The cheapest way to get AI help with writing is no longer an AI writing tool. Google AI Plus costs £4.49 a month and ChatGPT Go £7, and ChatGPT says text chats on Go are unlimited. The cheapest dedicated writing tool I priced, Rytr, is $9.
I had the prices checked for seven writing tools and three general assistants, each read off the vendor's own page with monthly billing selected. Three things stood out.
The category is splitting up
Several of the old "AI writers" now sell something else. Writesonic's pricing page sells tracking of how brands appear in AI answers, from $99 a month. Copy.ai sells itself as a sales-and-marketing platform, with one self-serve plan, Chat, at $29 for five seats. Hypotenuse only quotes custom prices. When a general assistant does the basic job for a few pounds, the specialists either move up-market or find a new job to do.
The ones that stayed charge for something specific
Jasper Pro is $69 a month for one seat, aimed at marketing teams with brand voice and workflows. Fiction has its own market: Sudowrite sells credits ($19 a month for 225,000), while NovelAI offers unlimited text from $10. These are paying for features a general chat window doesn't give you, not for the words themselves.
The yearly price comes first
Sudowrite's page opens on $10 a month; billed monthly it is $19. Wordtune shows $9.99 against $19.99, Claude $17 against $20, Jasper $59 against $69. If you compare tools on the first number you see, you're often comparing prices you won't pay unless you commit for a year.
A disclosure
This was researched with one of the tools on the list, Claude, and it is priced the same way as the others. There are no affiliate links on the page or in this note.
The page this is about: What do AI writing tools really cost? — every figure sourced to the vendor's own page, with the date it was checked.