Ranked every LLM sub by price tier after a year of testing. ChatGPT Plus is the best $20 pick, but not for the reason you'd think.

Spent the past months paying for Claude Max, ChatGPT Pro, Gemini, Kimi, Synthetic, NanoGPT. Most "best AI subscription" guides are alphabetized vendor lists. I wrote mine by what you're willing to spend per month. Why ChatGPT Plus wins at $20: it's not about GPT-5.4 being the best model (it's not, Opus 4.6 is stronger for coding). It's the separate usage pools. Your chat quota and your Codex coding quota don't eat each other. Morning planning session doesn't touch afternoon coding. That's a real workflow win. For context: Claude Pro at $20 is a trap for developers.