The short answer
ChatGPT Business is the cheaper seat. A Standard seat costs $20 a month billed annually, so 25 people pay $6,000 a year, while Dust Pro costs $24 a seat on yearly billing, $7,200 for the same team. The price gap is small. The real difference is what each seat is for. ChatGPT Business gives everyone a strong assistant, with company apps connected person by person. Dust gives a team a workspace to build shared agents over company data, but its self-serve plan connects only 3 data sources. Buy ChatGPT Business for individual productivity, Dust for shared agents over a few sources, and a search product if the need is cited answers across all your company apps.
Dust and ChatGPT Business end up side by side when a small company decides it is done with everyone paying for their own AI subscription. Someone in operations gets the job of picking one tool for the team. Both vendors print a price per seat, both say they connect to company data, and both cost roughly the same. So the choice looks easy, and then the details start to matter.
This article prices both for teams of 10, 25 and 50, then walks through the three things that change the bill or the outcome: how each one meters usage, how each one reaches company data, and what happens when the team grows.
Which is cheaper, Dust or ChatGPT Business?
ChatGPT Business is cheaper per seat. A Standard seat is $20 a month billed annually or $25 month to month, against $24 and $30 for a Dust Pro seat. For 25 people that is $6,000 a year on ChatGPT Business and $7,200 on Dust, a difference of $1,200.
Both vendors also sell a heavy-use seat, and here the gap closes. ChatGPT Business Premium is $100 a seat a month on annual billing, with 5x the usage of Standard and no 5-hour usage limit. Dust Max is $120 a seat on yearly billing with 40,000 credits a month instead of 8,000. Most teams put the majority on the cheap seat and a handful of heavy users on the expensive one, and both vendors let you mix the two.
ChatGPT Business has one floor worth knowing: a workspace needs at least 2 paid seats, either 2 of one type or 1 of each. Dust has no published seat minimum on the self-serve plan.
What do Dust and ChatGPT Business cost for 10, 25 and 50 people?
On annual billing with everyone on the entry seat, ChatGPT Business costs $2,400, $6,000 and $12,000 a year for 10, 25 and 50 people. Dust Pro costs $2,880, $7,200 and $14,400. Month to month, ChatGPT Business is $3,000, $7,500 and $15,000.
| Yearly cost | 10 people | 25 people | 50 people |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT Business Standard, annual ($20) | $2,400 | $6,000 | $12,000 |
| ChatGPT Business Standard, monthly ($25) | $3,000 | $7,500 | $15,000 |
| Dust Pro, yearly ($24) | $2,880 | $7,200 | $14,400 |
| ChatGPT Business Premium, annual ($100) | $12,000 | $30,000 | $60,000 |
| Dust Max, yearly ($120) | $14,400 | $36,000 | $72,000 |
A realistic 25 person team rarely sits on one row. Say 22 people are light users and 3 are heavy ones. On ChatGPT Business that is 22 Standard seats at $20 and 3 Premium at $100, or $8,880 a year. On Dust it is 22 Pro and 3 Max, or $10,656. The ratio holds: Dust runs about 20% more for the same mix.
Two contract terms change the math more than the sticker price. On ChatGPT Business annual plans, OpenAI says added seats stay committed through the end of the annual term and reductions only take effect at the next annual cycle, and unused seats are generally not refundable once you commit. Dust's catch is a setting that can upgrade a member from Pro to Max automatically when they need more credits, which turns a $24 seat into a $120 one without a purchase order. Decide who owns that switch before rollout. The full Dust credit model is on Dust pricing, and the OpenAI side, including the Premium seat, is on ChatGPT Business pricing.
How do the two meter usage?
ChatGPT Business meters usage by seat type and time window: Standard seats have included limits, Premium seats get 5x more and no 5-hour cap, and workspace credits can extend usage. Dust meters every seat in credits, 8,000 a month on Pro, and charges 3 credits each time an agent searches company data.
The difference shows up in who runs out and what happens next. A ChatGPT user who hits a limit can wait for the window to reset, move to a Premium seat, or draw on workspace credits if the admin has bought them. A Dust user who spends their 8,000 credits is stuck until next month unless the workspace has a prepaid pool. On the self-serve Business plan there is no pay-as-you-go overage: top-ups are bought in advance, with a minimum of 100 credits, and they last a year. Unused seat credits do not roll over.
Neither model is wrong. ChatGPT's suits a team where everyone uses the assistant a little each day. Dust's suits a team where a few people run agents hard and the rest barely touch them, as long as someone funds the pool.
Do Dust and ChatGPT Business search company data the same way?
No. ChatGPT Business connects company apps person by person through its Company Knowledge plugin, so each employee authorizes their own Slack, Google Drive or SharePoint account. Dust connects data at the workspace level into shared Spaces, but its self-serve Business plan allows only 3 data connectors.
OpenAI is precise about this. Its help center says that "installing the plugin does not connect your app accounts", and that members authenticate a provider account when an app requires individual authorization. The supported sources are Slack, Google Drive, SharePoint, GitHub, HubSpot, OneDrive, Box and Dropbox, plus custom apps built on MCP. Permissions are respected, and that part works well: a person only gets back what they could already open. The cost is coverage. If half the team never connects Confluence, the assistant never sees it for them, and two people asking the same question get different answers.
Dust goes the other way. An admin connects a source once, places it in a Space, and every agent with access to that Space can use it, which is why teams that build shared agents like it. The constraint is the count. Three connectors covers Slack, Google Drive and Notion and nothing else. A company that also runs Confluence and Jira is over the cap on day one and needs an Enterprise quote.
So for company data, ChatGPT Business is broad but personal and uneven, and Dust is shared but narrow on the self-serve plan.
What happens when you outgrow each plan?
ChatGPT Business stops at 200 paid seats per subscription for workspaces created since August 24, 2026, and OpenAI says support cannot raise it. Dust's self-serve Business plan is for teams up to 100 people with 3 connectors. Past either line, both vendors move you to an Enterprise contract with no published price.
OpenAI's wording on the ceiling is blunt: "Starting on August 24, 2026, the upper limit is 200 paid Standard and Premium seats total per ChatGPT Business subscription. Our support team is unable to change your maximum seat limit." For a 50 person company that is years of headroom. For a fast-growing one it means planning the move to ChatGPT Enterprise before you hit it, because ChatGPT Enterprise is quote only.
Dust's limits arrive sooner. Headcount past 100, a fourth connector, a sixth Space or a sixth remote MCP server all point to Dust Enterprise, which is annual and quote only. For many teams the connector cap is the one that bites first.
One more thing to check for both: whether the agents you have in mind belong in chat at all. A weekly competitor summary or a nightly report check runs better as scheduled AI agents that run on a timer than as a prompt someone has to remember to type.
Which one should you buy?
Buy ChatGPT Business if you want every employee on a capable assistant at the lowest seat price and can live with company data connected person by person. Buy Dust if a few people will build shared agents over 3 or fewer data sources. If the need is one cited answer across all your company apps, buy a search product.
- ChatGPT Business fits a 10 to 50 person team where most of the value is drafting, summarizing and analysis, and company data is a bonus rather than the point. It has more connectors than Dust's self-serve plan and it is cheaper. Concede that plainly.
- Dust fits a team with one or two builders who want agents that everyone can use on shared Slack, Drive or Notion content. Start month to month at $30 a seat so you can watch credit use before committing to a year.
- Neither fits well when the daily complaint is "I can't find where we wrote this down". ChatGPT only sees what each person connected, and Dust stops at three sources.
That last case is what InSearch is built for. An admin connects the company's apps once, read-only, including Google Drive, Slack, Notion, Confluence, Jira, Gmail and Salesforce on the Business plan. Anyone then asks in plain English and gets one written answer with a link to every source, filtered by the permissions they already have in each app. There are no credits and no per-person app connections. For 25 people it is $9,600 a year on Business at $32 a seat billed annually, or $6,000 on Team if Google Drive, Slack and Notion are enough. See how one search across every app works on unified search, then pick a plan on our pricing page.
If Google is also on your shortlist, we price Dust against it on Dust vs Gemini Enterprise, and if the alternative to Dust is an automation platform, read Dust vs Zapier Agents cost.