ChatGPT
The general-purpose assistant most people mean when they say "AI"
openai.com Free tier Checked 30 August 2026
- Price
- We could not verify it — see the vendor page
- Trains on your data
- Opt out
- Where data is processed
- Not published
- Data processing agreement
- Not published
- Setup
- Minutes
- Skill needed
- Anyone
What is ChatGPT?
Drafting, summarising, rewriting, explaining, and increasingly reading your files and browsing for you. It is the broadest tool on this list and the one with the shallowest learning curve, which is why it is where most businesses start and where many of them stop.
ChatGPT is the default because it is the least specialised thing here. It does not do any one job better than a purpose-built tool, but it does two hundred jobs adequately, which for a business with no AI in it yet is the more useful property.
The thing to watch is the tier. The consumer plans and the business plans are sold from the same website and look the same in use, but they carry different commitments about what happens to what you type. If your staff are already pasting customer emails into a personal account — and in most small businesses they are — that is the problem to fix first, before any question of which model is cleverest.
What does ChatGPT cost in the UK?
We could not verify it — see the vendor page.
What the free tier actually gets you
A free tier exists and is genuinely usable for occasional drafting, with lower limits and slower access to the newest models.
What to watch on the price
We are not quoting an entry price. OpenAI's pricing page returned HTTP 403 to us on 29 August 2026, and the plan structure changes often enough that a remembered figure would mislead. The link goes to the live page.
Does ChatGPT train AI models on your data?
Opt out
OpenAI states, for the individual plans: "When you use our services for individuals such as ChatGPT and Codex, we may use your content to train our models" and "You can opt out of training through our privacy portal by clicking on “do not train on my content”." The business tiers are governed differently: "By default, we do not train on any inputs or outputs from our products for business users, including ChatGPT Business, ChatGPT Enterprise, and the API." This entry covers the consumer plans, which is what most readers are on. Feedback is a carve-out on both: if you click thumbs up or down, "the entire conversation associated with that feedback may be used to train our models." Read on 30 August 2026.
The rest of the data position
- Where data is processed: Not published
- Data processing agreement: Not published
What do people use ChatGPT for?
- Draft a first version of a quote, proposal or awkward email
- Turn a rambling voice note into a structured set of actions
- Explain a contract clause or a piece of legislation in plain English
What does ChatGPT connect to?
- Google Drive
- Microsoft 365
- Slack
- Zapier
Where does ChatGPT fall short?
- Confidently wrong about UK-specific law, tax and regulation unless you make it cite a source
- The consumer and business tiers have different data terms, and the difference is not obvious in the app
- No UK data residency option published for the consumer tiers
Who is ChatGPT for?
A good fit for
- Sole traders
- Anyone writing a lot of text
- First AI tool in a business
Not for
- Anyone relying on it for UK law, tax or regulation without making it cite a source — it is confidently wrong in exactly that area
- Teams putting client data through a personal account, which is the most common and least noticed mistake in this whole directory
The Torus verdict on ChatGPT
The right first tool for almost any business, on the paid individual tier. Move to a business tier before anyone pastes in customer data, and read the data terms for the tier you are actually on rather than the one you assume.
What are the alternatives to ChatGPT?
Others in writing, with what each one is for.
- Claude from $20/mo A rival assistant that holds long documents better and hedges less
- Claude for Work Price on application Anthropic's assistant on a business plan, which is not trained on your data
- DeepL See vendor pricing Translation that reads like it was written by a person
- Google Gemini for Workspace See vendor pricing Gemini inside Gmail, Docs and Sheets, on your own Workspace content