Send us Fan Mail
The best AI subscription for business owners: I pay for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and here's the one I'd keep for $20.
Watch the video: https://youtu.be/ZVAF525Tp54
If you're paying $20 a month for ChatGPT and wondering whether to upgrade, or switch to Claude or Gemini, this is the bottom line from someone who pays for all of them. Mark Mason leads engineering teams, including AI engineering, at a Fortune 500 semiconductor company, and he pays for these tools out of his own pocket: ChatGPT on two accounts, Claude's top plan, Gemini, and OpenRouter to test the rest.
The short answer comes first: if you already use one and you're happy, stay with it, because switching has a real cost. If your business runs on Google, Gemini makes sense. With his own $20, Mark picks Claude, and he explains why. Then comes the part that matters more than which one you pick: moving AI from answering questions to doing the work. Two real examples from his wife's photography business show how: blog posts drafted in her voice from her social media and pushed to WordPress, and quarterly sales tax prepared for a human to check before anything is filed.
In this episode:
- ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini: which $20 plan to keep, and when not to switch
- How to get AI to do the work, not just answer questions
- Is Microsoft Copilot worth it for a small business?
- Is the $20 plan enough, and when does the $100 or $200 plan pay for itself?
- Why the AI model you pick matters less than how you use it
The sung stinger is AI-generated music. Every word you hear is Mark's own voice.
Prices checked October 18, 2026: ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, and Google AI Pro are $20 a month ($19.99 for Google). The bigger plans (Claude Max, ChatGPT Pro, Google AI Ultra) run $100 to $200 a month. Check the current price before you buy.
My previous video, on what the research actually says about AI and jobs: https://youtu.be/snsV4Ydb26E
About Mark Mason
Mark Mason leads engineering teams, including AI engineering, at a Fortune 500 semiconductor company. He has run online businesses since 2007 and has been podcasting since 2009. This channel is practical AI for the business you already run: growth by design, not by grind. More at https://markmason.com?utm_source=buzzsprout&utm_medium=podcast
Disclaimer: this episode is for educational and informational purposes only. It isn't legal, tax, accounting, financial, investment, HR, or cybersecurity advice, and watching it doesn't create a professional or client relationship. Talk to a qualified professional before you make decisions for your business. Any income, revenue, savings, time saved, or other results mentioned are examples or my own experience, shared for reference only. They aren't typical, and they aren't a promise or a guarantee: your results depend on your business, your market, your effort, and many other factors. AI tools can be wrong, incomplete, or biased, can make things up, and change often. Check their output before you rely on it, and follow each tool's terms, your privacy and data-protection duties, your client agreements, and the law, especially before you put customer, employee, or confidential information into any AI tool. Tools, features, and prices were accurate when recorded and may have changed since. Product names are trademarks of their owners, and mentioning a product doesn't mean its maker endorses this channel. Any sponsorship or affiliate link is disclosed. Opinions are my own and don't represent my employer. You use this information at your own risk; Mark Mason and markmason.com accept no liability for any loss or damage that results from using it.
