For most B2B teams in 2026, pick by the work, since price is no longer a tiebreaker. Claude Team and ChatGPT Business both cost $25 per seat a month, or $20 billed annually. Choose Claude if your team writes, researches and runs tools through connectors all day. Choose ChatGPT if you want always-on agents, image generation and an ecosystem that reaches into other apps.
This week made the choice harder. On September 29, OpenAI shipped GPT-6.1 Sol and background agents called Dots. That came a week after Anthropic released Opus 5.5 and a day after Sonnet 5.5. On my own plan, Sol burned 20% of my weekly limit in 90 minutes, and I went back to Opus 5.5. Here is how I would decide for a sales or GTM team.
- Price is a tie: $25 a month per standard seat on both, $125 for premium seats, minimum two seats.
- GPT-6.1 Sol is OpenAI's new mid-priced work model, an upgrade to GPT-6 Sol. OpenAI's own tests put it slightly ahead of Opus 5.5 on one agent benchmark at about a third of the cost.
- Dots are always-on agents on ChatGPT Pro and Business premium seats. Early testers found them slow and buggy at launch.
- Usage limits decide more than benchmarks. Both vendors meter standard seats with a five-hour window, and Claude Team adds a weekly limit.
- Neither vendor trains on business plan data by default. Run a two-week test on your own tasks before you buy seats.
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“OpenAI dropped GPT-6.1 Sol and Dots. Opus is in trouble. Here are the 6 biggest facts from launch day.”
Claude vs ChatGPT for Business: Which Should You Choose?
Choose the tool that finishes your team's most common task with the fewest corrections. For writing, research and connector work, that is Claude for me today. For background agents, OpenAI is ahead.
| Main job | My pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Sales research and account lists | Claude | Connectors let it query data tools inside the chat and refine the search on its own |
| Writing emails, posts, proposals | Claude | Anthropic says Opus 5.5 puts key information first. In my first sessions its output beat Fable 5.1 |
| Always-on agents that work while you sleep | ChatGPT | Dots run 24/7 on their own cloud computer. Claude's closest match on Team is Cowork scheduled tasks, which run on a timetable and do not join Slack or calls |
| Coding and internal tools | Test both | Claude Code comes with Team seats. GPT-6.1 Sol ships in Codex. The winner changes with every release |
| One AI budget used across many apps | ChatGPT, on personal plans | On Plus and Pro, Sign in with ChatGPT lets participating apps use your plan. Business seats are not listed as eligible |
| Cost per task through the API | Test both | GPT-6.1 Sol and Claude Sonnet 5.5 both list at $2 input and $10 output per million tokens. Opus 5.5 is $4 and $20 |
That table is my judgment from daily use, and it will age fast. Both companies ship a major model every few weeks. The test in the last section is what stays true.
If you want a scoring sheet for that test, my guide on how to evaluate AI models on real business work gives you the rubric we use.
What Changed With GPT-6.1 Sol and Dots on September 29?
OpenAI released two things at its developer event on September 29, 2026. GPT-6.1 Sol is a new model that OpenAI says nearly matches its flagship GPT-6 Astra on agent tasks, coding and professional work at about one fifth of Astra's token price. Dots are personal agents that keep working in the background. They run on GPT-6 Astra, the bigger model.
Sol is live for Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu users in ChatGPT Work and Codex, and not yet in regular ChatGPT chats. In the API it costs $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens.
On AutomationBench at medium effort, OpenAI claims a 2.2 point lead over Opus 5.5 at about $0.30 per task against $0.92. Anthropic's Sonnet 5.5, released the day before at the same $2 and $10 API price, scored higher on the same benchmark, 44.7%, at $1.14 per task.
Each Dot runs on its own cloud computer and connects to more than 4,000 apps. You reach them in ChatGPT, Slack or Microsoft Teams, and they can join a voice call. They are rolling out to Pro and Business premium seats in eligible markets, with an admin-enabled beta on Enterprise and Edu. NBC News reported they are not yet available in the EU or the UK.
First reviews were mixed. At the launch demo, an OpenAI presenter joked that her Dot was having a slow morning. A pre-launch tester quoted by BeInCrypto called the build buggy. Casey Newton at Platformer found them highly capable. My read: promising, and not yet something I would hand a client's pipeline.
How Do Claude and ChatGPT Business Plans Compare on Price?
The list prices are identical: $25 per standard seat a month, or $20 billed annually, and $125 per premium seat, or $100 annually. Both need at least two seats. The differences sit in what premium unlocks and how enterprise is billed.
| Claude Team | ChatGPT Business | |
|---|---|---|
| Standard seat | $25/month, $20 billed annually | $25/month, $20 billed annually |
| Premium seat | $125/month, $100 billed annually | $125/month, $100 billed annually |
| Seats | 2 to 150 | From 2 |
| Premium seat unlocks | 5x standard seat usage, weekly limit remains | 5x standard seat usage, no five-hour limit, Dots |
| Extra usage | Buy usage credits | Workspace credits |
| Included agents and coding | Claude Code, Cowork | Codex, Dots on premium seats |
| Enterprise plan | $20 per seat plus usage at API rates, billed annually | Custom contract, pooled credits |
| Newest top model | Opus 5.5 (September 22) | GPT-6.1 Sol (September 29) |
The real cost is how many seats need premium to get through a normal week. Start with standard seats and upgrade only the people who hit the limit twice.
What Can ChatGPT Do for Business That Claude Cannot?
ChatGPT makes images and Claude does not. That is the clearest gap. Claude can draw charts, diagrams and interactive visuals in code, but Anthropic says it does not generate photos or illustrations. Most other everyday features now exist on both team plans, with different defaults and admin switches.
| Feature | Claude Team | ChatGPT Business |
|---|---|---|
| Image generation | No photos or illustrations, charts and diagrams only | Yes |
| Context window in the app | Up to 1M tokens with Opus 5.5 or Sonnet 5.5 | Not published per plan, varies by model |
| Gmail, Google Drive, Outlook, SharePoint, Teams | Yes, admin enables connectors | Yes, through connectors |
| Voice | Yes, in beta | Yes, subject to workspace settings |
| Web search | Yes, an owner must switch it on | Yes |
| Scheduled or background work | Cowork scheduled tasks run in the cloud | Dots on premium seats |
| SCIM, audit logs, data residency | Enterprise only, residency through the API | Enterprise only |
For a sales team, two rows matter most. The context window decides how many call transcripts fit in one conversation. The connectors decide whether the tool can read your inbox and files.
How Do Usage Limits Work on Claude and ChatGPT?
Both vendors meter usage per person. Claude Team seats have a five-hour session limit plus a weekly limit, published as multiples of the Pro plan. ChatGPT Business standard seats have a five-hour window with message ranges per model, and premium seats remove it. Anthropic does not publish weekly numbers, and OpenAI publishes only five-hour ranges for Business. The only reliable measure is your own team's week.
Limits are where my Sol test ended. A stronger model that uses more tokens per answer can drain a weekly allowance in an afternoon. On my own plan, I used 20% of my weekly limit in 90 minutes on GPT-6.1 Sol, then switched back. A founder I know ran his own tests and found Sol three times more efficient than Opus 5.5. I do not know what he tested. That is the point.
Efficiency depends on the task, the reasoning effort and the context length. Before rollout, give three heavy users one normal week and read the usage page daily. If they hit the limit by Wednesday, budget for premium seats or credits.
On the Claude side, my guide to Claude Max usage limits explains how the five-hour and weekly windows reset.
Which Is Better for Sales and GTM Work?
For sales and GTM work, Claude is my daily driver, mainly because of connectors. A connector lets the model call a data tool inside the chat, read the result and search again. The model thinks, and the database supplies the facts.
This week a client that sells to sales teams needed its dream customers: companies that build tools for sales teams. No database filter said that. We gave Opus 5.5 the problem, and it went through our data provider's connector until it found a filter for who a company sells to. The first run returned 2,410 companies. It judged the list too broad, added buyer titles, and got to 943.
Then it pulled 2,520 founders and sales leaders at those companies, with verified mobile numbers. The data provider was Prospeo. I have not run the same job on GPT-6.1 Sol yet. So treat this as one Claude result from my own work. If your team lives in data tools, test that exact loop in both products first.
For the tasks where Claude works well in a sales team, and where a person still needs to check the output, read my guide to Claude for sales.
Can Your ChatGPT or Claude Budget Pay for Other Apps?
This is the strategic difference. OpenAI wants your monthly AI budget and lets you spend it across other companies' apps. Anthropic wants the same budget, spent on Claude models, including inside partner tools built on Claude.
On the OpenAI side, Sign in with ChatGPT lets eligible Plus and Pro users allow participating apps to use their ChatGPT allowance, with a weekly cap per app. Launch partners include Notion, Vercel, GitLab and HubSpot. Business seats are not listed as eligible. For large customers, a beta OpenAI Marketplace lets part of an enterprise commitment pay for partner software.
Anthropic's Claude Marketplace, launched in March 2026, lets enterprise customers apply part of their commitment to Claude-powered tools such as GitLab, Harvey, Lovable, Replit, Rogo and Snowflake. I found no Pro or Team equivalent. So the buyer question is simple: one AI wallet for everything, or one model everywhere?
Is Your Company Data Safe on Claude and ChatGPT Business Plans?
Yes, both business plans exclude your data from model training by default. OpenAI states this for ChatGPT Business and Enterprise. Anthropic states it for Claude Team, Enterprise and the API. Both include single sign-on on the team plan. Consumer plans follow different rules, so do not let staff use personal accounts for client data.
- Decide who can install connectors. Each one is a new path for company data.
- Turn on single sign-on before you invite the team.
- For audit logs, SCIM or HIPAA needs, you need Claude Enterprise or ChatGPT Enterprise. The team plans stop short of that.
- If you sell into the EU or UK, check availability first. Dots are not live there.
How Do You Test Claude and ChatGPT Before You Buy Seats?
Run both on the same five real tasks for two weeks, with two or three people who will use the winner daily. Score corrections, time saved and limits hit. Launch-day benchmarks measure someone else's work. Two seats on each tool cost about $100 for the month.
- Pick five weekly tasks: an account list, a cold email, a call summary, a proposal, a report.
- Write each task once, with the same inputs and files, and run it in both tools.
- Count the edits each output needs before you would send it. Fewer edits wins the task.
- Log every time someone hits a usage limit, and on which day of the week.
- Test one real connector job with your own data tools.
- At the end, buy standard seats for the winner and premium only for the people who hit limits.
If you want help setting up that test inside a real outbound motion, this is the work our B2B lead generation service runs for companies selling contracts of $50,000 or more.
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude better than ChatGPT for business?
It depends on the job. In my use, Claude is better for writing, research and connector-driven sales work, and it is my daily driver. ChatGPT is ahead on always-on agents with Dots and on image generation, and on Plus and Pro it lets one plan pay for some partner apps. Test both on your five most common tasks before you buy seats.
How much do Claude Team and ChatGPT Business cost?
Both cost $25 per standard seat a month, or $20 a month billed annually, and $125 per premium seat, or $100 annually, as of September 30, 2026. Both require at least two seats. Enterprise plans are priced differently: Claude Enterprise is $20 per seat plus usage at API rates, and ChatGPT Enterprise is a custom contract.
Is GPT-6.1 Sol better than Opus 5.5?
On OpenAI's own benchmarks, GPT-6.1 Sol edges Opus 5.5 on some agent tasks at a lower cost per task. In my first sessions it drained my weekly limit fast, so I went back to Opus 5.5. The honest answer after one day is that it depends on your tasks. Run your own comparison.
Do Claude and ChatGPT train on business data?
No, not by default on business plans. OpenAI says it does not train on ChatGPT Business or Enterprise data, and Anthropic says it does not train on Claude Team, Enterprise or API data. Personal consumer accounts follow different rules, so keep client data on the company workspace.
Can a small team use both Claude and ChatGPT?
Yes, and many do. With a two-seat minimum on each, a small team can pay about $80 a month on annual billing to keep one tool for writing and research and the other for agents or coding. Review usage monthly and drop the seats nobody opens.
Sources
OpenAI, Introducing GPT-6.1 Sol, read September 30, 2026.
OpenAI, Introducing Dots, read September 30, 2026.
Anthropic, Claude Opus 5.5, read September 30, 2026.
Anthropic, Claude pricing, read September 30, 2026.
Claude Help Center, What is the Team plan?, read September 30, 2026.
Claude Help Center, Can Claude produce images?, read September 30, 2026.
OpenAI Help Center, ChatGPT Business overview, read September 30, 2026.
OpenAI Help Center, ChatGPT Business models and limits, read September 30, 2026.
OpenAI Help Center, Using your ChatGPT plan in other apps and sites, read September 30, 2026.
Anthropic, Claude Marketplace, read September 30, 2026.
OpenAI, Enterprise privacy, read September 30, 2026.
Anthropic, Is my data used for model training?, read September 30, 2026.
Anthropic, Introducing Claude Sonnet 5.5, read September 30, 2026.
Vellum, GPT-6.1 Sol benchmarks explained, read September 30, 2026.
OpenAI Help Center, ChatGPT Work and Codex, read September 30, 2026.
Platformer, OpenAI connects the Dots, read September 30, 2026.
BeInCrypto via Yahoo Tech, a tester's verdict on Dots, read September 30, 2026.
OpenAI Help Center, OpenAI Marketplace for enterprise customers, read September 30, 2026.
Claude Help Center, context window by model, read September 30, 2026.
Claude Help Center, voice mode, read September 30, 2026.
Claude Help Center, web search, read September 30, 2026.
NBC News, OpenAI launches Dots AI agents, read September 30, 2026.
Disclosure: Growth Cab has no commercial relationship with OpenAI or Anthropic and pays for both. Prospeo, the data provider in the sales example, is a partner of mine and we earn a commission from links to it. The GPT-6.1 Sol and Dots details come from launch-day sources and may change as OpenAI rolls them out.
