Business vs Enterprise vs Edu: Features and Pricing

Three plans, three organizational realities

OpenAI offers three plans for organizations: Business (known as Team until August 29, 2025), Enterprise, and Edu, the Enterprise variant for educational institutions. They differ less in the models they access than in what they can absorb: organization size, compliance requirements, and the ability to integrate with an identity directory.

Choosing the wrong plan doesn’t cost you at signing, but six months later, when you’re manually reconciling hundreds of accounts created without automatic provisioning. Understanding what truly separates these three plans is therefore the first step in any deployment.

Business, the self-service plan

You can subscribe to Business online, with no negotiation required. A workspace requires at least two seats: the Standard seat costs $25 per month, or $20 per month with annual billing, and the Premium seat costs $125, or $100 annually, offering higher usage limits for ChatGPT Work and Codex. These prices apply to most countries and may vary by currency.

The Standard seat provides access to ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work, and Codex, as well as Projects, connected apps, company knowledge, the Agent, and Deep Research. As of November 2026, GPT-6 is rolling out to Chat in Business workspaces; the Pro option, powered by GPT-6 Astra, is capped at 15 messages per month on a Standard seat and 50 per week on a Premium seat.

On the administration side, Business is more robust than many realize. Domain verification and SSO, via SAML or OpenID Connect, are included. Four built-in roles—Owner, Admin, Stats Reader, and Member—and an admin console cover members, access, usage, and spend. OpenAI does not train its models on workspace data. What’s missing: SCIM and group synchronization with your directory, configurable data retention settings, and contractual options like purchase order billing, a BAA, or zero retention, which are reserved for contracted plans.

Enterprise, complete control

Enterprise is purchased at the organization level after contacting the OpenAI sales team, and pricing depends on the contract: seats, workspace credits, or token-based billing. As of April 2026, standalone Codex seats billed by usage are also available.

The decisive differences lie in infrastructure and governance: SCIM and synchronized groups, custom roles (RBAC) down to model selection, configurable retention periods, usage analytics broken down by group, and the Compliance Platform to feed your eDiscovery, data loss prevention, and SIEM tools. New customers can choose their data storage region, including Europe (EEA and Switzerland), and run inference there as well. Enterprise workspaces assigned an OpenAI representative can finally encrypt their content with their own keys (EKM), managed in AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure.

The target is clear: large organizations, regulated industries, and generally any structure where identity directories, data retention, and traceability are non-negotiable.

Edu, the academic variant

Edu builds on the Enterprise foundation for educational institutions. It includes the flagship model, data analysis, browsing, and file uploads, along with GPTs shareable within the institution, much higher limits than the free plan, and the same administrative controls: group permissions, SSO, SCIM, and GPT management.

Comparison at a glance

How to decide

The decision comes down to three questions. First, identity management: SSO is available starting with Business, but if your IT department requires arrivals and departures to sync automatically from your directory, only Enterprise or Edu SCIM can handle that. Second, compliance: mandated retention periods, audit logs fed into a SIEM, inference in Europe, a BAA, or custom encryption keys point toward Enterprise. Finally, budget: Business is predictable and subscribable online, whereas Enterprise requires sales negotiation.

One last piece of advice: don’t start with Enterprise if your use cases aren’t validated yet. A pilot on Business with twenty to thirty motivated users will produce the metrics and testimonials you’ll need in front of your finance leadership within a few weeks.

Your turn

Fill out the grid for your organization. For each line in the comparison table, note whether the criterion is mandatory, desirable, or indifferent for you, consulting your IT director and data protection officer. If a “mandatory” line is covered only by Enterprise, your choice is made; otherwise, launch a Business pilot.

Official sources: ChatGPT Business overview · What is ChatGPT Enterprise? · Setting up single sign-on (SSO) for ChatGPT Business · SCIM provisioning and management · ChatGPT Edu at OpenAI · Data residency and inference residency for ChatGPT (OpenAI Help Center)

Key takeaways

• Business subscribes online: $25 per Standard seat per month ($20 annual), two seats minimum, SSO included.
• Enterprise, via contract, adds SCIM, custom roles, configurable retention, the Compliance Platform, data residency with inference, and custom encryption keys.
• Edu is the Enterprise variant for education, with the same administrative controls.
• None of the three plans use your data to train OpenAI models by default.
• Validate your use cases on a Business pilot before entering an Enterprise negotiation.