AI staff for a small business: $7, $18, and $20 a seat

On November 13, 2026, a small business can put “AI staff” on a card without a demo, and the card is a seat. Google Workspace Business Starter is $7 per user per month on the annual-commitment view, and the plan list names a Gemini assistant in Gmail. Microsoft 365 Copilot Business is $18 per user per month paid yearly. Claude Team is $20 per seat per month billed annually, and that card names Claude Cowork.

Five people is $35, $90, or $100 a month on those three annual rates, before tax. The $90 is an add-on. It does not replace the Microsoft 365 plan under it. None of the three pages prices a phone minute, an outbound prospect, or a ledger close. Those jobs are a second meter. The November 12 reading of that meter is 12 of 15 AI employee products print a price.

The query says employee. The invoice says seat.

An AI employee is a label for an agent: a model, a harness, tools, memory, and a person who approves anything that leaves the company. The pages that rank for the phrase sell a role. Inbox, support, outbound, the phone, the books. Which of those five a small business can hand off, and where the handoff breaks, is AI employee for a small business: 5 jobs.

The pages fetched this morning sell something else. They sell an assistant inside Gmail, Word, or a folder the team already uses. The assistant drafts. It does not become a headcount. A buyer who adds the $7 seat to a $0.99 support outcome and calls the sum “one AI employee” has added two meters.

Lindy’s pricing page, fetched the same minute as Claude’s, still prints a floor of $29.99 per user per month for 3,000 credits. This note does not rebuild that ladder. The November 12 census already holds it.

What the three annual seats include

Prices below are the figures in the HTML. Five-person totals are this page’s multiplication. They are not quotes from the vendors, and they leave out tax, existing Microsoft 365, and any usage charge.

ChatGPT’s pricing page returned HTTP 200 at 03:46:52 UTC. The HTML names Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise. The price numerals were not in that HTML. This page does not invent them. A Business price read on an earlier day is not copied forward.

Microsoft’s $18 sits on another bill

The Copilot Business card says “Add on to your Microsoft 365 plan.” The words on the price are “Originally starting from $21.00 now starting from $18.00,” then “$18.00 user/month, paid yearly.” The monthly card for the same add-on is $25.20. Five people on the monthly add-on is $126, still before the suite.

The bundled cards are a different product shape. Business Standard with Copilot is $23.50 paid yearly and $28.20 on the monthly card. Business Premium with Copilot is $32 paid yearly and $38.40 monthly. Five people on the yearly Premium bundle is $160. That bundle is the one whose highlights, in this fetch, name pre-built agents and name Cowork and Autopilot in SharePoint.

Every Copilot card in the fetch ends the price with the same sentence: usage-based billing for select advanced AI features. Footnote 1 is attached. This fetch did not extract a separate dollar for those features. A seat that can grow a second charge is not a cap. Read the invoice after the first month, not the card alone.

Copilot Studio, the place a company builds its own agent, is a different meter from this seat. The November reading of that meter, next to Salesforce Agentforce, is Agentforce vs Copilot Studio pricing. This page does not reprice it. The six-month view of the enterprise platforms is Enterprise agent platforms, Nov 2026 to May 2027.

Google’s $7 is the annual column, and the discount has a date

The Workspace page fetched at 03:45:22 UTC is titled as flexible pricing, and the block that holds the dollars is the annual commitment: “Save 16% with 1 year commitment,” with “All plans billed monthly.” The only dollar amounts in that HTML are $3.50, $7, $11, $14, and $22. A no-commitment price was not in the file. Do not back into one from the 16 percent.

Starter’s price-details box says November 26, 2026 through February 26, 2027 is 50 percent off, $3.50 instead of $7, “for all users,” and that from February 26, 2027 the price is $7. Standard moves from $14 to $7 in that window. Plus moves from $22 to $11. The estimator on the same page prints “1 user = $3.50 / mo.” Today is November 13. The dated window starts November 26. A checkout this morning can disagree with a window that has not started. The list price this note uses is the $7 the page prints for after February 26, 2027.

A footnote on the same page says an introductory price is for new Google Workspace customers, the first 20 users, for 12 months, and that standard pricing applies after that. A banner says up to 50 percent off the first 3 months. Those are separate sentences. This note does not merge them into one promotion.

Starter’s include list names “Gemini AI assistant in Gmail,” chat in Gemini, and Google Vids. Standard adds “Gemini AI assistant in Gmail, Docs, Meet, and more.” A comparison row calls Workspace Studio a way to “automate your workday with intelligent AI agents.” The fetched text does not say which of Starter, Standard, and Plus includes that row. Leave it off the shopping list until the row names the plan.

Cowork is on the Team card, not in the Pro list

Claude Pro, in this fetch, is $17 per month with the annual discount, $200 billed up front, or $20 if billed monthly. The “everything in Free, plus” list names Claude Code. It does not name Claude Cowork.

Team is “for teams of 2 to 150.” The standard seat is $20 per seat per month billed annually, or $25 billed monthly, and the feature line under those prices is “Claude Code and Claude Cowork.” A company of five on the annual standard seat is $100 a month. A company of one cannot buy that card. The page’s range starts at two.

Premium seats are $100 annually or $125 monthly, for 5 times the standard seat’s usage. Enterprise is $20 per seat per month plus usage at API rates, billed annually, with a 20-seat minimum. A 5-person shop is not that plan. The usage on top of the Enterprise seat is the part that moves. The seat is the smaller number.

Cowork is still a harness around a model: files you choose, tools you connect, a review before the result leaves. Connecting a tool over MCP does not turn the seat into a worker. The November 13 count of which popular MCP server repositories are archived, and which ones name an auth method, is 5 of 44 top MCP server repos are archived.

The job that leaves the company is the other invoice

The seat drafts inside an app the vendor already runs. The role agent is the product that sends, calls, or posts. On November 12, 12 of 15 of those products printed a dollar, and the median of seven fixed subscription cards was $33 a month. Intercom Fin was $0.99 an outcome, and a handoff can be that outcome. 11x Growth was $36,000 a year. Artisan printed no dollar.

That spread is why “AI staff” is a bad budget line. A 5-person company that buys Workspace Starter at $35 a month has bought Gemini in Gmail. It has not bought a receptionist. The receptionist, where a vendor prints one, is a unique customer, a minute, or a missing price. The map of those five jobs is the November 12 jobs note. The dollar-by-dollar cost guide from November 11, kept as that day’s record, is How much does an AI employee cost?.

Buy the seat when the work is a draft in a tool you already pay for, and when a person still reads it. Buy the role agent when you can count the task and the meter is narrower than the wage. Run twenty of your own tickets through the harness before either one is allowed to send. The method is How do you evaluate an AI agent harness?. A pricing page is not that test.