Five findings
- Same price, different weight. Claude Team and ChatGPT Business both list at $20 a seat a month on annual billing. That is 21 minutes of work at the average wage in Switzerland, 29 in the United States, 64 in Italy and 93 in Poland.
- The gap is wide inside the euro area too. A $20 seat costs 26 minutes of work in Luxembourg and 86 in Portugal, more than three times as much.
- In Latin America a seat is measured in hours. It costs 174 minutes of work in Mexico and 213 in Colombia.
- The break-even point is the same number. A seat pays for itself when it saves that many minutes a month. In 14 of the 21 OECD countries that is less than one hour, and in all 21 it is less than four.
- Four seats are a rounding error in some countries and a budget line in others. One seat of each of the four plans costs $91 a month: 0.9% of the average monthly wage in Switzerland, 4.1% in Poland and 7.6% in Mexico.
The list prices
We use United States list prices in dollars, per seat per month on annual billing and before tax, as published by the four vendors on 14 November 2026.
| Plan | Per seat a month, annual billing | Monthly billing | What to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Team, Standard seat | $20 | $25 | 2 to 150 seats |
| ChatGPT Business, Standard seat | $20 | $25 | From 2 seats |
| Gemini Enterprise, Business edition | $21 | - | Starting price, up to 300 seats |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot | $30 | $31.50 | Add-on: needs a qualifying Microsoft 365 plan |
Microsoft also lists Microsoft 365 Copilot Business for organisations of up to 300 users at $21, with a promotional price of $18 until 31 December 2026. Claude Enterprise lists at $20 a seat with usage billed on top.
A seat in working time
To compare countries we convert the seat price into minutes of work at the average wage. We use the same full-time year of 2,080 hours everywhere, so the differences come from wages alone.
Figure 1
The same $20 seat costs 21 minutes of work in Switzerland and 213 in Colombia
Minutes of work at the average wage needed to pay for one $20 seat for a month. OECD countries.
| Switzerland | 21 |
|---|---|
| Luxembourg | 26 |
| United States | 29 |
| Denmark | 31 |
| Ireland | 35 |
| Norway | 35 |
| Belgium | 36 |
| Netherlands | 36 |
| Austria | 38 |
| Germany | 40 |
| United Kingdom | 41 |
| Finland | 44 |
| Sweden | 45 |
| France | 50 |
| Spain | 63 |
| Italy | 64 |
| Portugal | 86 |
| Poland | 93 |
| Chile | 115 |
| Mexico | 174 |
| Colombia | 213 |
Source: Solorai analysis of vendor list prices, OECD average annual wages and World Bank exchange rates.
For five markets we only have labour force survey data, which is built differently and runs lower. We show them apart. In Egypt a $20 seat costs about 32 hours of work at average earnings.
Figure 2
Outside the OECD data a seat can cost days of work
Minutes of work at average earnings needed to pay for one $20 seat for a month. Labour force survey data, not comparable with Figure 1.
| Qatar | 63 |
|---|---|
| Saudi Arabia | 116 |
| Argentina | 256 |
| Brazil | 342 |
| Egypt | 1,902 |
Source: Solorai analysis of vendor list prices and ILOSTAT mean monthly earnings of employees.
What it means for a business case
- Budget by wage level, not by seat price. The same rollout is a different decision in Zurich and in Warsaw. State the cost of a seat in working time for each country you operate in.
- Use the break-even time as the test. Ask each team how many minutes a month the assistant has to save, then measure it in a pilot. See how we price a pilot.
- Where a seat is expensive, start with the roles that gain the most. In lower-wage markets a seat for everyone is harder to justify than a seat for the teams with the most repeatable work.
Method and limits
- Prices: United States list prices per seat per month on annual billing, before tax, read on the vendors’ pricing pages on 14 November 2026. Local prices, taxes and negotiated discounts differ.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot is an add-on. The qualifying Microsoft 365 plan it needs is not counted.
- Wages: OECD average annual wages per full-time equivalent employee, in national currency at current prices, for 2025 (Colombia 2024, Chile 2023), converted at the World Bank average exchange rate of the same year.
- Working time: a full-time year of 2,080 hours, or 40 hours a week, in every country.
- Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia are not in the OECD dataset. For them we use ILOSTAT mean monthly earnings of employees from labour force surveys (Argentina and Brazil 2025, Egypt 2024, Qatar and Saudi Arabia 2022). For Mexico, where both sources exist, the survey figure is less than half the OECD figure, so the two groups cannot be ranked together.
- We found no comparable wage figure for the United Arab Emirates, so the study covers 26 of our usual 27 countries.
- Wages are gross wages, not the full cost of an employee to the employer. With the full cost, break-even times would be shorter.
Sources
Cite this research
Solorai (2026). What an AI seat really costs: list prices against wages in 26 countries. https://solorai.com/insights/research/ai-seat-cost-vs-wages-2026/
Free to quote and to chart, with attribution and a link to this page.