ChatGPT Business for a UK firm: cost, seats, data and whether to buy it.
By Zain M · 25 September 2026 · 11 min read
ChatGPT Business, the plan formerly called Team, costs $20 a seat a month billed annually or $25 monthly, about £15 or £19 before VAT, with a two-seat minimum and a Premium seat at $100 annual or $125 monthly for five times the usage. Business workspaces are not used to train OpenAI’s models, deleted conversations are removed within 30 days, and the plan includes single sign-on, an admin console and shared projects. It is the plan any UK firm with two or more people should buy instead of personal Plus accounts, whose conversations are used for training unless each user turns it off. Enterprise is quote-only and only pays off for large or regulated firms.
What it costs a UK business
OpenAI lists ChatGPT Business at $20 a seat a month on annual billing or $25 monthly, with a minimum of two seats. In April 2026 the price came down by $5 a seat from the previous $25 and $30, and in August 2026 OpenAI added a Premium seat at $100 annual or $125 monthly with five times the included usage for heavy users. Seats can be mixed. Business is listed in dollars, so at September 2026 rates a Standard seat is about £15 or £19 and a Premium seat about £75 or £94, before VAT. OpenAI charges UK VAT at checkout and a VAT-registered business reclaims it in the normal way.
That puts ChatGPT Business at exactly the same price as Claude Team, seat for seat, which is why our comparison guide tells firms to decide between them by the work rather than the bill. The individual plans sit below: ChatGPT Go at $8 a month, Plus at $20 (OpenAI prices Plus in pounds for UK users at £16 plus VAT), and Pro at $100 or $200 for the heaviest individual use.
| Plan | Dollar price | About in pounds, ex VAT | Minimum |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business Standard, annual | $20 a seat a month | £15.09 | Two seats |
| Business Standard, monthly | $25 a seat a month | £18.86 | Two seats |
| Business Premium, annual | $100 a seat a month | £75.45 | Two seats |
| Business Premium, monthly | $125 a seat a month | £94.31 | Two seats |
| Plus, for comparison | $20 a month (£16 plus VAT in the UK) | £16 | One |
| Enterprise | Quote only | Reported near $60 a seat with a large minimum | Negotiated |
OpenAI list prices, 25 September 2026, at USD 1 = GBP 0.7545. Enterprise pricing is not published; the figure is from 2026 procurement reports and is indicative only.
What the Business plan includes
A shared workspace with an admin console: add and remove members, verify your domain, set roles, see usage. Single sign-on through SAML, so access follows your Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace directory and a leaver loses ChatGPT when they lose their email. Shared projects and custom GPTs for the firm’s own templates and tone. Connectors to Google Drive, SharePoint, Box and others, plus the company-knowledge search layer that searches across them, which OpenAI switched on by default for Business workspaces when it launched in October 2025. The coding agent, deep research, and the image and voice tools are included, with usage governed by the seat type.
What it does not include is the Enterprise compliance layer: SCIM provisioning at scale, the compliance API for exporting conversations to your archiving tool, custom retention periods, and data residency in the UK or Europe. Those are the reasons a regulated or large firm pays the Enterprise price.
Data: what OpenAI does and does not do with a Business workspace
By default OpenAI does not use content from ChatGPT Business, Enterprise, Edu or ChatGPT for Healthcare workspaces to train its models. Workspace owners control retention and memory settings, deleted conversations are removed from OpenAI’s systems within 30 days unless legally required to be kept, and Enterprise owners can set a custom retention period from 90 days. OpenAI publishes its enterprise privacy commitments, provides a data processing addendum with the standard contractual clauses, and holds SOC 2. Enterprise adds data residency options that include the UK.
The consumer plans are the opposite by default. Free, Go and Plus conversations are used to improve OpenAI’s models unless the user turns that off in data controls, and the decision sits with the individual, not the firm. For a UK employer that is the whole argument for Business: a few pounds a seat moves the decision from each employee’s settings page to the firm’s admin console and contract.
Two settings to make on day one. Decide whether connectors should stay on for everyone, since they let ChatGPT read whatever the connected drive lets that person see. And set the workspace retention deliberately, short enough that a subject access request is manageable, long enough to reconstruct advice given.
Business or Enterprise
Enterprise has no published price. Procurement reports through 2026 put it around $60 a seat a month with a substantial seat minimum and annual prepayment, which makes the realistic entry point a six-figure sum in dollars. What it buys is the compliance layer above, higher usage, longer context, priority access, and a contract you can negotiate. A firm should move to Enterprise when a client contract or regulator requires UK data residency, a specific retention period, or an exportable audit trail, or when the firm has a few hundred seats and wants provisioning from the directory. A firm of ten to a hundred people with none of those requirements gets almost everything it needs on Business.
Rolling it out so the seats get used
The subscription is the cheap part. Three things decide whether a Business workspace pays back: a one-page acceptable-use policy with examples of what may and may not be pasted in; two or three shared projects or custom GPTs built on the firm’s real templates and tone, so the first thing a new user sees is ChatGPT already knowing how the firm writes; and a short session per team on the two tasks that team does most. Our policy template is written to be adopted as it stands, and our training guide sets out what the sessions cost.
Common questions
How much does ChatGPT Business cost in the UK?
About £15 a seat a month on annual billing ($20) or £19 monthly ($25), before VAT, with a two-seat minimum. A Premium seat with five times the usage is about £75 or £94 ($100 or $125).
Is ChatGPT Business the same as ChatGPT Team?
Yes. OpenAI renamed Team to Business. The plan, the pricing tiers and the data commitments carried over.
Does ChatGPT Business train on our data?
No. Content from Business, Enterprise and Edu workspaces is not used to train OpenAI’s models by default. Free, Go and Plus conversations are, unless the user turns it off.
What is the minimum number of seats?
Two.
Does ChatGPT Business include single sign-on?
Yes, SAML single sign-on and enforced two-factor authentication are part of the Business admin console.
How long does ChatGPT keep our data?
Deleted conversations are removed within 30 days. Workspace owners control retention and memory settings; Enterprise can set custom retention from 90 days.
Is ChatGPT Business GDPR compliant?
It can be used in line with UK GDPR: OpenAI offers a data processing addendum with the standard contractual clauses, does not train on workspace data, and holds SOC 2. Compliance is yours to complete with a lawful basis, a processor record and a staff policy.
Is our data kept in the UK?
Not on Business, which processes on OpenAI’s infrastructure under the standard contractual clauses. Enterprise offers UK data residency.
Should we buy ChatGPT Business or Claude Team?
They cost the same. Claude leads on long documents, careful writing and coding; ChatGPT leads on images, voice and breadth of integrations. Many firms run both, splitting seats by role.
When is Enterprise worth it?
When a client or regulator requires UK residency, a fixed retention period or an exportable audit trail, or when the firm has hundreds of seats. Otherwise Business covers most firms.
Setting up ChatGPT Business properly
We configure the workspace, write the policy, build the shared projects on your own templates and train each team on its two most common tasks, at a fixed price.