ChatGPT Enterprise vs Team vs Plus: which plan for an Australian team?
The hardest decision in adopting ChatGPT at work is not whether to use it. It is which plan to use. The three options (Plus, Team, Enterprise) have very different price points, very different data policies, and very different administrative capabilities. This is the comparison we walk Australian teams through during procurement: AUD pricing, the data and privacy differences that matter, where each plan fits, and where Microsoft Copilot or Google Gemini are worth considering instead.
The three plans at a glance
ChatGPT Plus is around $30 AUD per user per month, paid individually. OpenAI's consumer plan. Includes access to current GPT models, higher rate limits, and image generation. Designed for individual use.
ChatGPT Team is around $40 AUD per user per month, minimum two users, billed annually. Adds team workspace, admin controls, no training on your data, and shared custom GPTs. Designed for teams up to about 150 people. Roughly $480 AUD per user per year.
ChatGPT Enterprise is custom-priced, typically starting around $90 AUD per user per month with significant volume discounts above 150 users. Adds SSO, SCIM, advanced data analysis, longer context, audit logs, and contracted data residency options. Designed for organisations where procurement, security, and compliance teams are involved in the decision.
The data policy difference
This is the single most important difference, and the one most teams miss.
ChatGPT Plus trains on your conversations by default. You can turn this off in Settings, Data Controls, 'Improve the model for everyone', but it is enabled out of the box. Your prompts and the model's responses are used to train future versions of the model. For client work, financial data, or anything sensitive, this is a problem if the default is not changed. A per-user toggle that has to be turned off correctly by every user, every time, is not a control posture you pass an audit on.
ChatGPT Team does not train on your data. This is the policy difference that makes Team the right minimum tier for any business that handles confidential information. The $10 per seat per month premium over Plus pays for the data policy alone, even before the team features matter.
ChatGPT Enterprise does not train on your data and adds contracted data residency. OpenAI can be configured to store your team's data in specific regions (US or EU at time of writing, not Australia). For organisations with contracted data residency obligations, this is the tier that supports a procurement conversation.
Admin, SSO, and audit
Plus has no admin layer. Each user manages their own account. There is no way for a manager to see what users are doing, revoke access centrally, or enforce any policy.
Team adds a workspace with a basic admin role. The admin can add and remove users, see seat usage, manage shared GPTs, and enforce some baseline settings. There is no SSO and no SCIM. For teams of 5 to 50, this is usually enough.
Enterprise adds SSO (via SAML), SCIM provisioning, audit logs, configurable data retention, and a more detailed admin console. SSO and SCIM are the features procurement teams will ask about by name. Audit logs are what compliance teams need. If you are an organisation where 'we cannot adopt a tool that does not support SAML' is a real sentence, Enterprise is the right tier.
The decision matrix
Three questions decide which tier is right.
How sensitive is the data you handle? If you handle any client data, financial information, health data, or anything covered by the Privacy Act, the floor is Team. Plus's default-on training policy is not acceptable for that work.
How big is the team? Below 5, individual Plus licenses are often the lowest-friction starting point. From 5 to 150, Team is almost always right. Above 150, Enterprise pricing usually becomes more competitive than Team and the admin features become necessary anyway.
How involved is procurement? If procurement, security, and compliance are involved in the decision, the answer is Enterprise. Not because Team is technically insufficient, but because Enterprise is the tier that supports the contractual and audit conversations those teams need to have.
A worked example: a 50-person Australian professional services firm. They handle client data covered by confidentiality obligations. Procurement will be involved. Answer: ChatGPT Enterprise. Annual cost at $90 AUD per user per month is around $54,000 AUD. Consolidating Plus licenses typically saves around $15,000 if 30 staff were already paying for Plus individually. Net spend is around $39,000 AUD per year for a 50-person firm. Roughly $780 per person per year for a tier that supports the procurement conversation.
What about Copilot and Gemini?
Microsoft 365 Copilot is the alternative for organisations already running Office 365 at scale. At around $45 AUD per user per month on top of M365, it sits in similar pricing territory to ChatGPT Enterprise. The integration with Excel, Word, and Outlook is genuinely strong if your team does serious work in those tools. The general chat experience is weaker than ChatGPT. If your team's bottleneck is document and spreadsheet work, Copilot wins. If it is research, drafting, and analysis in general, ChatGPT Team or Enterprise wins.
Google Workspace's Gemini features (priced into Gemini Business at around $30 AUD per user per month) are improving fast. As of mid-2026 the writing and reasoning quality is competitive, and the integration with Docs, Sheets, and Gmail is convenient if your team lives in Google. The ecosystem is thinner than ChatGPT's and the team admin features are still maturing. A reasonable second choice, not yet the obvious first pick for a procurement conversation.
For most Australian teams in 2026, the practical short list is: ChatGPT Team for unregulated teams of 5 to 150, ChatGPT Enterprise for teams above 150 or in regulated work, Microsoft Copilot if Office is the bottleneck, Gemini Business if Google Workspace is the home base.
- ChatGPT Plus trains on your data by default. Not safe for client work without per-user opt-out.
- Team is the minimum tier for any business that handles confidential information.
- Enterprise is the tier that supports a procurement conversation, not just a technical decision.
- A 50-person professional services firm should default to Enterprise, not Team.
- Copilot wins if Office is the bottleneck. ChatGPT wins for general work.
Can I get Australian data residency on ChatGPT?+
Not at time of writing. Enterprise supports US and EU residency. If Australian residency is a hard requirement, the practical alternatives are Azure OpenAI in the Australia East region or AWS Bedrock in Asia Pacific. Both need infrastructure work. They are not off-the-shelf.
Is the Team plan enough for a 100-person firm?+
Technically yes, but at 100 users the lack of SSO becomes painful and the admin features start to feel thin. Most teams over 80 find Enterprise easier to manage even before the procurement question forces the move.
What happens to my custom GPTs and prompts if I move from Plus to Team?+
Custom GPTs do not migrate automatically. Conversation history does not migrate either. Build any custom GPTs once you are on Team rather than building them on Plus and trying to move them. Conversation history that needs to be preserved should be exported before the move.
Can we mix Plus and Team across the company?+
Technically yes, but it creates an administrative mess. Some teams on Team workspaces with shared GPTs, others on Plus with their own customisations. The inconsistency wastes more time than it saves money.
Does any tier include API access?+
No. API access is billed separately based on usage. The Plus, Team, and Enterprise subscriptions are for the consumer interface. If your team needs API access for custom apps, that is a separate procurement.
