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What it actually costs

Runway sells seconds, disguised as credits. Gen-4.5 costs 12 credits per second — 60 credits for 5 seconds, 120 for 10 — and every tier should be read in finished seconds, before retries:

• Free: $0. 125 credits, once only — never expiring, never renewing. You cannot buy more, model choice is limited, and every video is watermarked. A trial, not a free tier.
• Standard: $12/month billed annually ($15 monthly). 625 credits/month = 52 seconds of Gen-4.5 or 104 seconds of Gen-4 Turbo. No watermarks, 4K upscaling.
• Pro: $28/month billed annually ($35 monthly). 2,250 credits/month = 187 seconds of Gen-4.5 or 375 seconds of Turbo — about three minutes of flagship video.
• Max: $76/month billed annually ($95 monthly). 9,500 credits/month = 791 seconds of Gen-4.5, about 13 minutes, plus early access and studio-grade formats.
• Enterprise: custom pricing and contract — and materially different data rights.

Now the traps. First, retries are the real price. A finished 10-second shot that took four attempts cost 480 credits, not 120 — almost a whole Standard month. Second, expiry: Standard and Pro credits do not roll over, they reset on your billing date, and a cancelled balance resets to 0. Only Max (and Team) roll up to one month over. Purchased top-ups never expire — minimum 1,000 for $10 at $0.01 each — but plan credits are spent first, so you cannot save the expiring ones.

Third, the plan older reviews recommend no longer exists. There is no Unlimited plan for new buyers: it stopped being offered on 1 June 2026, legacy subscribers keep it only until 30 November 2026, then move automatically to Max at the same $95 monthly price. Unlimited’s appeal was Explore Mode — unlimited generations at a slower rate, using no credits. Max explicitly does not include it. You get more credits, faster, and a hard ceiling again.

Your data: what the fine print actually says

The headline is good. Runway does not claim ownership of your inputs or outputs, its help centre says you retain ownership of what you upload and generate, and commercial use is expressly allowed — monetised YouTube, ads, social posts, film festivals — with no credit required.

Section 4.4 is the price of that headline. You acknowledge inputs and outputs “may be used by the Company to train and improve its AI models,” and grant Runway a “non-exclusive, irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, fully paid, transferable, sublicensable” licence to use them. Irrevocable and perpetual mean cancelling does not take it back, and there is no training opt-out in the standard terms.

The contrast proves the point. Under the separate Enterprise terms, Runway “may not use Customer Content as training data,” and may use it only to provide the service, fix problems, comply with law, or enforce the agreement. No-training is a negotiated contract upgrade, not the default.

Other exposures are quieter. Anything submitted to a public area can be searched, seen, used, modified and reproduced by other users. The privacy policy collects prompts, images, video, audio and metadata, uses information for improvement, research, analytics and new products, and gives no fixed deletion period for uploads — retention is “only as long as necessary” for the service and other listed purposes. Face scans and voiceprints are capped at three years after your last interaction. And ownership is not exclusivity: outputs may not be unique, and ownership does not clear a face, logo, song or trademark inside the frame.

Refunds & cancellation

The written default is stark. Terms section 8.5: “all fees for the Services are non-refundable,” and cancelling earns no refund or credits for the time remaining. Refunds exist only “in our discretion.”

The help centre narrows that to three cases: you bought or renewed within 30 days and the subscription is unused or “close to unused (as determined by Runway in its discretion)”; you bought credits within 30 days and have not used them; or you picked the wrong plan, where you can switch and get the difference. A granted refund terminates the plan immediately, with feature access and unused plan credits lost at once.

Credits themselves are almost never refunded — returned automatically only on a generation error. If a generation completes but misses your prompt, fails to preserve a likeness, or is simply bad, credits are consumed and “cannot be automatically reinstated”: credits pay for the process, not the quality.

Cancellation is clean: cancel in Plans & Billing, confirm in Stripe, keep paid access until the end of the cycle. Projects survive unless you delete the account. But downgrading has teeth: fall back to Free with more than three projects and you cannot create new ones; purchased credits remain usable, yet your current plan decides features — so generations after downgrading carry watermarks again. Subscriptions auto-renew, and Runway may change fees and benefits going forward, with continued use counting as acceptance.

Company risk

Runway is not a fly-by-night. Sacra’s compiled reporting records a $315 million Series E in February 2026 at a $5.3 billion valuation, led by General Atlantic with NVIDIA and Adobe Ventures participating, after a $308 million Series D in April 2025 — roughly $1.05 billion raised in total. Sacra estimates $200 million annualised revenue in August 2026, up from $96 million at the end of 2025. Disappearing next quarter is not the risk.

The category is. Google’s Veo, ByteDance’s Seedance, Kuaishou’s Kling and others compete directly, and giants can bundle video into subscriptions Runway must charge for separately. The warning from next door: reporting notes OpenAI’s Sora consumer app shut down on 26 April 2026 after roughly $2 million in total revenue against an estimated $1 million a day in compute costs. AI video is brutally expensive to run, which is why ceilings tighten — and the clearest pricing-power evidence is Runway’s own behaviour: it retired its best-value plan, replaced unlimited slow generation with a capped pool, and reserved the right to change prices and features. Expect the deal to be renegotiated by Runway, not by you.

Who should / shouldn’t buy it

Buy it if: you make short-form, advertising or pre-visualisation work and can budget in attempts, not clips; you need commercial rights in writing; or your usage is heavy and predictable enough that Max’s 9,500 credits and one-month rollover are actually consumed monthly.

Skip it if: your uploads are confidential or NDA material without an Enterprise no-training contract; you work in occasional bursts, so expiring credits burn unused; or you expected “unlimited” experimentation — that plan is gone, and a disappointing result costs the same as a good one.

Bottom line

Trust score 5/10. The company is strong, and its ownership and commercial-use language is better than most. The deal is one-sided: expiring credits, discretionary refunds, no refunds for bad output, and a perpetual training licence over everything you make on a standard plan. Budget for retries and assume your work trains the next model, and the price is at least honest. Assume anything softer, and it is not.

How we audit: we have not purchased or hands-on tested Runway. This audit is written from Runway’s own pricing page, help centre and terms, plus reputable published reporting, checked in October 2026. Prices and terms change; the links below show exactly where each claim comes from.

Sources

• Pricing page (plan prices billed annually and monthly, credits per tier, and Runway’s own seconds conversions — 625 credits = 52s of Gen-4.5, 2,250 = 187s, 9,500 = 791s; no watermarks on Standard; rollover only on Max; purchased credits never expire): https://runway.com/pricing
• How do credits work? (Gen-4.5 at 12 credits per second, 60/120 credits per 5/10-second generation; monthly credits by plan; Standard/Pro/Unlimited credits expire on the billing date, Max rolls one month, purchased and Free credits do not expire; 1,000-credit minimum top-up, Free users cannot buy credits): https://help.runwayml.com/hc/en-us/articles/15124877443219-How-do-credits-work-
• Will unused credits carry over after my billing day? (unused credits forfeited each cycle except Max; cancelled balance resets to 0; purchased credits bought from $10 at $0.01 each and never expire; plan credits spent first): https://help.runwayml.com/hc/en-us/articles/23987639973267-Will-unused-credits-carry-over-after-my-billing-day
• Free plan details (125 one-time credits that do not renew, limited models and tools, 5GB storage, all Free videos watermarked, no credit purchases on Free): https://help.runwayml.com/hc/en-us/articles/50404627334547-Free-plan-details
• Unlimited plan is switching to Max (Unlimited no longer offered from 1 June 2026; legacy access until 30 November 2026 then automatic switch to Max at $95/month; Max has no Explore Mode; Unlimited was 2,250 credits plus Explore Mode): https://help.runwayml.com/hc/en-us/articles/52068047744019-Unlimited-plan-is-switching-to-Max
• Terms of Use, sections 4.3, 4.4, 8.4 and 8.5 (no ownership claim and no restriction on commercial use of outputs; inputs and outputs may be used for training under an irrevocable, perpetual, sublicensable licence; public-area content may be used by other users; outputs may not be unique; auto-renewal and right to change fees and features; all fees non-refundable): https://runway.com/terms-of-use
• Usage rights (you retain ownership of content you upload and generate; commercial use including monetised YouTube, advertising and film festivals; no formal credit to Runway required): https://help.runwayml.com/hc/en-us/articles/18927776141715-Usage-rights
• Privacy Policy (user content collected including prompts, images, video, audio and metadata; use for improvement, research, analytics and new products; no fixed retention period for uploads, face scans and voiceprints capped at three years after last interaction): https://runway.com/privacy-policy
• Enterprise Services Terms, section 5.2 (Enterprise contrast: Runway may not use Customer Content as training data and may use it only to provide, maintain and optimise the service, fix problems, comply with law or enforce the agreement): https://runway.com/enterprise-terms
• Requesting a refund for your plan or payment (refunds discretionary and limited to an unused or close-to-unused purchase or renewal within 30 days, unused credit purchases within 30 days, or a wrong-plan switch; a granted refund terminates the plan and unused plan credits are lost): https://help.runwayml.com/hc/en-us/articles/24343363554067-Requesting-a-refund-for-your-plan-or-payment
• Can I have credits refunded? (credits auto-returned only on a generation error; a completed but unsatisfactory, off-prompt or likeness-failing generation consumes credits with no reinstatement): https://help.runwayml.com/hc/en-us/articles/34266159290003-Can-I-have-credits-refunded
• How do I cancel my plan? (cancel via billing and Stripe confirmation, access until end of cycle; projects and assets survive cancellation; no new projects on Free over three projects; purchased credits remain but current plan level decides features, including watermarks after downgrade): https://help.runwayml.com/hc/en-us/articles/21668396605971-How-do-I-cancel-my-plan
• Sacra, Runway profile (Sacra-estimated $200M ARR in August 2026; $315M Series E in February 2026 at a $5.3B valuation and $308M Series D in April 2025, about $1.05B raised in total; competition from Google Veo, Seedance, Kling, Hailuo, OpenAI Sora and Meta Movie Gen): https://sacra.com/c/runway/
• TechFundingNews reporting (OpenAI shut down the Sora consumer app on 26 April 2026 after roughly $2M total revenue against an estimated $1M a day in compute costs; Runway’s $315M raise at a $5.3B valuation and its steering toward world models): http://techfundingnews.com/higgsfield-targets-5b-valuation-and-500m-run-rate-as-sora-folds-and-runway-retreats/

What it actually costs

Warning first: most reviews still quote Creator at $39–$49 a month. On the live pricing page it is gone for new buyers. Only two plans remain:

• Pro — $69 per seat monthly, or $59 billed annually ($708 up front, 12-month commitment). Exactly 1 seat, Canvas, core marketing agents, and tight caps: 2 Brand Voices, 5 Knowledge assets, 3 Audiences.
• Business — custom pricing, no public number. Everything in Pro, plus unlimited voices/knowledge/audiences, the no-code agent builder, Grid, API, admin controls, SSO and a dedicated manager. Begins with a 12-month commitment.

The traps sit between those bullets:

• The seat trap. Need a second login? The pricing page tells you to contact sales and customise a Business plan. A two-person team jumps from $69 a month to an unpublished quote in one step.
• The monthly penalty. Monthly costs $828 over a year against $708 annually — the ~20% gap Jasper itself advertises.
• “Unlimited” has a meter behind it. Chat and Canvas writing is not word-metered, but the pricing page admits GEO Hub and Agents run on credits alongside Business seat pricing. The help centre adds: API/MCP use, Grid rows and advanced agent runs draw from one shared pool; prepaid credits expire at renewal or cancellation; overages are pay-as-you-go; and “the list of credit-based actions will expand.” A Fair Use Policy also applies.
• No free plan, narrow payment options. Only a 7-day free trial of Pro. Jasper accepts major credit and debit cards — not PayPal, prepaid cards or cash apps. A 20% nonprofit discount exists if you email and prove status.

This packaging has form. In May 2023 Jasper removed word credits, sunset Starter and Boss Mode, and relaunched with Creator at $49 and Teams at $125. Creator has since vanished — each repackaging moved the entry price up.

Your data: what the fine print actually says

This is Jasper’s strongest section, and the claim survives the contract. The pricing page states: “we never permit third parties to train their AI models with Jasper customer data.” The ethics page says entered data is NOT used to train the underlying LLMs, and Jasper does not retain ownership of outputs. The service agreement is blunter: Jasper “shall not use, nor permit a third party to use, Customer Property to train artificial intelligence models utilized by the Service.”

The fine print around that promise:

• Your words still travel. Its sub-processor list names OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere and Google Gemini as LLM providers, plus Google Cloud and Stripe — all US entities. “Not trained on” is not “never leaves Jasper.”
• Outputs are yours, but not only yours. The agreement warns output may not be unique and Jasper may generate the same or similar output for a third party.
• Feedback is forever. Suggestions are granted to Jasper under a royalty-free, worldwide, transferable, irrevocable, perpetual licence. Customer content is excluded — your improvement ideas are not.
• Usage data is theirs. Jasper may compile and publish non-identifying statistical information about your use, and retains all rights in it.
• Retention is vague where rivals are specific. The security page says data is retained for the duration of the agreement, and after termination under its Data Retention Policy unless you send a written deletion request. No number of days is published. The agreement adds you must request a copy of your inputs and outputs in writing within 30 days of termination. Deletion is by request, not default.
• The basics are solid. SOC 2 Type II, stated GDPR/CCPA/PCI compliance, US Google Cloud hosting, encryption in transit (TLS 1.2+) and at rest (AES-256), annual penetration tests. Jasper also warns customers not to enter cardholder, health or other sensitive regulated data at all.

Refunds & cancellation

This is the strictest part of the deal. Refunds are not automatic: cancel first, then email hey@jasper.ai within 7 days of the charge. Miss it and, in the policy’s words, “we will not issue a refund for any months outside of our refund policy.” Only the current charge is refundable — not prior months or extras. The service agreement adds that fees are non-cancellable and non-refundable except where it expressly says otherwise.

Cancellation is self-serve for Pro (Workspace Settings → Plans → Cancel, at the very bottom of the page), effective at the end of the billing cycle. Jasper would rather you paused: it offers 30, 60 or 90 days.

Do the maths on annual billing. Days 1–7, you can escape the $708. From day 8, you own a year of Jasper whether it fits or not. On Business the exposure is larger and entirely negotiated. Monthly’s higher price is, in effect, the price of a working exit.

Company risk

Jasper raised $125 million in October 2022 at a $1.5 billion valuation. ChatGPT launched weeks later and became a formidable low-cost competitor overnight — and Jasper was built on third-party models from the start, and still routes work to OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere and Google.

What followed: layoffs in July 2023 (number not disclosed), framed as a refocus on mid-size and enterprise marketing teams; an internal valuation cut of roughly 20%, to about $1.2 billion, reported by The Information, with the 2023 revenue forecast lowered by at least 30%; and, in September 2023, founder Dave Rogenmoser stepping down as CEO for Timothy Young, former Dropbox president, as Jasper repositioned as an enterprise copilot.

Jasper is not about to shut down — it still operates and ships new products such as its GEO tools. The risk is different: an enterprise-chasing Jasper has little reason to protect small buyers, and three pricing architectures in three years say the deal you sign is a snapshot, not a promise. Its suppliers are also its competitors, and they set the price of the models it resells.

Who should / shouldn’t buy it

Buy it if: you run a marketing team publishing at volume under a few brand voices, value the no-training clause in writing and SOC 2 paperwork, and can justify Business pricing for unlimited voices, API and admin controls. Buy monthly first.

Skip it if: you are a solo writer or two-person team — Pro’s single seat and 2-voice cap are built to push you into a custom quote, and a general-purpose assistant does the core drafting for far less. Skip it, too, if you might need a refund after week one, or plan to paste sensitive client material into a tool whose security page tells you not to.

Bottom line

Trust score 5/10. The data terms are genuinely good — contractual no-training promise, clear output ownership, real security credentials. But on leaving, adding a colleague, or renewing, the written terms favour Jasper: a seven-day email-only refund window, seats that escalate to a sales call, expiring credits, a pricing page already rebuilt twice. Defensible for committed marketing teams; a poor bet on the old $39–$49 reputation.

How we audit: we have not purchased or hands-on tested Jasper. This audit is written from Jasper’s own pricing page, help centre and terms, plus reputable published reporting, checked in October 2026. Prices and terms change; the links below show exactly where each claim comes from.

Sources

• Jasper pricing page (Pro $69 monthly / $59 annual per seat, 1 seat included, 2 Brand Voices / 5 Knowledge / 3 Audiences caps, Business custom pricing and 12-month commitment, credits for GEO Hub and Agents, 7-day Pro trial, card-only payment, no-training statement): https://www.jasper.ai/pricing
• Jasper help centre, Credits-Based Pricing (which actions consume credits, shared workspace pool, prepaid credits expiring at renewal or cancellation, pay-as-you-go overages, expanding list of credit actions): https://help.jasper.ai/hc/en-us/articles/46644376016923-Credits-Based-Pricing
• Jasper help centre, Refund Policy (7-day window, email-only claims, current charge only, no refunds outside the policy): https://help.jasper.ai/hc/en-us/articles/18618699843739-Refund-Policy
• Jasper help centre, Cancel Your Account (Pro Plan) (cancellation path and end-of-cycle timing, refund email requirement, 30/60/90-day pause offer): http://help.jasper.ai/hc/en-us/articles/18618705279899-Cancel-Your-Account-Pro-Plan
• Jasper Software as a Service Agreement (non-training clause, output ownership and non-uniqueness, perpetual Feedback licence, usage-information rights, fees non-cancellable and non-refundable, 30-day window to request inputs/outputs after termination): https://jasper.pactsafe.io/versions/67abac45d51b06f16d0acec3.pdf
• Jasper Ethics page (data entered is NOT used to train underlying LLMs, Jasper does NOT retain ownership of outputs, Transcend privacy centre): https://www.jasper.ai/ethics
• Jasper Safety & Security page (retention for the duration of the agreement and written deletion requests, US Google Cloud hosting, AES-256/TLS encryption, SOC 2, annual penetration testing, warning against entering regulated data): https://www.jasper.ai/security
• Jasper sub-processors list (OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere and Google Gemini as LLM providers, Google Cloud, Stripe and other processors): https://jasper.ai/legal/sub-processors
• TechBullion, Jasper’s new plans and pricing (2 May 2023 removal of word credits, Starter and Boss Mode sunset, Creator at $49 and Teams at $125 launch): https://techbullion.com/try-out-jaspers-new-plans-and-pricing-for-unlimited-writing/
• Voicebot.ai, Jasper laying off staff nine months after $125M raise (July 2023 cuts, $1.5B valuation, refocus on marketing teams): https://voicebot.ai/2023/07/17/jasper-ai-laying-off-staff-9-months-after-125m-raise/
• Maginative, Jasper appoints new CEO and cuts internal valuation (20% internal valuation cut to ~$1.2B per The Information reporting, 2023 ARR forecast cut by at least 30%, CEO change): https://www.maginative.com/article/jasper-cuts-internal-valuation-as-ai-growth-slows/?fbclid=IwAR3etCOy9xRu3dseklQjt_uX5ilJmp-8-3pfVcyge3OyTUbRTaPkx9nkmuU
• Jasper blog, Timothy Young welcomed as CEO (September 2023, former Dropbox president, founder Dave Rogenmoser moving to chairman, enterprise focus): https://www.jasper.ai/blog/jasper-new-ceo

What it actually costs

Canva’s US pricing page lists four tiers. Free is $0: 5GB, one Brand Kit, up to 20 uses a month of Standard or Premium AI tools from one shared pool, no Ultra AI. Pro is $18 a month, or $144 a year ($12 a month), for one person: 100GB, five Brand Kits, background removal, up to 200 Premium or 20 Ultra AI uses a month. Enterprise has no public price: 1TB, 1,000 Brand Kits, single sign-on — and the same headline AI allowance as Business.

Canva Teams is closed to new sign-ups; the team plan sold today is Canva Business, at $25 per person per month or $250 per person per year, with 500GB per person, 100 Brand Kits and up to 400 Premium or 40 Ultra AI uses per member. Existing Teams subscribers keep their old pricing, but cancel and they cannot resubscribe — they return at Business rates. Business seat billing is the trap: a seat is billed next cycle even if the invite was never accepted, and removing a person does not remove the seat until someone deletes it.

Then there is the second meter. Each plan’s AI allowance is one shared pool, not a budget per tool. “200 Premium or 20 Ultra” are two ways of spending it, and Canva’s wording is “up to”: figures assume simple tasks on the lightest tool in each tier; complex tasks use more. Premium covers generating a design, Magic Layers, Canva Code and music; Ultra covers conversational design with Canva AI 2.0 and AI video. Some tools sit outside the meter — Magic Write, Translate and background removal among them — which makes the real limit unpredictable before buying. Trials get only the free-level 20 uses. Run out, and Canva sells AI Pass at $100 per person per month — $1,200 a year on top of Pro — for a larger pool, no new tools.

Your data: what the fine print actually says

On ownership, the Terms are clear in your favour: you own your User Content, and Canva says it never obtains ownership over it. What it takes is a royalty-free, sublicensable licence to host, copy, store and use that content to provide the service — perpetual if your content sits in a design shared with others.

AI training runs through your Privacy Settings. The Terms say Canva and its trusted partners may use your usage data and/or User Content to improve AI features if that is consistent with your Privacy Settings. The Privacy Policy is blunter: Canva may analyse your activity, content and uploads to train its models, and points you to the privacy controls to manage it. For Free and Pro users this is a settings decision, not a blanket “never” — check it. Team plans are stronger: Teams, Business, Enterprise and Education content is not used to improve AI features, and that cannot be turned on.

For output, the AI Product Terms say you retain your input rights and you own your Output, to the maximum extent permitted by law, usable for any lawful purpose — at your own risk. Outputs may not be unique; other users may receive similar ones. Output incorporating library content stays bound by the Content Licence, and Canva gives no warranty on its legality.

That licence is restrictive. Pro Content is licensed perpetually, but for a single design only: the licence is issued at export, and reusing a Pro element in a new design needs a new licence (automatic while you subscribe). Pro Content cannot be used as a trademark or sold standalone, and Canva reserves the right to cancel or change its licences. Canva Shield’s IP indemnity for Magic Studio designs is for eligible Enterprise customers only.

Refunds & cancellation

The Terms state it plainly: “If you cancel your subscription, you will not receive a refund or credit for any amounts that have already been billed,” and outstanding fees become immediately due. Canva’s refund help page softens this only slightly: in most cases subscriptions aren’t refundable; Canva reviews every request and sometimes helps — with no published list of qualifying situations. Treat an annual payment as gone on day one. Plans bought through Apple or Google are handled by those stores.

Cancelling is simple: Settings, Billing, Cancel plan (app-store plans are cancelled in the store); you keep paid features until the period ends. A three-month pause exists, but annual plans can pause only near renewal.

Your work survives: designs stay accessible on Canva Free, and for teams, Brand Kit content and shared folders are retained there too. The paid extras do not survive cleanly: Pro elements in old designs appear watermarked on Free, Brand Kit access shrinks to the free limit, and storage falls from 100GB to 5GB. Because a Pro Content licence is issued at export, export final versions of everything important before the period ends.

Company risk

Collapse risk looks low: Canva describes itself as a platform used by more than 260 million people. It is unlikely to vanish — but subscribers have no leverage.

Pricing risk is the documented problem. In September 2024, TechCrunch reported some US Teams subscribers saw a five-person plan jump from $119.99 a year to $500, with Canva pointing to its expanded AI suite, including Magic Studio, as part of the reason — communicated by email, not publicly. Canva later protected existing Teams pricing, but the pattern is clear: AI features arrive, then pricing reorganises around them. The Terms reserve the right to change prices at the next renewal or 30 days after notice, whichever is later. Lock-in compounds this: editable designs and Brand Kits live inside Canva; exports are flat files, not portable projects.

Who should / shouldn’t buy it

Buy it if: you design every week and want the editor, premium library, brand kits, background removal and usable AI in one subscription. Pro at $144 a year is reasonable for a solo creator who stays inside the Premium allowance; Business suits teams needing brand controls and the no-AI-training guarantee for team content. Pay monthly first if you may not stay eight months, where annual Pro breaks even.

Skip it if: you mainly want AI images or video. Free gives 20 AI uses a month, the paid allowance is capped and unpredictable, and unlimited-feeling generation costs another $100 a month — compare dedicated AI tools at that point. Also skip it if you need refund flexibility, plan to build trademarks or resale templates from library content (the licence restricts both), or need an IP indemnity, an Enterprise-only feature on the published terms.

Bottom line

Canva earns 6/10: a dependable platform with clear ownership terms and a real opt-out on AI training, held back by no refunds, an AI allowance designed to be outgrown, and a proven willingness to reprice teams sharply. Buy it if you will use it weekly — privacy setting checked, seat count watched, designs exported.

How we audit: we have not purchased or hands-on tested Canva’s paid plans. This audit is written from Canva’s own pricing page, help centre and terms, plus reputable published reporting, checked in October 2026. Prices and terms change; the links below show exactly where each claim comes from.

Sources

• Pricing tiers, plan features, Brand Kits and storage (US prices as listed): https://www.canva.com/pricing/
• Monthly AI allowances, Standard/Premium/Ultra tiers and what counts against them: https://www.canva.com/help/ai-access/
• Ownership of User Content, AI training via Privacy Settings, Pay as You Grow seat billing, no-refund and cancellation and price-change clauses: https://www.canva.com/policies/terms-of-use-2025-10-30/
• Use of content and uploads to train AI models, and the privacy-controls opt-out: https://www.canva.com/policies/privacy-policy/
• Ownership of AI Output, “any lawful purpose at your own risk”, non-uniqueness and AI usage limits: https://www.canva.com/policies/ai-product-terms-2026-03-16/
• Pro Content one-design licence, licence issued at export, prohibited uses and Canva’s right to change licences: https://www.canva.com/policies/content-license-agreement/
• Teams/Business/Education content not used to improve AI, and Enterprise-only Magic Studio IP indemnification: https://www.canva.com/newsroom/news/safe-ai-canva-shield/
• Pricing, AI allowance, AI Pass and Business figures checked against Canva’s pages, October 2026: https://www.aiworthit.com/blog/canva-ai-review/
• Monthly vs annual prices, seat-billing traps, Teams closure to new sign-ups and the $100/month AI Pass price: https://aialleyway.com/canva-pricing/
• Cancellation steps, refund-page wording (“aren’t refundable in most cases”), pause rules and what happens to designs and Brand Kits after cancelling: https://aialleyway.com/canva-cancel-subscription/
• 2024 Teams price rise from $119.99 to $500 for a five-person plan, blamed partly on generative AI: http://techcrunch.com/2024/09/03/canva-has-increased-prices-for-its-teams-product

What it actually costs

ElevenLabs sells credits, not minutes. On standard Multilingual models one credit is roughly one character, and about 1,000 credits buys about one minute of speech. Flash and Turbo cost about half a credit per character, so they stretch twice as far.

The October 2026 tiers are: Free, $0, 10,000 credits (~10 minutes); Starter, $6/month, 30,000 (~30 minutes); Creator, $22/month — $11 first month — 121,000 (~121 minutes); Pro, $99/month, 600,000 (~600 minutes); Scale, $299/month, 1,800,000 (~1,800 minutes, 3 seats); Business, $990/month, 6,000,000 (~6,000 minutes, 10 seats). Annual billing costs ten months for twelve.

Three traps matter more than the headline price. First, rights are the real ladder. Free has no commercial licence and no cloning, and public output must carry attribution. Commercial use and Instant Voice Cloning start at Starter. Professional Voice Cloning — built from around 30 minutes or more of clean audio — starts at Creator. Second, everything shares one pool: speech-to-text (about 330 credits a minute), music (about 900 a minute), sound effects (200 a generation) and dubbing (thousands a minute) all drain the same balance. A short dub can eat a month of narration. Third, every generation costs credits, including retakes. There is no free preview.

Unused paid credits roll over for up to two months, capped at three times your monthly quota. Downgrade or cancel, however, and the banked balance is forfeited. Free credits do not roll over.

Your data: what the fine print actually says

Read this section before uploading a voice.

By default, ElevenLabs may use submitted data to improve and train its models. Non-enterprise users can opt out under Terms and privacy > Data use. That stops future use; it does not undo uses already made, or models derived from earlier data. Enterprise customers are excluded by default, except where needed to provide the service, and Zero Retention Mode exists only for specified products and eligible enterprise arrangements — do not assume it covers the web interface.

The licence is broad. The terms grant ElevenLabs a royalty-free, worldwide licence to use, reproduce, modify and create derivative works from your input — expressly including your voice and persona — to provide, improve and develop services and products. It says it will not commercialise your voice standalone without permission. Reporting on the February 2025 update describes that licence as perpetual and irrevocable, with raw voice data kept for no longer than three years after your last interaction, unless the law permits longer. The recording may eventually go; what was learned from it may not.

Consent is stronger for professional cloning. A Professional Voice Clone can only be made of your own voice, verified with a live voice-CAPTCHA. You cannot make one of someone else, even with permission — they must create and verify it on their own account and share it with you. Instant cloning relies on you confirming you have the right. That protects ElevenLabs; it does not give you permission you do not have. Never clone anyone else without specific, written, scoped consent.

Portability is the final catch: you can download generated audio, but not the cloned voice itself. It lives in your account and works only through ElevenLabs or its API. Keep your original recordings — if you leave, you start again elsewhere, and a recreated clone may sound different.

Refunds & cancellation

The written position is hard. ElevenLabs’ ElevenMusic terms, updated September 2026, state: “All sales are final. Except to the extent required by applicable laws or as we may offer at our sole discretion on a case-by-case basis, there are no refunds.” Summaries of its help material describe a narrow exception — a refund within 14 days where no credits were used — but treat that as a favour, not a guarantee.

You can cancel at any time in account or subscription settings, with no cancellation fee on monthly plans. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period; you keep paid access until then, with no prorated refund for the unused remainder. Purchases through Apple or Google are handled by those stores, not ElevenLabs.

What survives is the strongest point in this audit: audio generated on a paid plan keeps its commercial licence indefinitely after the subscription ends. What does not survive matters too. Banked credits are lost. Professional clones may become unusable until you upgrade again. Stored content is not guaranteed to stay available on Free, so download everything yourself. Audio generated on Free never becomes commercial just because you paid later — the plan at generation is what counts.

Company risk

Shutdown risk looks low. Founded in 2022, ElevenLabs raised $180 million at a $3.3 billion valuation in January 2025, then $500 million at $11 billion in early 2026, and was reported at $22 billion in autumn 2026, with recurring revenue above $500 million.

Misuse risk is the opposite. In 2024 a consultant used ElevenLabs to create a fake President Biden robocall telling New Hampshire voters to skip the primary; he was later fined $6 million by the FCC, and ElevenLabs banned the account, restricted cloning of some public figures and promoted its AI Speech Classifier. In 2026, journalists and voice actors sued in Illinois alleging their voices were used for training without consent. Expect cloning rules and enforcement to keep tightening — possibly in ways that affect legitimate creators too.

Pricing-power risk is already visible. In 2026 Starter rose from $5 to $6, Scale fell from $330 to $299 while its quota fell, and Business fell from $1,320 to $990 while its volume nearly halved. Prices can fall while what you get falls faster.

Who should / shouldn’t buy it

Buy it if: you publish narration, voiceover, podcasts, courses or audiobooks regularly, need realistic voices or a professional clone of your own voice, and can stay paid while you produce. Starter is the minimum for anything commercial; Creator is the realistic start for serious creators. Download everything, set the training opt-out, and keep your source recordings.

Skip it if: you need only occasional narration, want a refund safety net, need to move your voice model between providers, or plan to upload confidential scripts without first changing the data-use setting. Skip Free for any monetised or client work. And skip it if bursty volume will push you into constant overage; per-character pricing punishes irregular use.

Bottom line

6/10 is a “pay, but with your eyes open” score. The core paid deal is fair, and unusually clear on one point that matters — work made on a paid plan stays commercially usable after you cancel. Around that core sit a non-exportable clone, training by default unless you opt out, a broad and long-lived licence over your voice input, no-refund terms, and pricing already reshaped several times. If voice quality is why you are here, pay monthly, not annually, until your real credit use is proven.

How we audit: we have not purchased or hands-on tested ElevenLabs. This audit is written from ElevenLabs’ own pricing page, help centre and terms, plus reputable published reporting, checked in October 2026. Prices and terms change; the links below show exactly where each claim comes from.

Sources

• Pricing tiers, credit-to-minute conversion, commercial rights and cloning by tier, verified against ElevenLabs’ pricing page: https://toolchase.com/blog/elevenlabs-pricing-2026/
• October 2026 pricing table, shared credit pool costs for music, dubbing and speech-to-text, rollover capped at two months and forfeited on downgrade or cancellation: https://dev.to/stimlau/elevenlabs-pricing-explained-free-starter-creator-and-pro-in-2026-4p6b
• Data use by default with opt-out, enterprise exclusion, Biden robocall and $6 million FCC fine, and 2026 Illinois voice-training lawsuit: https://builtin.com/articles/what-is-elevenlabs
• Privacy policy retention of voice data for up to three years after last interaction, data-use opt-out location, and that cloned voices cannot be downloaded or exported: https://www.popularai.org/p/local-elevenlabs-alternative-qwen3-tts-chatterbox
• Professional cloning only of your own verified voice, voice-CAPTCHA, instant versus professional cloning, and commercial rights starting at Starter: https://www.forasoft.com/learn/ai-for-video-engineering/articles-ai/elevenlabs-pricing-voice-cloning-no-fakes-act
• ElevenLabs’ own terms language on the licence granted over input including voice and persona, rights in output at time of creation, data-use opt-out, and “all sales are final” refunds: https://elevenmusic.io/terms-of-use
• Commercial licence for paid-period output surviving cancellation, rollover limits, no free preview without credit deduction, and clones not being exportable: https://aitoolcritic.com/elevenlabs-questions-answered/
• Analysis of the February 2025 terms update, perpetual and irrevocable voice licence, and three-year raw recording retention: https://www.kukarella.com/post/important-changes-to-our-voice-cloning-technology-transitioning-away-from-elevenlabs
• Funding and valuation — $3.3 billion after Series C, $11 billion after $500 million raise, $22 billion secondary valuation and revenue above $500 million: https://www.martechai.com/ai-news/elevenlabs-hits-22-billion-valuation-as-enterprise-voice-ai-demand-grows-3396.html

What it actually costs

Free is $0. Pro is $20 a month or $200 a year, about $16.67 a month. Max is $200 a month or $2,000 a year. Education Pro is $10 a month for verified students and educators, and includes everything in Pro. Perplexity’s own table lists Enterprise Pro at $40 per seat a month ($400 a year) and Enterprise Max at $325 ($3,250 a year).

What Pro adds is capacity and choice, not a different search engine. The help centre lists 10 times as many citations per answer, increased file and photo uploads, extended access to Research, enhanced image generation, limited video generation, Create files and apps, and premium models including GPT-5.2, Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Gemini 3.1 Pro. Breakdowns checked against Perplexity’s pages describe Pro Search as unlimited, 20 Deep Research runs a day and $5 a month in Sonar API credits — a sample, not a developer budget.

Two traps deserve plain language. First, Perplexity’s own Pro page hedges: it says “extended access” and a “high volume” of daily searches, not a hard number you can hold it to. Second, Computer, the agent feature, is metered in credits. Pro does not get a monthly Computer allowance on that breakdown — it gets a one-time 4,000-credit bonus that expires in 30 days — while Max gets 10,000 credits a month. Finally, the terms let Perplexity change plans or pricing “in any manner and at any time” in its “sole and absolute discretion”, after “reasonable notice”.

Your data: what the fine print actually says

This is the weakest part. Perplexity’s data-collection page says that for Free, Pro and Max users “AI Data Retention is enabled by default” and some data may be used to train AI models and improve search quality unless you opt out. Only Enterprise data is described as never used for training.

The opt-out is simple but limited. Go to Account Settings, open Preferences and turn off AI data retention. Do it before your first sensitive search, because Perplexity states: “Opt-outs only apply to data collected after the opt-out date” and “Previously collected training data cannot be deleted or removed”. Opting out does not stop all processing either: data may still be processed for service operation, legal compliance and product improvement.

Retention is vague where you would want a date. The privacy notice says personal data is kept “only as long as necessary”, unless a longer period is required or permitted by law, with no fixed deadline for ordinary queries. Files are more specific: the upload help page says files and images are retained for 30 days, or 7 days for Enterprise Pro, after which file contents are no longer accessible for follow-ups. Files in Projects are retained until deleted. If you share a session publicly, anyone with the link can see an uploaded file or image that remains visible there, so keep sensitive threads private.

Incognito helps, but it is not anonymity. The account-settings help says searches in incognito mode “are never stored”, and the privacy notice says it does not save search activity across sessions. The same notice warns, for Comet incognito, that Perplexity and third parties such as visited websites may still be able to track you.

Refunds & cancellation

The Terms of Service, section 2.4, state the default bluntly: subscription payments are “nonrefundable” and there are “no credits for partially used periods”. The help centre then carves out narrow exceptions.

In the EU, UK or Turkey you are eligible for a refund if you cancel within 14 days of purchase, monthly or annual. In South Korea or Brazil the window is 7 days. For all other customers, monthly subscriptions can be refunded only up to 24 hours after purchase, and annual subscriptions only within 72 hours, with the help centre adding: “No exceptions for requests after this period.” A second refund after a first has been granted will not be processed.

Subscriptions auto-renew at the then-current rate unless you cancel before the renewal date. On the web, cancel through Settings and Manage Subscription. If you subscribed through Apple or Google, the app store controls billing and the cancel option does not appear in Perplexity Settings — cancel in App Store Subscriptions on iOS, or Google Play Payments & Subscriptions on Android. Apple refunds go via reportaproblem.apple.com. After cancelling you keep paid access until the end of the period paid for, then revert to Free. One costly trap: deleting your account does not terminate your subscription. Cancel first, delete second.

Company risk

Perplexity is not a fragile hobby project. Reuters reported in September 2025 that it had secured commitments for $200 million in new funding at a $20 billion valuation, and described it as Nvidia-backed.

The legal risk sits at the centre of the business. Reuters reported on 5 December 2025 that The New York Times sued Perplexity for copying, distributing and displaying millions of its articles without permission, including paywalled material, and alleged trademark harm from fabricated content falsely attributed to the Times. The same report noted Reddit sued in October 2025 over alleged unlawful scraping, and that Dow Jones and the New York Post were also suing. Those are allegations in active disputes, not final judgments. The consumer risk is practical either way: if courts restrict how Perplexity collects publisher content, or force expensive licensing, the likely results are fewer or weaker sources, higher prices, or both. Do not prepay for a year assuming today’s sources, models and limits are locked in.

Who should / shouldn’t buy it

Buy it if: research with sources is part of your week, you regularly hit the free limits, and you will use model choice, larger uploads and deeper Research. Pay monthly at first, turn off AI data retention on day one, and keep confidential material out of consumer Pro — the never-train promise is an Enterprise promise, not a Pro one. Students should check Education Pro first: the same product for half the price.

Skip it if: you only need a few cited answers a week, because Free covers casual use without a card on the refund clock. Skip it if you need a guarantee that inputs will never be used for training, or time to change your mind about an annual plan. Skip Max unless you can name agent work that will burn 10,000 Computer credits a month — it buys credits and caps, not a more trustworthy service.

Bottom line

Perplexity Pro earns 6/10: a useful, fairly priced research upgrade undermined by training-on-by-default, a non-retroactive opt-out, vague query retention and an unusually harsh refund policy outside regions where the law forces a longer window. Buy it monthly, opt out immediately, and cancel in the store where you bought it — do not mistake a Pro subscription for a privacy subscription.

How we audit: we have not purchased or hands-on tested Perplexity Pro. This audit is written from Perplexity’s own pricing page, help centre and terms, plus reputable published reporting, checked in October 2026. Prices and terms change; the links below show exactly where each claim comes from.

Sources

• Plan prices for Pro, Max, Enterprise Pro and Enterprise Max in Perplexity’s own October 2026 pricing table: https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/ai-costs
• What Pro includes — citations, uploads, Research, image/video generation, Create, and named premium models: https://www.perplexity.ai/help-center/en/articles/10352901-what-is-perplexity-pro
• Annual prices, Education Pro price, Deep Research and Labs limits, $5 Sonar API credit, and Computer credit traps (checked against Perplexity pages): https://dev.to/stimlau/perplexity-pro-pricing-explained-free-vs-pro-vs-max-in-2026-36ae
• Education Pro includes everything in Pro, including unlimited Pro Searches: https://www.perplexity.ai/help-center/en/articles/12590157-what-is-education-pro
• Price-change, auto-renewal, cancellation and no-refund clauses in the Terms of Service (sections 2.2–2.4): https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/legal/terms-of-service
• Training on by default for Free/Pro/Max, opt-out mechanics, non-retroactive opt-out, and Enterprise never trained on: https://www.perplexity.ai/help-center/en/articles/11564572-data-collection-at-perplexity
• AI data retention toggle and Incognito searches never stored: https://www.perplexity.ai/help-center/en/articles/10352990-account-settings
• Privacy notice — data used to improve AI models, retention wording, Incognito limits and tracking warning: https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/legal/privacy-policy
• File retention of 30 days (7 days Enterprise Pro) and public shared sessions exposing uploads: https://www.perplexity.ai/help-center/en/articles/10354810-security-and-privacy-with-file-uploads
• Refund windows — 14 days EU/UK/Turkey, 7 days Korea/Brazil, 24 hours monthly and 72 hours annual for others, and Apple/Google refund routes: https://www.perplexity.ai/help-center/en/articles/10354288-refunds
• How to cancel on web, iOS and Android, app-store billing control, and deleting an account not cancelling a subscription: https://www.perplexity.ai/help-center/en/articles/10354283-canceling-a-subscription
• Reuters reporting of $200 million funding commitments at a $20 billion valuation: https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/perplexity-finalises-20-billion-valuation-round-the-information-reports/article70036339.ece
• Reuters reporting of the New York Times lawsuit and the Reddit and Dow Jones disputes: https://goldsea.com/article_details/new-york-times-sues-perplexity-for-copyright-infringement

What it actually costs

Free is $0, with chat on web, desktop and mobile, web search and file creation. Pro is $20 a month billed monthly, or $17 a month on an annual subscription — $200 up front. Max is sold as “from $100”: 5x is $100 a month and 20x is $200 a month for web subscriptions, billed monthly only, with no annual discount. Team and Enterprise are seat-based plans for organisations.

Each step buys mostly headroom. Pro gives at least 5x more usage per five-hour session than Free, plus Claude Code, Projects and more models. Max gives 5x or 20x Pro’s usage per session, higher output limits, early access and priority access. Its listed $100–$200 in monthly API credits are separate from the chat allowance, unusable for Claude Code, and expire each cycle.

The traps are in the limits:

• No fixed message count. Anthropic says so: how much you can do depends on conversation length and complexity, the model and the features you use. Sites quoting an exact figure are guessing.
• Two clocks run at once. Every plan has a limit resetting on a rolling five-hour window; paid plans add weekly limits on top. The five-hour reset does not fix a weekly block.
• One shared pool. Web, desktop, mobile and Claude Code all draw from the same allowance, so a heavy morning of coding can block your chat that afternoon. Free has no Claude Code at all.
• Going over costs extra. At a limit you can wait, upgrade, or turn on usage credits at standard API rates — the flat fee can quietly become a metered bill. Even the top Fable model is rationed: paid credits only on Pro, capped at 50% of weekly limits on Max.

Prices exclude tax, and the page states that “price and plans are subject to change at Anthropic’s discretion.”

Your data: what the fine print actually says

Before August 2025, Anthropic did not use consumer conversations to train Claude, unless a user submitted feedback. On August 28, 2025, it announced updates to its Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy covering Free, Pro and Max, including Claude Code on those accounts.

The announcement presents this as a choice: new users select a preference at sign-up, existing users got a pop-up, and the setting can be changed any time in Privacy Settings (toggling off “Help improve Claude”). The legal wording is blunter: the Consumer Terms say Anthropic may use your materials, including training its models, “unless you opt out of training through your account settings,” and the pricing page lists training for every consumer plan as “Opt-out.”

Retention follows the toggle. Allow training and retention extends to five years for new or resumed chats and coding sessions — the same five years applies to feedback you submit. Decline it and you keep the existing 30-day retention. Deleted conversations are not used for future training and leave the back-end within 30 days, per the Privacy Policy.

The opt-out has holes Anthropic states openly: even opted out, your material will still be used for model improvement when flagged for safety review, or when you reported it via feedback. Anthropic does say it does not sell users’ data.

The sharpest divide is consumer versus commercial. The 2025 changes do not apply to services under the Commercial Terms — Claude for Work, Education or Government, or API use via Bedrock and Vertex AI. Max at $200 a month buys no stronger training protection than Free.

Refunds & cancellation

The Consumer Terms state: “Except as expressly provided in these Terms or where required by law, all payments are non-refundable.” The pricing page softens it only slightly: payments are “generally non-refundable.”

• Cancelling is not a refund. Fees will not be refunded, but access continues to the end of the term paid for. On annual Pro, that can mean walking away from prepaid months.
• The exceptions are mostly legal, not generous. Customers in the European Economic Area and the UK may get a refund within 14 days of purchase, prorated by use. Elsewhere the route is an eligibility check — “Get help,” then “Claude Refund Request” — and eligibility is Anthropic’s call.
• Where you bought it decides who refunds you. App Store subscriptions can only be refunded by Apple, at Apple’s discretion; Google Play needs a support eligibility check; no refund can be processed during a pending bank dispute. Termination for a terms breach means no refund at all.

Cancelling itself is clean: any time in Settings > Billing, keep the plan to the end of the period, cancel at least 24 hours before renewal. App-store subscribers cancel through Apple or Google instead. Cancelling does not delete your data — chats, projects and files stay as the account drops to Free.

Company risk

Shutdown risk is low. In September 2025 Anthropic closed a $13 billion Series F at a $183 billion post-money valuation, led by ICONIQ, Fidelity and Lightspeed, and said run-rate revenue had grown from about $1 billion at the start of 2025 to over $5 billion by August. Amazon is a major backer too: reporting on its November 2024 announcement put its total investment at $8 billion, with AWS as primary training partner.

The real risk is pricing power and repackaging — already used once, in the 2025 training change. The terms also let Anthropic change subscription features, increase or decrease capacity limits, and revise the terms at its discretion. Fee increases need 30 days’ notice and do not apply during your current term, but apply at renewal unless you cancel.

Who should / shouldn’t buy it

Buy it if: you use Claude daily, keep hitting the free limits, and want Claude Code included — Pro at $20 a month, billed monthly, is the sensible entry point. Buy only after turning off the training toggle on day one. Max makes sense solely for people repeatedly stopped by Pro’s limits; it buys capacity, not better privacy.

Skip it if: you need confidential handling of client, legal, medical or proprietary material on a personal account — the consumer terms, opt-out or not, are the wrong vehicle. Skip annual billing if the no-refund rule bothers you, skip Max if you expect an unlimited plan (there isn’t one), and skip paying if five-year training retention is a deal-breaker you will not manage yourself.

Bottom line

Trust score 6/10. Claude’s terms are clearer than most, cancellation is clean, and the company is well-funded. But a trust audit judges the defaults: training is opt-out rather than off, retention stretches to five years, the opt-out has safety and feedback exceptions, usage is capped by numbers Anthropic declines to publish, and money is gone once paid. Pro, billed monthly, toggle off, is defensible. Anything more, or anything sensitive, deserves a pause.

How we audit: we have not purchased or hands-on tested Claude. This audit is written from Anthropic’s own pricing page, help centre and terms, plus reputable published reporting, checked in October 2026. Prices and terms change; the links below show exactly where each claim comes from.

Sources

• Claude plans and pricing page (Free/Pro/Max prices, annual vs monthly billing, 5x/20x usage, five-hour and weekly limits, shared usage pool, no fixed message count, tax and change-at-discretion wording, refund and cancellation FAQs): https://claude.com/pricing
• Anthropic Consumer Terms of Service (training unless you opt out, safety and feedback exceptions, all payments non-refundable, auto-renewal, cancellation without refund, fee-increase notice, termination without refund for breach): https://www.anthropic.com/legal/consumer-terms
• Anthropic Privacy Policy (training use of inputs and outputs unless you opt out, flagged-for-safety and reported-material exceptions, deleted conversations removed from back-end within 30 days, no sale of personal data): https://www.anthropic.com/legal/privacy
• Anthropic announcement, Updates to Consumer Terms and Privacy Policy, August 28, 2025 (applies to Free/Pro/Max including Claude Code, not to commercial/API services, five-year retention if training is allowed, 30 days if not, five years for feedback, changeable in Privacy Settings): https://www.anthropic.com/news/updates-to-our-consumer-terms
• Claude Help Center, Request a refund for a paid Claude plan (EEA/UK refund within 14 days prorated by use, Apple-only refunds for App Store purchases, Google Play eligibility checks, no refunds during a pending bank dispute): https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12386328-request-a-refund-for-a-paid-claude-plan
• MacRumors reporting on the August 2025 change (opt out at sign-up or via Settings > Privacy, previous position of not training on consumer conversations except feedback): https://www.macrumors.com/2025/08/28/anthropic-claude-chat-training/
• IntuitionLabs, Claude Max plan pricing (Max 5x $100/month and Max 20x $200/month for web subscriptions, monthly billing, API credits expire at the end of each billing cycle and do not cover Claude Code): https://intuitionlabs.ai/articles/claude-max-plan-pricing-usage-limits
• Anthropic announcement, Series F financing ($13 billion raised at $183 billion post-money valuation, run-rate revenue from about $1 billion to over $5 billion in 2025, over 300,000 business customers): https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-raises-series-f-at-usd183b-post-money-valuation
• PYMNTS reporting on Amazon’s investment (additional $4 billion taking Amazon’s total to $8 billion, AWS as primary training partner, Amazon remaining a minority investor): http://pymnts.com/news/investment-tracker/2024/amazon-increases-total-investment-artificial-intelligence-startup-anthropic-8-billion-dollars/?ref=biztoc.com

What it actually costs

Plus costs $20 a month, billed monthly. There is no annual plan and no prepay discount, so a year is $240 plus any tax charged at checkout — the terms make taxes your responsibility. Around it, in US prices: Free $0; Go $8 a month; Pro in three tiers at $100, $200 and $500 a month; ChatGPT Business at $25 per user a month monthly or $20 billed annually, minimum two users; Enterprise custom-priced.

Three traps:

• “Expanded” is not a number. OpenAI’s Plus page says subscriptions “may include usage limits such as message caps, especially during high demand,” varying with system conditions. The pricing page just says “Limits apply.” Some caps are published — agent mode is 40 messages a month on Plus against 400 on Pro — but ordinary chat has no fixed allowance you can hold OpenAI to.
• Plus does not include the API. API usage is separate and billed independently. Tools authorised through “Sign in with ChatGPT” also draw on your Plus allowance.
• Cheaper is not ad-free, and bigger is not stable. The pricing page warns Go “may include ads” — $8 does not buy ad-free; $20 currently does. Pro 500 was added on 29 September 2026, and Pro 200 was reopened the same week with a lower included allowance for new subscribers. Qualifying existing Pro 200 subscribers keep the old allowance only until 29 October 2026, then move to the lower one — at the same $200 price. OpenAI will shrink what a fixed price buys, and call it a plan change.

Your data: what the fine print actually says

For individual plans — Free, Plus, Pro — OpenAI may by default use your content to train its models. Paying $20 does not change that.

The opt-out is real: turn off Improve the model for everyone under Settings > Data controls, or choose “Do not train on my content” in the Privacy Portal. OpenAI then says it will not use your new conversations to improve its models. Three holes:

• Feedback overrides it. Tap thumbs up or down, and the entire conversation attached to that feedback may be used for training — even if you opted out.
• Codex has a separate switch. Its “Include environments” training setting is not changed by the ChatGPT opt-out.
• Opting out is not deleting. Chats stay until you delete them. Deleted chats vanish from view at once and are scheduled for permanent deletion within 30 days — unless already de-identified and disassociated from you, or OpenAI must keep them longer for security or legal reasons. Payment records can be kept longer for accounting and compliance.

Temporary Chat is safer for sensitive one-offs: out of your history, no new memories, not used to improve models while temporary. But OpenAI may keep a copy for up to 30 days for safety, and saving one makes it a regular chat. Deleting a chat also does not delete a file saved in your Library.

The contrast is the point. For Business, Enterprise, Edu and the API, OpenAI says it does not train on inputs or outputs by default, customers own their inputs and outputs, and qualifying organisations get retention controls, AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS 1.2+ in transit. No-training is a business feature; on Plus, privacy is a setting you must flip yourself.

Refunds & cancellation

The terms say it plainly: “Payments are non-refundable, except where required by law.” The refund help page repeats “generally non-refundable,” then narrows the exceptions:

• A discretionary refund may be available for an unused individual subscription if you contact OpenAI within seven days of the charge — conditions include no substantial use and limits on repeat refunds.
• No automatic prorated refund after seven days. An accidental purchase, forgetting to cancel, dissatisfaction, or changing plans “does not by itself qualify.”
• Refunds may be approved for a verified billing error, validated unauthorised charges, or a documented OpenAI service failure.
• EU, UK and Turkey residents get a prorated refund if they cancel within 14 days of purchase — a legal right, not generosity.

Approved refunds take 5–7 business days for web purchases, 10 for Google Play; Apple subscriptions are refunded, if at all, by Apple. If a refund is granted, access paid for by that charge normally ends.

Cancellation is simpler. Cancel any time, keep paid features until the period ends, then drop to Free; chats are not deleted. Cancel at least 24 hours before renewal, and where you bought it — web, Apple or Google Play — because uninstalling cancels nothing, and deleting your account does not cancel an Apple subscription. No pause button.

Company risk

Disappearance risk is low. Reuters reported OpenAI closed a March 2026 round with $122 billion committed at an $852 billion valuation, and in September was seeking at least another $30 billion at about $1.4 trillion as bridge financing in place of an IPO, with the revenue run rate nearing $70 billion.

The real risks: pricing power — a company needing capital at this scale has every incentive to repackage: new top tiers, ads on Free and Go, credits on top of subscriptions, and the Pro 200 cut at an unchanged price. The terms promise only 30 days’ notice of a price increase, effective at renewal, and nothing protects Plus’s allowance or features. Legal overhang — the New York Times lawsuit filed in 2023, accusing OpenAI and Microsoft of using millions of articles without permission to train ChatGPT, is one of dozens of copyright cases Reuters describes; in September 2026 the US government filed a brief backing OpenAI’s fair-use position. Unlikely to kill Plus, but a live cost, and a reason training terms keep changing. Dependency — Plus is one person’s account, the terms bar sharing credentials, and models are retired on OpenAI’s schedule.

Who should / shouldn’t buy it

Buy it if: you use ChatGPT for real work most weeks and free limits interrupt you; you are buying for yourself, so training-by-default affects only your own material; and you will turn off training before your first serious conversation, use Temporary Chat for anything sensitive, and diarise renewals — there is no refund if you forget.

Skip it if: your work involves client, patient, legal or other confidential material — no-training-by-default only starts at Business, which needs at least two seats; you rarely hit free limits, so Free or $8 Go (ads and all) covers you; or you need a guaranteed allowance or API access, because Plus guarantees neither.

Bottom line

Trust score 6/10. A fairly priced, useful subscription from a company too big to disappear — written entirely on its terms: training on by default, refunds a seven-day maybe, usage never stated as a number, and proof one tier up that allowances can shrink without prices following. Buy monthly, opt out immediately, treat every feature as rented.

How we audit: we have not purchased or hands-on tested ChatGPT Plus. This audit is written from OpenAI’s own pricing page, help centre and terms, plus reputable published reporting, checked in October 2026. Prices and terms change; the links below show exactly where each claim comes from.

Sources

• ChatGPT plan tiers, Go “may include ads,” “Limits apply,” and monthly plans for Go/Plus/Business with annual plans only for Business and Enterprise: https://chatgpt.com/pricing
• Plus price ($20/month, billed monthly), no annual billing or advance payment, API billed separately, usage limits that may vary with system conditions: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6950777-what-is-chatgpt-plus
• Pro tiers ($100/$200/$500, monthly only), Pro 500 launch, and Pro 200’s lower allowance for new subscriptions with grandfathering to 29 October 2026: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9793128-what-is-chatgpt-pro
• Full plan price table including Go ($8/month) and Business ($25/user/month monthly, $20 annual, 2+ users), checked against OpenAI plan documentation: https://www.glbgpt.com/hub/chatgpt-5-subscription-cost-2025/
• Consumer plans (Free, Plus, Pro) may be used for training, the Data controls / Privacy Portal opt-out, the feedback exception, the separate Codex setting, and Business/API no-training-by-default: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/5722486-how-your-data-is-used-to-improve-model-performance?ref=learn.codesee.io
• What OpenAI collects, retention rules, deletion within 30 days, longer retention exceptions, and Temporary Chat controls: https://openai.com/policies/row-privacy-policy/
• Deleted chats scheduled for deletion within 30 days, Temporary Chat copies kept up to 30 days, and Library files surviving chat deletion: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8983778-chat-and-file-retention-in-chatgpt
• Temporary Chat: out of history, no new memories, not used to improve models while temporary, copy kept up to 30 days: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8914046-temporary-chat-in-chatgpt
• Terms of use: automatic renewal charges, taxes, “Payments are non-refundable, except where required by law,” 30 days’ notice of price increases, and no sharing account credentials: https://openai.com/policies/row-terms-of-use/revisions/2024-12-11/
• Refund eligibility: generally non-refundable, discretionary unused-purchase window of seven days, no prorated refund after seven days, EU/UK/Turkey 14-day prorated right, and 5–7 / 10 business-day processing: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7232895-how-do-i-request-a-refund-for-my-chatgpt-subscription
• Cancellation: cancel where purchased, at least 24 hours before renewal, access until period end, uninstalling does not cancel, deleting an account does not cancel an Apple subscription: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7232927-how-do-i-cancel-my-chatgpt-subscription
• Agent mode limits (Plus 40 messages/month, Pro 400/month): https://help.openai.com/en/articles/11752874-chatgpt-agent
• Business/enterprise commitments: no training on business data by default, customer ownership of inputs/outputs, retention controls, SOC 2, AES-256 and TLS 1.2+: https://openai.com/enterprise-privacy/
• Business data not used for training or improving models by default, and encryption at rest and in transit: https://openai.com/business-data/
• Pro 500 launch on 29 September 2026 and Pro 200 reopening with a lower allowance for new subscribers: https://tech-ish.com/2026/09/30/openai-adds-usd-500-chatgpt-pro-tier-at-about-kes-64900-a-month/
• Funding and valuation reporting: $122 billion round at $852 billion in March 2026, seeking at least $30 billion at about $1.4 trillion, no IPO in 2026, revenue run rate nearing $70 billion (Reuters): https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/openai-targets-30-billion-funding-14-trillion-valuation-bloomberg-news-reports-2026-09-29/
• Copyright litigation context: New York Times case filed in 2023 against OpenAI and Microsoft, dozens of related cases, and the US government brief backing OpenAI (Reuters): https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/us-government-backs-openai-new-york-times-copyright-case-2026-09-02/

What it actually costs

There are four plans, and there is no free tier and no standing free trial — the cheapest first image costs $10.

• Basic: $10/month, or $96/year ($8/month). Buys ~3.3 hours (200 minutes) of Fast GPU time.
• Standard: $30/month, or $288/year ($24/month). 15 Fast hours, plus unlimited slower “Relax” generations.
• Pro: $60/month, or $576/year ($48/month). 30 Fast hours, Relax, and Stealth Mode.
• Mega: $120/month, or $1,152/year ($96/month). 60 Fast hours, Relax, and Stealth.

Annual billing takes 20% off — if you prepay a full year upfront. What you are actually buying is not images but metered GPU minutes, and the meter has teeth:

• Fast hours never roll over. Unused time expires every cycle. On Standard, an idle month burns $30 of nothing.
• Basic has no Relax mode. When its 200 Fast minutes are gone, your choices are buying extra Fast time at $4 an hour or waiting for renewal. The plan that looks like the cheap trial is engineered to run dry.
• Privacy is a paid upgrade. Keeping your generations out of the public gallery (Stealth Mode) starts at Pro — $60 a month, not the $10 on the homepage.
• Business size changes your rights. Under the terms, if your company takes in more than $1 million a year, you must be on Pro or Mega for your asset ownership to hold.
• Extra Fast time is $4 an hour on every plan — a fixed subscription that quietly becomes a variable one.

Subscriptions renew automatically until you cancel. Midjourney’s terms also reserve the right to “modify or discontinue any aspect of the Service, including pricing and features, at any time.”

Your data: public by default, licensed forever

Midjourney is built as an open community, and its terms say so in so many words: “By default, Your Content is publicly viewable and remixable.” Every prompt you write and every image you generate is visible to other users in the community gallery, and other members can build on it. There is no private-by-default tier at any price.

What you sign away is broader still. By using the service you grant Midjourney “a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicensable no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license” over everything you input and everything produced — prompts and images alike — and “this license survives termination of this Agreement by any party, for any reason.” Cancelling does not claw it back. There is no opt-out short of not using the service.

Stealth Mode, on Pro and Mega, softens the visibility, not the licence: Midjourney agrees to “make best efforts” not to publish Stealth assets. Best efforts is a promise to try, and the terms add that anything made in a shared space like a Discord chatroom is viewable by everyone there regardless of Stealth.

Two partial credits where due. You do own the assets you create as a paying subscriber, and that ownership “persists even if in subsequent months You downgrade or cancel Your membership.” And if you leave entirely, Midjourney documents a straightforward process: account and associated data deleted within 30 days of a deletion request, with a 7-day window to change your mind. Note, though, that these deletion rights cover your account data — the irrevocable licence over already-created content is written to outlive it.

Don’t confuse owning with excluding, either: purely AI-generated images carry weak-to-no copyright protection under current US practice, so a competitor can often copy your Midjourney artwork quite legally. The terms themselves advise consulting your own lawyer about IP law.

Refunds & cancellation

Midjourney’s refund policy is the strictest in this series, and it isn’t close. From its official help documentation: “You’re eligible for a refund only if you’ve used less than 20 GPU minutes throughout the lifetime of your account.” Lifetime. Fast, Turbo and Relax all count. Twenty GPU minutes is on the order of a few dozen generations — barely enough to learn the interface. If you qualify, the refund option appears automatically when you cancel; if it doesn’t appear, “we’re unable to provide a refund.” No refund at all applies if your account was suspended for a terms violation. Processed refunds can take up to 10 business days.

Cancellation itself is simple and, to be fair, clean: cancel any time, keep using the plan until the end of the paid period, and no charges afterwards — and your gallery stays accessible even after the subscription lapses. But the current period is never refunded, and purchased extra Fast time is non-refundable too.

So the real-world advice is blunt: because the annual discount requires a year upfront and the refund door closes after 20 minutes of use, always start monthly. The 20% “saving” is Midjourney buying your commitment before you’ve had a fair chance to test what you’re committing to.

Company risk

Here the story flips. Midjourney has taken zero venture capital. Founder David Holz has repeatedly declined outside investment; the company runs with roughly 40 employees, and reporting by The Information put its annual revenue above $200 million, with profitability along the way. There is no funding round to miss and no plausible shutdown scenario. Of the three companies in this series, this is the one least likely to disappear with your subscription money.

The same independence cuts the other way. A ~40-person, founder-controlled company with no outside shareholders answers to nobody, and its documents reflect that: service provided “as is” with no warranties, a right to change pricing and features at any time, and a right to suspend or ban accounts at any time for any reason. Support is thin and community-driven. There is also open legal exposure around training data — Disney’s litigation against Midjourney is a live industry story — and the terms place responsibility for the legality of your outputs squarely on you. Independence means stability; it also means every protection you have is the contract, and the contract is one-sided.

Who should / shouldn’t buy it

Buy it if: you produce visual work for clients and treat generations as drafts the world may see anyway; you’ll genuinely use Standard’s unlimited Relax mode; or you’re a studio that can justify Pro/Mega for volume plus Stealth, and you’ve read the licence grant and accept it.

Skip it if: your work is confidential or pre-launch and $60-a-month “best efforts” privacy isn’t good enough (it isn’t, for NDA work); you like to test tools before committing — there is no trial, and the refund window closes before evaluation starts; you churn subscriptions casually; or you need artwork you can legally stop others from copying.

Bottom line

Trust score 4/10 — the lowest in this series, despite the strongest balance sheet. A trust audit scores the deal, not the company, and Midjourney’s deal is: pay first, evaluate within 20 GPU minutes, publish everything by default, and hand over an irrevocable licence that outlives your account. Professionals who go in knowing all four points can get fair value. Everyone else: start monthly, and assume every generation is public.

How we audit: we have not purchased or hands-on tested Midjourney. This audit is written from Midjourney’s own terms of service, subscription documentation and help centre, plus reputable published reporting, checked in October 2026. Prices and terms change; the links below show exactly where each claim comes from.

Sources

• Midjourney Terms of Service, docs (effective May 27, 2026 — ownership and the $1M Pro/Mega rule; perpetual irrevocable licence grant; public-by-default and Stealth; cancel anytime, no refund for current period; right to change pricing/features): https://docs.Midjourney.com/hc/en-us/articles/32083055291277-Terms-of-Service
• Midjourney Docs, “Requesting a Refund” (20 GPU-minute lifetime eligibility; refund at cancellation; 10 business days): https://docs.midjourney.com/hc/en-us/articles/25386088618253-Requesting-a-Refund
• Midjourney Docs, “Data Deletion and Privacy FAQ” (deletion within 30 days; 7-day reconsider window): https://docs.midjourney.com/hc/en-us/articles/32084462534541-Data-Deletion-and-Privacy-FAQ
• Krater, Midjourney Pricing 2026 (plan prices, GPU minutes, no rollover, $4/hr extra Fast time, no free tier): https://krater.ai/blog/midjourney-pricing
• Dev.to, Midjourney Pricing Explained 2026 (20% annual discount prepaid; Fast hours by tier; commercial terms from Basic up): https://dev.to/stimlau/midjourney-pricing-explained-standard-pro-and-mega-in-2026-33n8
• AIAlleyway, Midjourney Pricing (no free trial per Midjourney’s help page; checkout and refund-window pitfalls): https://aialleyway.com/midjourney-pricing/
• Terms.Law, Midjourney Commercial Use Policy 2026 (licence analysis; public default; “ownership” vs copyright limits): https://terms.law/ai-output-rights/midjourney/
• AIForAutomation, “Midjourney Hits $200M Revenue With Zero Investors” (The Information reporting; ~40 employees; no VC): https://aiforautomation.io/news/2026-03-30-midjourney-200m-revenue-no-investors
• WebProNews, “Midjourney’s Quiet Cash Machine” (~$200M revenue; founder-controlled, no outside investors): https://www.webpronews.com/midjourneys-quiet-cash-machine-how-a-40-person-startup-blew-past-200-million-without-venture-capital/

What it actually costs

Grammarly has three tiers. Free costs nothing and covers spelling, grammar, punctuation and tone detection, plus 100 generative-AI prompts a month. Pro is the paid plan most people mean: $12 per member per month billed annually — that’s $144 charged upfront, once a year. There is also a quarterly option at $20 a month and a monthly option at $30 a month. Enterprise is custom-priced with unlimited AI prompts.

Pro’s headline features are full-sentence rewrites, tone adjustment, plagiarism and AI-text detection, and 2,000 AI prompts per member per month, plus light team features (one style guide, one brand tone) for groups up to 149 members.

Now the traps:

• The $12 price is a prepayment price. Pay month-to-month and the identical product costs $30 — two and a half times more, $360 over a year. Flexibility is punished, not priced.
• A 7-day free trial exists — and if it rolls into a paid plan because you forgot it, the no-refunds clause below applies to you in full. Reviewers repeatedly flag the same story: people who expected one monthly charge and found $144 gone, or who forgot a trial entirely.
• You’re being steered into a bundle. Since the company’s reorganisation (see Company risk), the sales push is toward the “Superhuman” suite: a Business bundle around $33 per member per month that marries Grammarly Pro to an AI email client most writers never asked for. Standalone Pro still exists — you just have to know it’s the thing you want.
• Pricing is per seat, flat, with no lifetime option. Every prompt, rewrite and “make this sound professional” click draws down the monthly AI allowance; Pro’s 2,000 is generous, Free’s 100 disappears fast.

Your data: what the fine print actually says

Grammarly’s model requires trust by design: the tool reads what you type across your browser, documents and apps, and routes text through its servers to check it. Within that model, the official commitments are decent. Its privacy policy states: “We do not sell personal information to third parties.” Its Trust Centre says you can opt out of letting Grammarly use your content to train its models and improve the product for everyone, via a setting called Product Improvement and Training.

Here is the catch that decides this audit: according to Grammarly’s own support documentation, that setting is on by default for individual Free and single-user Pro accounts. Accounts bought through sales channels (Enterprise, Education, larger Business plans) default to off. Translation: the people least likely to read settings pages are the ones whose writing may be used to train and improve the product unless they actively opt out. Third-party providers, Grammarly says, are not permitted to train on your content — but Grammarly itself reserves the right to learn from your text until you say no.

Other documented details worth knowing:

• Anything you save in the Grammarly Editor is stored until you delete the document or your account. There is no automatic expiry on drafts you forgot about.
• If you turn off a “tailored assistance” feature, the personalisation data stored for that feature is deleted — a genuinely good behaviour, and easy to miss.
• The privacy policy gives you access and deletion rights (GDPR/CCPA style), and its hosting runs on mainstream cloud providers such as AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Rule of thumb: the day you sign up, turn Product Improvement and Training off, then decide what you paste into it. Unpublished manuscripts, contracts, HR matters — all have passed through tools like this by accident.

Refunds & cancellation

This is where Grammarly loses the most trust.

Its Terms of Service carry a section titled “No Refunds”: to the fullest extent the law allows, all payments are non-refundable, payment obligations are non-cancelable, and there are no credits for partially used periods. The only refund you’re entitled to is one the law forces. A billing error is handled case-by-case through support; an unrecognised charge can be disputed; subscriptions bought through the Apple or Google app stores fall under Apple or Google’s refund rules instead. But “I changed my mind,” “I forgot the trial,” and “I barely used it” are not refund reasons. Ever.

Cancellation itself is civilised: cancel any time from your subscription page, keep access until the end of the period you’ve paid for, and the account then converts to Free. No exit interviews with a retention agent, no dark maze. The problem is purely asymmetric — leaving is easy, but every dollar already paid is final.

Practical advice follows directly: start on the monthly plan or the free trial with a calendar reminder set for day five, and only move to the $144 annual plan once you’re certain. The discount is real; so is the trap.

Company risk

The company is not going anywhere — it claims 40 million daily users — but it has been reshaping itself aggressively. In December 2024 it acquired the workspace tool Coda, whose co-founder Shishir Mehrotra became CEO. In mid-2025 it acquired the Superhuman email client; in October 2025 the parent company renamed itself Superhuman, keeping “Grammarly” as a product name inside a suite that now includes an AI email client, a docs workspace and an agent layer (“Superhuman Go”) designed to reach into your mail, calendar and other apps. Even customer support now lives at a Superhuman address.

For a buyer, the risk is scope creep. You subscribed to a writing checker. The company selling it wants to become the agent platform that reads your inbox and schedules your meetings, and its bundle pricing already reflects that ambition. Product names, bundles and defaults have all changed within two years; there is no reason to assume they’ve finished changing.

Who should / shouldn’t buy it

Buy it if: you write in English all day across many apps and want checking where you type; English isn’t your first language and the rewrites earn their keep; or your small team wants one shared style guide and tone — and you’re disciplined enough to manage the defaults and the renewal date.

Skip it if: you handle sensitive drafts (legal, medical, unreleased financials) and won’t audit settings first; you’re bad at cancelling trials; you only write occasionally — the free tier or the AI assistant you already pay for probably covers you; or you object on principle to paying a company that trains on your words until told not to.

Bottom line

Trust score 6/10. Grammarly does not sell your data, cancellation works as advertised, and the product’s been around long enough to trust its plumbing. But a trust audit reads defaults and clauses, not promises — and here the defaults favour Grammarly (training on by default for individuals) and the clauses favour Grammarly (no refunds, ever, unless the law insists). Buy it with your eyes open, flip the training toggle off on day one, and never let a trial decide for you.

How we audit: we have not purchased or hands-on tested Grammarly. This audit is written from Grammarly’s privacy policy, Trust Centre, terms of service and support documentation, plus reputable published reporting, checked in October 2026. Prices and terms change; the links below show exactly where each claim comes from.

Sources

• HyperWrite, Grammarly Pricing 2026 (Pro $12 annual / $20 quarterly / $30 monthly; 100 vs 2,000 AI prompts; 7-day trial): https://www.hyperwriteai.com/articles/grammarly-pricing
• Become a Writer Today, Grammarly Free vs Pro 2026 (billing table, $144 upfront annual charge): https://becomeawritertoday.com/grammarly-free-vs-premium/
• The Side Hustler, Grammarly Review 2026 (month-to-month trap, forgotten-trial complaints, Superhuman suite bundle ~$33): https://thesidehustler.blog/grammarly-review/
• Grammarly User Trust Center (training opt-out; saved documents stored until deleted; tailored-assistance deletion): https://www.grammarly.com/trust
• Grammarly Privacy Policy (“We do not sell personal information to third parties”; data rights): https://www.grammarly.com/privacy-policy-fall-2023
• TechHelp, GrammarlyGO settings guide (Product Improvement and Training defaults by account type, per Grammarly support docs): https://techhelp.ca/grammarly-go/
• Grammarly Terms of Service, via BillSensor’s billing-policy analysis (No Refunds clause; cancel anytime; support routes): https://billsensor.com/blog/grammarly-charged-after-cancelling
• Fast Company, “Grammarly just rebranded to Superhuman” (Superhuman Mail acquisition; 40M daily users; repositioning): https://www.Fastcompany.Com/91427120/inside-the-superhuman-effort-to-rebrand-grammarly
• CB Insights company profile (Coda Dec 2024 and Superhuman Mail acquisitions; Oct 2025 company rename; Superhuman Go): https://www.cbinsights.com/company/super-human

What it actually costs

The pricing page runs four plans. Free is $0. Plus costs $10 per member per month billed yearly, or $12 billed monthly. Business costs $20 per member per month billed yearly, or $24 monthly. Enterprise is custom-quoted.

Here is the part the marketing glosses over: Free and Plus get only a limited trial of Notion AI. The full package — the Notion Agent, AI Meeting Notes, Enterprise Search — exists only on Business and Enterprise. The $10–$12 headline rate on Plus buys you more storage and longer page history, not the AI.

Three traps to know about before you hand over a card:

• It’s all-or-nothing. Pricing is per member, for the whole workspace. You cannot buy AI for the three people who write and leave everyone else on Plus. A 10-person team pays $200 a month for Business even if two people ever open the AI panel. Guests are free, but guests don’t get AI either.
• Seat churn costs you, never them. Add a member mid-cycle and you’re charged a prorated amount immediately. Remove a member and you get no credit back — you just keep an empty paid seat until the period ends. Seat counts only reset at renewal.
• There’s a second meter. Custom Agents — Notion’s autonomous task-running feature — are “free to try,” then bill at $10 per 1,000 monthly Notion credits on top of your Business subscription. The plan price is not the ceiling.

And one piece of history worth remembering: until May 2025, Notion sold AI as a flat add-on (reported at $8 per member per month billed annually, $10 monthly) that could be attached to any plan. It pulled the add-on for new sign-ups and folded AI into Business instead; existing add-on subscribers were grandfathered. Nothing stops it from repackaging again.

Annual billing saves roughly 20%, in exchange for prepaying a year per seat. Given the repackaging track record, monthly billing is the honest way to test it — the annual discount is buying their lock-in, not your savings.

Your data: what the fine print actually says

This is Notion’s strongest section. Its pricing page FAQ states it plainly: “Notion AI will not use your data to train our models unless you opt in to a request to share your data.” It adds that the outside AI providers processing your prompts are bound by contracts that prohibit them from training their models on customer data. There is an opt-in data-sharing program for people who actively want to contribute; the default is no.

Retention is tiered, and the tiers matter:

• Free, Plus and Business: 30-day retention with AI providers.
• Enterprise: zero data retention with AI providers — plus SCIM, an audit log and advanced security controls.

In other words, the strongest privacy setting is itself a sales feature, locked behind the custom-priced tier.

Two caveats the FAQ won’t volunteer. First, Notion does not offer end-to-end encryption: your pages are encrypted in transit and at rest, but Notion holds the keys, so content is stored in a form the company can access. Don’t treat a workspace as a vault for secrets. Second, workspace administrators have broad visibility — on higher tiers, owners can search across content, which means “private” pages in a company workspace are private from colleagues, not necessarily from your employer.

Refunds & cancellation

Cancellation is self-serve and honest about timing: the subscription auto-renews until you cancel (Settings → Billing → Change plan, desktop only), you keep paid features until the end of the billing cycle, and the downgrade then takes effect.

The refund terms are better than most of the industry, but time-boxed:

• Monthly plan: full refund if you downgrade within 3 days of signing up.
• Annual plan: full refund within 30 days of signing up.
• Accidentally added members: prorated refund if you contact them within 3 days of the invoice.
• Customers in the EU get a 14-day window on monthly plans under mandatory refund law.

After those windows close, unused time is simply gone. Also note the downgrade sting: a multi-member workspace sent back to Free hits a block limit — you can keep reading and editing what exists, but you can’t keep adding content. Leaving is allowed; leaving is also designed to hurt a little.

Company risk

Notion itself is about as stable as a private software company gets. It raised $275 million in October 2021 at a roughly $10 billion valuation led by Coatue and Sequoia, hasn’t raised since, and reporting through 2026 puts revenue in the region of $500 million, with the company cash-flow positive and holding more cash than it ever raised. Shutdown risk is negligible.

The risk is not survival — it’s pricing power. Notion sits between Microsoft and Google, both of whom bundle rival AI into suites customers already pay for, and Notion’s documented response so far has been to move AI up-tier and add metered credits. Buyers should expect the shape of the deal to keep changing, even if today’s terms are honoured.

Who should / shouldn’t buy it

Buy it if: your team already runs its work in Notion and would justify Business on the workspace features alone; you’re a student or educator (Plus, one-member, is free — though AI is still trial-only); or you’re a larger organisation willing to pay Enterprise prices for zero retention and an audit log.

Skip it if: you’re a solo user who mainly wants AI writing help — paying $20 a month because the AI lives behind a team-workspace toll is poor value; your team has one or two real AI users among many members; or you need your stored documents unreadable by the vendor itself.

Bottom line

Trust score 7/10. Notion AI is that rare thing: an AI product whose published data terms you don’t have to decode. The training pledge, the subprocessor contracts and the written refund windows are genuinely good. What you’re really auditing is the toll booth — full AI costs Business prices for every seat, forever, plus credits if the agents take off. If you’d pay for Business anyway, the AI is a fair bonus. If you wouldn’t, you’re not buying an AI assistant; you’re upgrading a company to get one.

How we audit: we have not purchased or hands-on tested Notion AI. This audit is written from Notion’s own pricing page, help centre and terms, plus reputable published reporting, checked in October 2026. Prices and terms change; the links below show exactly where each claim comes from.

Sources

• Notion pricing page (plan structure, AI trial-vs-included, retention tiers, Custom Agents credits, training pledge, refund FAQ): https://notion.com/pricing
• Notion Help Center, “Change your Notion plan” (auto-renewal, cancellation path, downgrade timing, refund windows, member charges): https://www.notion.com/help/upgrade-or-downgrade-your-plan
• Notion AI pricing explained (add-on discontinued May 2025; Business $20/$24; Custom Agents $10 per 1,000 credits): https://dev.to/stimlau/notion-ai-pricing-explained-is-the-add-on-worth-it-in-2026-7hh
• Krater, Notion AI Pricing 2026 (add-on removal, grandfathering, credit pricing): https://krater.ai/blog/notion-ai-pricing
• eesel AI, Notion AI review 2026 (pricing table incl. 30-day vs zero retention tiers): https://www.eesel.ai/blog/notion-ai-review
• GrowthNavigate, Notion valuation ($275M Series C at ~$10B, Forbes-reported revenue/profitability): https://www.growthnavigate.com/notion-valuation
• TechBuzz, “Notion hits $500M revenue” (no raise since 2021, cash position): https://www.techbuzz.ai/articles/notion-hits-500m-revenue-riding-ai-wave-as-microsoft-rivalry-heats-up
• NotionBackups, Notion privacy guide (no end-to-end encryption; admin content search on Enterprise): https://notionbackups.com/guides/notion-pages-privacy