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AI licences: your per-seat subscription now only covers the entry fee

Original title, in French: “Licences IA : votre abonnement par siège ne paie plus que l'entrée”

Publication
Journal du Net (France)
Author
Romain Faure
Published on
6 October 2026 · read in the page structured data

Summary

The author, Romain Faure, analyses the change of pricing model made within three weeks by Microsoft, Google, OpenAI and Anthropic for their enterprise AI offerings. The per-user licence remains as an entry fee, but heavy usage (agents, frontier models) is now metered, billed per token or in credits. Microsoft splits Copilot into "Everyday AI" (per seat) and "Advanced AI" (usage-based); OpenAI bills Enterprise contracts per token; Anthropic charges USD 20 per seat per month plus API usage; Google is removing Gemini Code Assist from new Enterprise subscriptions. The unit price is falling (Opus 5.5 at -20% compared with Opus 5), but the risk linked to usage volume is now shifting to the customer, according to the author, who recommends that CIOs lock down budgets by process before enabling usage-based spending options.

Summary based on the full text of the article.

Read the article on Journal du Net →

Figures cited

  • 4 USD/million tokens

    Opus 5.5 input price

    Anthropic, Opus 5.5 model, October 2026

    « Opus 5.5, le modèle haut de gamme d'Anthropic, sort à 4 dollars le million de tokens en entrée et 20 en sortie, 20 % sous Opus 5. »
  • 20 USD/million tokens

    Opus 5.5 output price

    Anthropic, Opus 5.5 model, October 2026

    « Opus 5.5, le modèle haut de gamme d'Anthropic, sort à 4 dollars le million de tokens en entrée et 20 en sortie, 20 % sous Opus 5. »
  • 20 %

    Opus 5.5 price reduction compared with Opus 5

    Anthropic, Opus 5.5 model vs Opus 5

    « Opus 5.5, le modèle haut de gamme d'Anthropic, sort à 4 dollars le million de tokens en entrée et 20 en sortie, 20 % sous Opus 5. »
  • 20 USD/seat/month

    Anthropic Enterprise seat price

    Anthropic, Enterprise price list

    « Anthropic affiche la même formule sur sa grille Enterprise : 20 dollars par siège et par mois, plus l'usage au tarif de l'API. »

Classification

Country
Worldwide scope
Company size
All sizes
Industries
Software vendors, IT services companies, telecoms · All industries, or industry not specified
Companies
Microsoft (supplier), OpenAI (supplier), Anthropic (supplier), Google (supplier)
Keywords
ai pricing, per-seat licences, finops, copilot, gemini enterprise, chatgpt enterprise

Entry written by Marsanne Studio from the cited article, with the help of an AI model (claude-sonnet-5). The rights to the article and its illustrations belong to Journal du Net and its author. Entry translated from French by Claude Sonnet 5.5.