Which generative AI for a small or medium business?

For an SMB in 2026, two parameters determine the right choice: monthly budget and priority use cases. For 1-5 users with moderate use (email drafting, document analysis, brainstorming, translation), pay-as-you-go via an aggregator platform like Ask Aurel typically lands at €20-50/month total — much less than 5 individual ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro subscriptions. For 10+ users with heavy use, a team plan (ChatGPT Team, Claude for Work, Mistral Enterprise) becomes relevant. For sensitive use (customer data, contracts), pick an AI with GDPR/Zero Data Retention commitment: Anthropic, OpenAI Enterprise, and Mistral offer it. For accounting, legal, commercial writing — Claude is generally preferred. For creativity (visuals, audio, social posts), GPT-4o with built-in DALL-E remains unbeatable. Recommended strategy: start with 30 days on pay-as-you-go via Ask Aurel to measure real usage, then switch to a dedicated plan if usage is heavy.