ChatGPT for Your Team · Lesson 6 of 7

Costs, seats and what's included

15 minutes. For the owner. Know the bill before it arrives, and set limits before anyone needs them.

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ChatGPT Business is simple to buy and easy to overpay for. Not because the price is hidden, but because of how seats and extra usage work. This lesson gives you the prices, the billing rules that catch people out, and the three settings that keep the bill predictable.

All prices here are from OpenAI's help pages on October 10, 2026, in US dollars. OpenAI notes that pricing may vary by country and currency.

| Seat type | Monthly plan | Annual plan | |---|---|---| | Standard | $25 per user per month | $20 per user per month, billed annually | | Premium | $125 per user per month | $100 per user per month, billed annually |

The rules around them:

• Minimum two paid seats. Two Standard, two Premium, or one of each.
• Maximum 200 paid seats in one Business workspace.
• Card payment. Self-serve Business takes credit and debit cards. OpenAI says invoice billing, purchase orders, bank transfer and net terms aren't available on self-serve Business.
• The API isn't included. If someone at your company builds software on OpenAI's API, that's billed separately.

OpenAI says a Standard seat includes ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work and Codex, with features such as GPTs, projects, apps, company knowledge, ChatGPT agent and deep research, within included usage limits.

A Premium seat has the same access with more usage. OpenAI says Premium includes five times the usage of Standard and no 5-hour usage limit.

A few specifics from OpenAI's pages that matter to an office team:

• Everyday chat is the generous part. OpenAI describes "virtually unlimited" access for Instant chat, subject to safeguards against misuse. That does not make thinking modes, Pro, Work, Codex or other tools unlimited.
• Pro messages are limited. Standard seats get 15 Pro messages a month. Premium seats get 50 a week. (Lesson 3 explains when Pro is worth it.)
• Voice has a daily limit. OpenAI's release notes list up to 3 hours a day on Standard and up to 15 hours on Premium with its live voice model.

For most office staff, Standard is enough. Premium is for the person who runs into limits every week.

Comfort Zone Heating & Cooling, our fictional HVAC company, has six people on Standard seats.

• Monthly plan: 6 × $25 = $150 a month, or $1,800 over a year.
• Annual plan: 6 × $20 × 12 = $1,440 a year, charged up front.

The annual plan saves $360 a year. But Marcus started monthly, to see who really used it. He'll look again at the 30-day check in Lesson 7.

Read these twice. They're where small businesses lose money.

• You pay for every seat you bought, whether it's assigned or not. OpenAI charges for all Standard and Premium seats at the start of each billing cycle.
• Removing a person doesn't remove the seat. It frees the seat for someone else. To stop paying for it, an owner has to reduce the seat count, and the reduction takes effect at the start of the next billing cycle.
• Adding a seat is charged right away, prorated for the rest of the cycle. For example, adding one Standard seat halfway through a 30-day monthly cycle costs about 15 ÷ 30 × $25 = $12.50 now, then $25 a month after that.
• On an annual plan, seats you add stay committed until the end of that year.
• Unused seats are generally non-refundable once you've committed to a seat count, except where the law or an approved exception applies.

Where to manage it: owners go to Workspace settings > Members, select Users, then Manage seats to add seats or schedule reductions. Billing details, invoices and the next charge are under Workspace settings > Billing. Only owners can add, reduce or change seat types.

When someone uses up their seat's included usage for advanced features, the workspace can keep them going with credits. Credits are bought by the workspace and shared by everyone.

What OpenAI's pages say:

• Credits are optional. You only need them if you want people to keep going after they hit their limit. Without credits, the feature is blocked until the limit resets, and the person can ask an owner for more.
• Core features don't use credits. OpenAI lists search, file upload and canvas as examples.
• Credits last 12 months from purchase and are generally non-refundable.
• Owners buy credits in Workspace settings > Billing.

The three settings that keep the bill predictable (5 minutes)

All three are in Workspace settings > Billing.

• Monthly credit usage limits. OpenAI says that by default, no seat or user has a limit. Set one for Standard and one for Premium. You can also set a per-person override. Pick a small number to start. You can raise it.
• Automatic reload. This tops up credits from your card when the balance runs low. If you turn it on, fill in the Monthly recharge limit. OpenAI says leaving that field blank allows unlimited automatic purchases each month.
• Usage alerts. OpenAI's credits page says owners can set credit usage alerts under Usage Alerts in the billing settings. Send them to the owner who reads email.

At Comfort Zone, Marcus bought no credits in the first month. He'll decide after he sees who hits limits.

OpenAI's Business page lists things that need a contracted plan such as Enterprise instead: invoice billing, purchase orders, split payments, Zero Data Retention, and Business Associate Agreements (BAAs). If your business handles protected health information, talk to your IT partner or privacy lead before anyone puts patient information into ChatGPT Business.

• Write your seat count, seat types, billing cadence and monthly total on the Workspace Setup Checklist, Part 3.
• Check for unassigned seats. If you have any you don't need, schedule a reduction.
• Set monthly credit usage limits for each seat type, even if you haven't bought credits.
• If you turn on automatic reload, set a monthly recharge limit.
• Put your renewal date on the calendar.

Check it worked

• You can say your monthly (or yearly) total out loud, and it matches the billing page.
• Every paid seat is assigned to a real person, or scheduled for removal.
• Credit usage limits are set for both seat types.
• Automatic reload is off, or has a monthly recharge limit.
• If your business handles health information, you've raised the BAA question before anyone uses ChatGPT for it.

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Next: put it all together. Retest your prompts and set up your 30-day check.

→ Lesson 7: Capstone: retest your prompts and a 30-day check

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