Steph cannot account for one line on her bank statement. It is small, it is monthly, and the amount is not what it was last month, which is part of why she has never worked it out.
Take Steph, a two-groomer salon in Sydney's Inner West. She is a worked example we follow through this series, and her numbers are the sort you would recognise rather than a real client's books.
The direct answer. What AI tools cost in Australia depends on which of the four you buy: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Canva. Canva publishes Australian dollar prices. Google publishes Australian dollar prices, and on the day we checked, two of Google's own pages quoted different figures for the same tier. Anthropic and OpenAI publish no Australian dollar prices at all: their plans are priced in USD, so what leaves your account depends on the exchange rate on the day your card is charged, and possibly on an international transaction fee your bank adds. Two of the four will quote you in the currency you spend. Two will not, and that is the part nobody writes down.
Every figure below was read from the vendor's own page on 9 August 2026. Prices move. Check the page you are buying from on the day you buy.
Why two of these four will not quote you in Australian dollars
OpenAI states plainly that purchases are made in USD, with local-currency billing in a limited set of countries, and AUD is on its list of supported billing currencies. What is not on any OpenAI page is an amount in AUD: ask for the Australian pricing page and you are redirected to the US one, bare dollar signs on the cards and the footer set to United States. Anthropic is simpler and no more useful for budgeting: USD and nothing else.
Here is what that means on your statement, because no vendor will say it for you.
- A USD charge lands as a different Australian dollar figure each month. It is set by the exchange rate on the day your card is charged, not the day you subscribed, so check at the checkout which currency you are actually being billed in.
- Your card may add an international transaction fee on top. That is between you and your bank, and it lives in your schedule of fees, not on the vendor's pricing page.
- Do not budget from the USD sticker price as though it were the number leaving your account. It is the figure before two other things happen to it.
- We will not convert it for you. Anything we printed today would be wrong by the time you read it, and a wrong number in a budget is worse than no number.
One OpenAI gotcha, better known before you subscribe than after: a subscription stays on the currency it was bought in, so switching means cancelling and re-subscribing after the current period ends.
On GST: not one of these four states, on any page we read, how GST is handled on an Australian purchase. OpenAI has a field for a tax ID at checkout and a VAT exemption route for self-identified businesses. Canva's Australian page prints neither "GST" nor "AUD", just A$. Take the invoice to your accountant and do not assume it either way.
Anthropic: Claude and Claude Code, in USD
| Plan | Price (USD) | Claude Code included |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | No |
| Pro | $17/month billed annually, $20/month billed monthly | Yes |
| Max | From $100/month, in two tiers (5x and 20x usage) | Yes |
| Teams Standard | $20/seat/month annual, $25 monthly | Yes |
| Teams Premium | $100/seat/month annual, $125 monthly | Yes |
| Enterprise Self-Serve | $20/seat plus usage at API rates | Yes |
| Enterprise (sales-assisted) | Custom | Yes |
Claude Code is not on the Free plan. Every paid plan includes it and Free does not, so if you have read what Claude Code actually is and want to try it, the cheapest door in is a paid plan.
Teams is sold for teams of 2 to 150 people, so the smallest Teams bill is two seats. At the Standard seat price that is USD $40 per month on annual billing, or USD $50 monthly. For a solo owner-groomer, Pro is the plan and Teams is not.
Anthropic also publishes pay-as-you-go API rates in USD, per million tokens. On a subscription you are not billed that way: Claude Code draws on the allowance your plan includes.
OpenAI: ChatGPT, in USD
| Plan | Price (USD) |
|---|---|
| Free | $0/month |
| Go | $8/month |
| Plus | $20/month |
| Pro | From $100/month, in two tiers ($100 and $200) |
| Business | $20/user/month billed annually, $25/user/month monthly, minimum two seats |
| Enterprise | Custom |
"ChatGPT Team" is not a plan any more. It was renamed Business. If an article is quoting you Team pricing, it is out of date, which tells you plenty about its other numbers.
Business carries a two-seat minimum, which matters if you are one person. The smallest possible Business bill is two seats: USD $40 per month on annual billing, or USD $50 per month billed monthly. A solo operator on Business is buying a seat nobody sits in. Plus is the individual plan.
One further gate that costs money: on Free you can use other people's custom GPTs, but creating one requires a paid plan. And Pro is not one price. It is one plan in two usage tiers, $100 and $200, so "Pro is $100" is only half true.
Google: priced in AUD, and its own pages disagreed
Google is the good news and the cautionary tale. The personal tiers, as served on gemini.google/subscriptions:
| Tier | Price (AUD) | Storage |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 AUD/month | 15 GB |
| Google AI Plus | $7.99 AUD/month | 400 GB |
| Google AI Pro | $32.99 AUD/month | 5 TB |
| Google AI Ultra | From $149.99 AUD/month, with a larger $329.99 AUD/month option | From 20 TB |
Now the same tiers on one.google.com/about/plans, read the same day: "Google AI Plus (2 TB)" at A$14.99/mo, and "Google AI Pro (5 TB)" at A$32.99/mo.
When we checked in August 2026, two of Google's own pages quoted different prices for the same tier. That is not us being sloppy. It is a reminder to check the price on the page you are actually buying from, on the day you buy it.
We will not average those, pick the cheaper one, or tell you which is right. AI Pro reads $32.99 on both pages, a fair sign of a settled price. AI Plus does not. Annual prices for the personal tiers are not published: the Google One page renders a "Save up to 16%" toggle without the amounts.
If you already pay for Google Workspace, you may already own what you were about to buy. Gemini in Workspace is no longer a separate purchase, and Gemini Notebook, Google's current name for what you may know as NotebookLM, is included in all Workspace plans. Prices below are per user per month from the Workspace pricing page, whose cards read Starter, Standard, and Plus. Google's help centre calls the same editions Business Starter, Business Standard, and Business Plus.
| Workspace plan | Promotional (AUD) | Standard (AUD) |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $4.95 | $9.90 |
| Standard | $9.90 | $19.80 |
| Plus | $15.45 | $30.90 |
| Enterprise | Let's talk | Let's talk |
Two columns, and only one is what you will be paying long term, so work out which applies before you budget. The page says all plans are billed monthly, with an annual option badged "Save 16% with 1 year commitment". Which Gemini features arrive at which tier is a question for our Gemini guide.
Canva: the one that quotes you in A$
| Plan | Price (AUD) |
|---|---|
| Free | A$0 |
| Pro | A$165/year for one person, or A$20/month |
| Business | A$280/year per person, or A$28/month per person |
| Enterprise | Let's talk |
The page loads on the yearly toggle, and its badge reads "Save from 16%". Read whichever state you are buying.
Two naming corrections, because these date an article fast. There is no Canva Teams plan to buy: Canva's own FAQ says Teams is closed to new sign-ups and upgrades, and Business is the team tier. And Canva Pro is single-seat, so a two-groomer salon wanting two logins is looking at Business at A$28 per month per person.
The AI allowance is where readers get caught. Canva's own term is "AI allowance", and the figures are alternatives joined by "or", not a pooled budget you spend across all three.
- Free: up to 200 Standard AI uses, or up to 20 Premium uses. No Ultra access.
- Pro: up to 2,000 Standard, or up to 200 Premium, or up to 20 Ultra.
- Business: up to 4,000 Standard, or up to 400 Premium, or up to 40 Ultra.
Canva is upfront that those are best-case numbers: they hold only where you use one type of tool, your task is simple, and you pick the lightest tool in its category. Two paid add-ons exist for when you run out, AI Pass and an AI top-up, and Canva publishes no price for either, which is worth knowing before you plan a month of content around them. What those tools actually do sits in our Canva guide.
What AI tools cost in Australia for a real salon
Three stacks, built only from the figures above. Notice what is missing from the bottom of each one: a single total. Adding an A$ column to a USD column would mean converting, and we do not do that.
Stack one: free only.
- Canva Free: A$0
- ChatGPT Free: USD $0
- Gemini free tier: $0 AUD per month
- Claude Free: USD $0, and no Claude Code
Total: nothing, in both currencies. This is the only stack here we can add up, because zero is zero in any currency, and for many readers it is the right answer this month.
Stack two: one paid tool.
If you are going to pay for exactly one thing, pay for it in the currency you bank.
- Canva Pro: A$165 per year for one person, or A$20 per month
- Everything else on the free tiers above: A$0 and USD $0
AUD side: A$165 a year, or A$20 a month. USD side: nothing. One line on the statement, in dollars you recognise, and the same number next month.
Stack three: everything.
- Canva Pro: A$165 per year, or A$20 per month
- Google AI Pro: $32.99 AUD per month, the tier both Google pages agreed on
- ChatGPT Plus: USD $20 per month
- Claude Pro: USD $17 per month on annual billing, or USD $20 monthly
AUD subtotal: $32.99 per month, plus A$165 per year. USD subtotal: $37 per month with Claude Pro on annual billing, or $40 per month if both are monthly.
There is no bottom line, on purpose. The AUD subtotal is what your bank will debit. The USD subtotal is not: it is the figure before the exchange rate, and possibly a card fee, get to it. That gap, invisible until the statement arrives, is the actual cost story here.
Those are all individual plans, so no seat minimum bites. Want a second login and that changes: Canva Business is priced per person, and ChatGPT Business and Claude Teams both start at two seats.
For what our own plans cost, the numbers live on the Petboost pricing page, and Grazi AI inside the app is included on every plan including Calendar Lite at no extra cost, so it is not another line on this list.
What is genuinely free, and good enough
For a lot of readers the honest recommendation is to spend nothing this month.
- ChatGPT Free gives you unlimited text chats with GPT-5.6 Luna, with OpenAI's own footnote that usage must be reasonable and comply with its policies. Web search, uploads, image creation, projects, voice, and unlimited chat history are on Free too, several rated "Limited" rather than absent. You cannot build a custom GPT, and OpenAI states ads may appear on Free and Go.
- Gemini free gives you access to 3.6 Flash plus varying access to 3.1 Pro, image generation, Deep Research, Gemini Live, Canvas, and Gems, with 15 GB of storage. Google publishes no daily prompt numbers for any tier now, only relative multipliers: AI Plus reads as 2x and AI Pro as 4x the standard limits, and AI Ultra as 5x or 20x the AI Pro limits depending on which Ultra you buy.
- Canva Free costs A$0 and includes 1.6 million-plus templates, 4.7 million-plus stock assets, 5 GB of storage, one Brand Kit capped at three colours, and the allowance above.
- Claude Free is USD $0, with the one hole that matters: no Claude Code.
The free tiers cost you something that is not money. On the personal plans your conversations train the model unless you turn that off, and the settings have names: OpenAI's is "Improve the model for everyone" under Data Controls, and Google's is Keep Activity, on by default for adults. Google warns plainly against entering confidential information you would not want a reviewer to see, because a subset of chats is reviewed by people.
Business tiers default the other way, and OpenAI states it does not train on ChatGPT Business data by default. Which is why the never-paste list exists, and why it bites hardest on the tier that costs nothing.
Five things to check before you pay for anything
- The currency. A bare dollar sign with a United States footer is USD, whatever your browser is set to.
- The toggle state. Canva loads on yearly, and Google's annual amounts for its personal plans do not render at all.
- The seat minimum. ChatGPT Business and Claude Teams both start at two seats.
- The tier the thing you want sits on. Claude Code is not on Free, nor is creating a custom GPT.
- Your own card's international transaction fee. It is in your schedule of fees. Look once, and stop wondering why the statement moved.
Before spending anything, which AI to use for which job sorts out what you actually need.
What this actually reclaims for you
Steph's admin sits in two hours, twice a week. Say she gets half of that back and puts two more full grooms on the bench in a month instead. Say her casual full groom is $95. That is $190 of billable work, in the currency she actually banks.
Against that, the Australian side of the everything stack is $32.99 a month plus A$165 a year. The USD side she will have to read off her own statement, which is the whole point of this article. Budget the two you can see, and watch the two you cannot.
If you would rather look at your own numbers before adding another subscription to the pile, book a demo and we will go through them with you.