Short answer: For most small teams, the best of today’s AI presentation makers is Gamma: it turns a prompt or a document into a presentable deck fastest, and its Plus plan costs $9 per seat per month billed annually. Choose Canva when the deck is one asset among many marketing designs, Beautiful.ai when every deck must look identically on-brand, and ChatGPT Slides only if your team already pays for ChatGPT Business or Pro, because Plus users are locked out.
One warning first, because most roundups skip it. ChatGPT Slides launched on 16 October 2026, and as of 20 October no reviewer had published a hands-on test of how its exports hold up in PowerPoint or Google Slides. OpenAI’s own help page tells users to check the exported file before using it. This comparison therefore treats ChatGPT Slides as documented, not proven, wherever its claims matter. The other three AI presentation makers have published pricing and documented exports that can be checked against a second source, so their verdicts are firmer.
AI presentation makers: the price table that matters
Prices below are US list prices, excluding tax, taken from a comparison that verified each vendor’s pricing page on 22 October 2026 and cross-checked against a second tracker where the two disagreed. Annual figures are the billed-annual total, not twelve times the monthly price.
| Tool | Free route | Entry paid plan | AI billing unit | Exports |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gamma | 400 one-time credits, up to 10 slides per prompt, Gamma badge | Plus $9 per seat per month billed annually ($108 a year) | Credits: 1,000 a month on Plus, 4,000 on Pro | PDF, PPTX, PNG, Google Slides |
| ChatGPT Slides | None: no free or $20 route | Business $20 per seat per month billed annually, two-seat minimum ($480 a year for two) | Included in the seat; no separate meter published | PowerPoint, PDF, Google Slides (fidelity unmeasured) |
| Canva | Free plan, up to 20 AI uses | Pro $144 a year for one person | Monthly AI allowance: Pro gets 10 times the free allowance | PPTX, PDF, video, share link |
| Beautiful.ai | None: 14-day trial only, card required | Pro $14.50 a month billed annually ($174 a year) | Unlimited AI content generation on paid plans | PowerPoint import and export (animations do not carry over) |
The table hides the real decision, which is not the monthly price but the billing unit. Gamma meters AI by credits, so a heavy month costs attention as well as money. Beautiful.ai charges per seat with unlimited generation, so a heavy month costs nothing extra. Canva meters by a monthly AI allowance that varies by tool tier, which makes the true limit hard to predict. ChatGPT Slides has no published meter, which sounds generous until you remember the seat itself is the price: the cheapest solo route is a two-seat Business workspace at $480 a year, because Pro starts at $100 a month and Plus does not include Slides.
Where the deck has to end up decides the winner
Ask one question before comparing features: where does this deck live when it is finished? If the answer is a link you send to a client, Gamma wins, because its web-native decks look finished in the browser. If the answer is a PowerPoint file your boss will open and edit, Beautiful.ai and ChatGPT Slides both promise editable PowerPoint, but only Beautiful.ai’s export has been walked through by independent reviewers, and even there the trade-off is documented: its transitions, animations, embedded videos and audio do not survive export. If the answer is a Canva brand kit shared with social posts and sales sheets, Canva wins even though its AI drafting is the weakest of the four, because the deck inherits assets the team already maintains.
Gamma: the fastest first draft, with a meter running
Gamma builds presentations, documents and simple websites from a prompt, pasted notes or an imported PDF or PowerPoint file, according to its pricing and help material. The free plan gives 400 credits at signup that do not refill, capped at 10 slides per prompt, with a “Made with Gamma” badge on shared decks. Plus, at $9 per seat per month billed annually, raises the allowance to 1,000 monthly credits and removes the badge, while Pro at $18 adds 4,000 monthly credits, custom branding and fonts, detailed analytics, API access and up to 10 custom domains. Unused paid credits roll over only up to twice the monthly amount.
What Gamma is for: a freelancer or small team that needs a credible deck this afternoon from rough notes, and is happy to edit afterwards. What it is not for: a team that produces decks daily, where the credit meter becomes a second job, or a company that needs pixel-perfect PowerPoint control. One secondary tracker estimated that a simple 10-slide presentation can consume 80 to 150 credits, which would put Plus’s 1,000 monthly credits at roughly 7 to 12 such decks a month; treat that as a secondary estimate, not a vendor promise. Its export story is its quiet strength: PDF, PPTX, PNG and Google Slides mean the work is portable even if the subscription is not renewed. For a fuller look at Gamma on its own, see our Gamma review.
ChatGPT Slides: the best idea, the worst door
ChatGPT Slides is OpenAI’s native presentation editor inside ChatGPT’s Space, launched on 16 October 2026 and rolling out to eligible Pro, Business and Enterprise users with Space access on web and desktop, according to OpenAI’s release notes as reported in the most detailed launch breakdown. You start from a conversation, uploaded files or an outline, or share an example deck to guide style; teammates edit the same deck in real time with shared comments, and you can present directly from ChatGPT or export to PowerPoint, PDF or Google Slides. There is no separate price: access rides on the seat.
The door is the problem. Plus, the $20 plan most individual power users hold, is not on the eligible list, and neither are Go at $8 or Free. Business seats cost $20 per user per month billed annually with a two-seat minimum, so the cheapest way into Slides for a solo user is $480 a year for a workspace built for two people, against Gamma Plus at $108 a year or Canva Pro at $144 a year. Rollout is also staged, so an eligible account may not see Slides yet; mobile Space does not support editing pages, so phones can only view; and on Windows 10 the desktop app falls back to generating ordinary .pptx files. Comment-only access is not available at launch, even though the feature page mentions choosing who can view, comment or edit.
Who should buy it anyway? A team already on ChatGPT Business or Pro, where Slides costs nothing extra and the deck’s source material already lives in ChatGPT conversations and connected tools such as Google Drive and Slack. Who should not? Anyone thinking of buying a ChatGPT plan just for Slides. If you are on Plus, the ChatGPT add-in for PowerPoint is available on every plan including Free, and Work mode can already hand you a .pptx or Google Slides file on request. For the full launch picture, see our ChatGPT Slides review.
Canva: buy it for everything except the slides
Canva’s AI presentation feature, Magic Design for Presentations, generates a starting deck from a prompt, and then hands you the full Canva editor: 250,000-plus templates, millions of stock photos, icons and videos, and a brand kit that keeps fonts, colours and logos consistent. That surrounding editor is the product. No standalone presentation tool can match the asset library, and for a marketing team that also makes social posts, sales sheets and email headers, the deck inherits a brand system the team already maintains instead of starting from a blank prompt each time.
The price, verified on 22 October 2026, is $144 a year for Pro for one person, with Business at $250 a year per person adding 100 brand kits with approvals, team admin tools and twenty times the free AI allowance, against Pro’s ten times. Older trackers list Pro at $120 a year; this article uses the October verification. The free plan allows up to 20 AI uses, useful for an occasional deck but not a workflow. Two warnings: Canva Pro is for one person only, and the old Teams plan is closed to new sign-ups, so a growing team prices Business per person; and the AI allowance varies by tool tier, standard, premium and ultra, so the real limit depends on which features you run. Canva is also the only tool here with video export, a real advantage for remote teams that present by link. Its weakness is the draft itself: reviewers describe its AI decks as generic first drafts needing significant hand editing. See our Canva AI review and our Canva versus Adobe Express comparison.
Beautiful.ai: the brand police, at a price with a catch
Beautiful.ai is built around Smart Slides: layouts that auto-rebalance when you add a bullet, keeping every deck structurally consistent and on-brand, so a sales team producing the same formats weekly never goes off-brand. The price needs care, because sources disagree. The October 2026 comparison that verified vendor pages on 22 October lists Pro at $14.50 a month billed annually, $174 a year, with month-to-month Pro at $45 and Team at $40 per user per month billed annually for 2 to 20 seats, as confirmed in a Gamma versus Beautiful.ai pricing comparison read on 16 October 2026. An August 2026 capture listed Pro at $12 a month billed annually, $144 a year, so a buyer who budgets $144 may be charged $174 at checkout. There is no free plan: the 14-day trial requires a credit card and converts automatically unless cancelled. Students with a verified education email can get a year of Pro free. Generation is unlimited on paid plans, the only tool here where a heavy month costs nothing extra, but Smart Slides enforce structure, so an unconventional deck fights its own template.
The deck-cost planner
Use the planner below with your own numbers. It compares cost per finished deck instead of headline monthly prices, and values the hours the AI draft saves at your own hourly rate. Default values are examples only, not findings.
Deck-cost planner
The formula is: annual bill equals the published annual price per seat multiplied by seats, with ChatGPT Business floored at two seats; cost per deck equals the annual bill divided by decks per year; time value equals decks per year multiplied by hours saved per deck multiplied by your hourly rate; net value equals time value minus the annual bill. That is our calculation, not a vendor claim. Two cautions: a tool that saves two hours on a deck you make once a quarter is worth almost nothing at any price, while the same tool saving two hours on four decks a month is worth hundreds of dollars a year. And the planner prices the subscription only, not the editing time after the draft, nor the export-fixing time on ChatGPT Slides, which is currently unmeasured.
The verdict, by reader
Freelancer making a few decks a month: Gamma Plus at $108 a year, with the free 400 credits as the trial. Marketing team already living in Canva: Canva Pro at $144 a year, bought for the whole design system, not the slide generator. Sales team producing the same formats weekly: Beautiful.ai Pro at $174 a year, with the trial cancellation date set the day you start it. Team already on ChatGPT Business or Pro: ChatGPT Slides at no extra cost, with export checks budgeted into every deadline until independent tests exist. Team thinking of buying ChatGPT just for Slides: do not, not at $480 a year for two seats when Gamma Plus does the same drafting job for $108. For what AI tools cost across categories, see our real-cost guide and our small-business AI overview; for turning a finished deck into social content, see our creator tools guide.
Is ChatGPT Slides free?
No. There is no free route to ChatGPT Slides. It is included on Pro, Business and Enterprise plans only, so the cheapest entry is a two-seat Business workspace at $20 per seat per month billed annually, and Plus, Go and Free users do not get it.
Which AI presentation maker is cheapest per year?
Gamma Plus at $108 a year per seat is the cheapest paid plan on this list, followed by Canva Pro at $144 a year for one person and Beautiful.ai Pro at $174 a year. Gamma and Canva also offer free tiers; Beautiful.ai offers only a 14-day card-required trial.
Can I export AI-generated decks to PowerPoint?
Yes, from all four tools, but export quality differs. Gamma, Canva and Beautiful.ai document PowerPoint export, while ChatGPT Slides documents it with an explicit warning to check the exported file first, and no independent test of its export fidelity existed as of 20 October 2026. Beautiful.ai animations and transitions do not survive export.
Does Gamma’s free plan refill its credits?
No. Gamma’s 400 free credits are a one-time signup allowance that does not refill. Paid plans add monthly credits, 1,000 on Plus and 4,000 on Pro, with unused credits rolling over only up to twice the monthly amount.
Is Canva Pro enough for a team?
No, not as a shared seat. Canva Pro covers one person, and the old Teams plan is closed to new sign-ups, so a team prices Business at $250 a year per person for shared brand kits, approvals and admin tools.
When should I pick Beautiful.ai over Gamma?
Pick Beautiful.ai when every deck must look identically on-brand and many people build decks from shared templates, and you value unlimited generation over a low entry price. Pick Gamma when speed from a rough prompt matters more than strict brand enforcement, or when a free tier matters.
Shurah is the founder of AI Tools Daily, tracking pricing, licensing and policy changes across AI tools so readers can make decisions without wading through marketing claims themselves.
