Manus built and shipped a live website in 6 minutes 23 seconds, for 276 credits. What it would not tell us was the cost. Its own help center admits there’s no reliable pre-task estimate, and warns in the same breath that the agent’s answers can be fabricated. A Tier B review of a capable agent you rent more than own.
OpenAI shut down Sora. The cost story is the easy one. The harder one is the off-ramp it left behind: an API ending September 24, 2026 with no successor, and a replacement market that is open and cheaper.
HeyGen is built for marketing volume. Synthesia is built for enterprise training. Pick wrong and you’ll switch within a quarter.
InVideo AI is fast but every edit burns credits — even the AI’s own mistakes. Know the credit math before you buy.
We paid for ChatGPT Pro and tested the $200 tier from the inside. Across 27 false-premise traps in five languages it fabricated nothing, yet its most expensive mode proved no more accurate than the cheaper one, only slower. The premium buys capacity and depth, not fewer factual errors.
Grok 4.3’s real edge is live X data, and at $30 a month that is most of what justifies paying over the free tier. The $300 tier is a harder sell.
Anthropic and OpenAI converged on identical $20, $100, and $200 tiers in April 2026. The pricing pages mirrored. The math did not. ChatGPT Pro $100 burned through in 24 hours. Claude Max 5x held at 91% on parallel work. This review unpacks the Capacity Asymmetry between the two $100 tiers. Four months Claude, six months ChatGPT. The wrong question is “Claude vs ChatGPT.” The right question is which envelope fits your work.
We tested all three so you don’t have to.
Every affiliate site recommends the cheapest plan. Here’s why that’s wrong — and what to buy instead.