What the AI presentation tools actually cost
Nine tools, one question: how much do you pay before you get a PowerPoint you can edit?
Comparing headline prices on these tools is close to useless, because they are not selling the same thing. Some let you generate free and charge to export. Some export free but hand you a file of pictures. One charges for the deck and tells you in its own dialog that the PowerPoint it produces is not editable.
So this page asks a narrower question, and it is the one we spent nine hands-on tests answering: what is the cheapest plan that gives you a PowerPoint whose text you can actually edit? We ran the same brief through every tool, exported the result, and unzipped each file to check.
The cheapest route to an editable PowerPoint
| Tool | What the free tier gives you | Cheapest plan with editable export | Metered by credits? | What one deck actually costs | What you actually get in that file |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SlidesGPT | Generate and preview full decks, no export | Pro at $7.49 a month billed annually ($89.99 a year) | No credits. Pro is capped in decks, not tokens: 10 downloads a month | $0.75 a deck, if you use all ten ($7.49 ÷ 10) | Editable PowerPoint, Google Slides and Keynote, 10 downloads a month |
| ChatGPT | Writes slide content free, but you format it yourself | Plus at $20 a month | No deck credits. Plus meters heavy model usage by message, not by presentation | $20 a month flat, however many decks you attempt | Its code tool can emit a basic .pptx; design is minimal |
| Gamma | 400 one-time credits, roughly 7 decks, and export is included | Free | Yes. 400 one-time credits that never refresh, then 1,000 a month on Plus, 4,000 on Pro, 20,000 on Ultra. Gamma publishes no per-action rate and states the rates may change | About seven decks free, then €0.42 each: we measured 52 credits for ten slides, so Plus at €8 a month buys about 19 decks | But it warned us five of ten slides would be scaled to fit PowerPoint, and free decks carry a Made with Gamma badge |
| Beautiful.ai | None. Sign-up lands on a plan wall with no skip and no free option | Pro at $12 per user a month, billed annually | No. Its pricing page promises unlimited AI content generation on every plan | $12 per user a month flat, however many decks | Layouts survive, but charts arrive as pictures |
| Canva | Generates and exports an editable .pptx with no charge | Free | Yes, a pooled monthly AI quota that resets. Free is capped at up to 200 Standard or 20 Premium AI calls; a paid AI Pass add-on sells 40 times the allowance of a Canva Pro seat, which is €110 a year | Free, but about five decks a month: our single deck consumed 20% of the free monthly allowance, and Canva does not publish the paid allowance | Text is editable; charts export as flat pictures |
| Microsoft Copilot | None. Needs a Microsoft 365 plan plus a Copilot licence | Bundled Microsoft 365 plans from $18 to $32 per user a month | No credits. You buy a seat and generate as much as you like | $18 to $32 per user a month flat, on top of Microsoft 365 | The only tool of the nine whose chart exported as a real, editable chart |
| Plus AI | None. A 7-day trial that requires a card | From $10 per user a month, billed annually | Yes. 1,500 credits a month on Basic, 3,000 on Pro, 6,000 on Team, and unlimited only on Max at $200 | About €0.04 a deck, the cheapest here: our seventeen-slide deck cost 6 credits, so Basic's 1,500 a month is roughly 250 decks | The web app we tested exports every slide as a flat image, with no editable text at all |
| Decktopus | Generates 16 slides but shows 3; download is blocked | From $9.99 a month billed annually ($119.88 a year) | Yes. 750 credits a month on Pro, which Decktopus itself equates to about 150 slides | About $1.07 a deck: at that rate our sixteen-slide deck is roughly 80 credits, so about nine decks a month | Its own export dialog states that exported PPT files are not editable |
| SlidesAI | One presentation, and export is included | Free | Yes, and two meters at once: 12 presentations and 120 AI credits a year on free, though the app showed us a quota of one | $1.00 a deck on Pro ($120 a year ÷ 120 presentations) | Text and tables are editable; charts are images, and every slide carries a tracking link |
| Presentations.ai | Generates a full deck you can view but cannot download in any format | Pro at $20 a month, billed annually | Yes. 100 credits on the free Starter, 5,000 a month on Pro, 50,000 on Gold | About $0.28 a deck: we measured 70 credits for fourteen slides, so Pro's 5,000 is roughly 71 decks a month | We could not test the exported file, because export is paid |
SlidesGPT
- What the free tier gives you
- Generate and preview full decks, no export
- Cheapest plan with editable export
- Pro at $7.49 a month billed annually ($89.99 a year)
- Metered by credits?
- No credits. Pro is capped in decks, not tokens: 10 downloads a month
- What one deck actually costs
- $0.75 a deck, if you use all ten ($7.49 ÷ 10)
- What you actually get in that file
- Editable PowerPoint, Google Slides and Keynote, 10 downloads a month
ChatGPT
- What the free tier gives you
- Writes slide content free, but you format it yourself
- Cheapest plan with editable export
- Plus at $20 a month
- Metered by credits?
- No deck credits. Plus meters heavy model usage by message, not by presentation
- What one deck actually costs
- $20 a month flat, however many decks you attempt
- What you actually get in that file
- Its code tool can emit a basic .pptx; design is minimal
Gamma
- What the free tier gives you
- 400 one-time credits, roughly 7 decks, and export is included
- Cheapest plan with editable export
- Free
- Metered by credits?
- Yes. 400 one-time credits that never refresh, then 1,000 a month on Plus, 4,000 on Pro, 20,000 on Ultra. Gamma publishes no per-action rate and states the rates may change
- What one deck actually costs
- About seven decks free, then €0.42 each: we measured 52 credits for ten slides, so Plus at €8 a month buys about 19 decks
- What you actually get in that file
- But it warned us five of ten slides would be scaled to fit PowerPoint, and free decks carry a Made with Gamma badge
Beautiful.ai
- What the free tier gives you
- None. Sign-up lands on a plan wall with no skip and no free option
- Cheapest plan with editable export
- Pro at $12 per user a month, billed annually
- Metered by credits?
- No. Its pricing page promises unlimited AI content generation on every plan
- What one deck actually costs
- $12 per user a month flat, however many decks
- What you actually get in that file
- Layouts survive, but charts arrive as pictures
Canva
- What the free tier gives you
- Generates and exports an editable .pptx with no charge
- Cheapest plan with editable export
- Free
- Metered by credits?
- Yes, a pooled monthly AI quota that resets. Free is capped at up to 200 Standard or 20 Premium AI calls; a paid AI Pass add-on sells 40 times the allowance of a Canva Pro seat, which is €110 a year
- What one deck actually costs
- Free, but about five decks a month: our single deck consumed 20% of the free monthly allowance, and Canva does not publish the paid allowance
- What you actually get in that file
- Text is editable; charts export as flat pictures
Microsoft Copilot
- What the free tier gives you
- None. Needs a Microsoft 365 plan plus a Copilot licence
- Cheapest plan with editable export
- Bundled Microsoft 365 plans from $18 to $32 per user a month
- Metered by credits?
- No credits. You buy a seat and generate as much as you like
- What one deck actually costs
- $18 to $32 per user a month flat, on top of Microsoft 365
- What you actually get in that file
- The only tool of the nine whose chart exported as a real, editable chart
Plus AI
- What the free tier gives you
- None. A 7-day trial that requires a card
- Cheapest plan with editable export
- From $10 per user a month, billed annually
- Metered by credits?
- Yes. 1,500 credits a month on Basic, 3,000 on Pro, 6,000 on Team, and unlimited only on Max at $200
- What one deck actually costs
- About €0.04 a deck, the cheapest here: our seventeen-slide deck cost 6 credits, so Basic's 1,500 a month is roughly 250 decks
- What you actually get in that file
- The web app we tested exports every slide as a flat image, with no editable text at all
Decktopus
- What the free tier gives you
- Generates 16 slides but shows 3; download is blocked
- Cheapest plan with editable export
- From $9.99 a month billed annually ($119.88 a year)
- Metered by credits?
- Yes. 750 credits a month on Pro, which Decktopus itself equates to about 150 slides
- What one deck actually costs
- About $1.07 a deck: at that rate our sixteen-slide deck is roughly 80 credits, so about nine decks a month
- What you actually get in that file
- Its own export dialog states that exported PPT files are not editable
SlidesAI
- What the free tier gives you
- One presentation, and export is included
- Cheapest plan with editable export
- Free
- Metered by credits?
- Yes, and two meters at once: 12 presentations and 120 AI credits a year on free, though the app showed us a quota of one
- What one deck actually costs
- $1.00 a deck on Pro ($120 a year ÷ 120 presentations)
- What you actually get in that file
- Text and tables are editable; charts are images, and every slide carries a tracking link
Presentations.ai
- What the free tier gives you
- Generates a full deck you can view but cannot download in any format
- Cheapest plan with editable export
- Pro at $20 a month, billed annually
- Metered by credits?
- Yes. 100 credits on the free Starter, 5,000 a month on Pro, 50,000 on Gold
- What one deck actually costs
- About $0.28 a deck: we measured 70 credits for fourteen slides, so Pro's 5,000 is roughly 71 decks a month
- What you actually get in that file
- We could not test the exported file, because export is paid
Prices and credit allowances checked August 2026 from each vendor's own pricing pages and, where we held an account, from inside the product. Cost per deck is our arithmetic, not a vendor figure: it divides the plan price by the number of decks its allowance covers. The credit rates for Plus AI, Gamma, Presentations.ai and Canva were read from each product's own usage meter during our tests; for Decktopus we used the vendor's own estimate of 750 credits to about 150 slides. Allowances and plan prices were re-checked from inside a signed-in account where we had one. It assumes one generation per deck and no regeneration, so treat it as a floor. Several vendors set prices by region: Canva, Gamma and SlidesAI would not serve dollar prices to us from Europe at all, and Plus AI billed our account in euros, so those rows record what we were shown rather than a conversion.
Four things the prices do not tell you
The credit meter is where the real price hides
Six of these ten tools do not sell you a month of software, they sell you a bucket of credits, and the sticker price tells you almost nothing about how many decks come out of it. So we went back into the accounts we had tested with and read the meters. A seventeen-slide deck cost 6 of Plus AI's credits. A ten-slide deck cost 52 of Gamma's. A fourteen-slide deck cost 70 of Presentations.ai's. One deck consumed a fifth of Canva's entire free monthly AI allowance. Set those rates against each vendor's own allowance and the cost of a single deck runs from about four cents on Plus AI's cheapest plan to about a dollar on Decktopus. Those two plans cost almost exactly the same to buy, $9.99 a month against €10, and differ by roughly twenty-five times in what a deck actually costs you. Credits are not comparable between vendors and are not meant to be: 6 of one company's credits and 70 of another's bought us the same thing. The cheapest deck in that list is also the worst file. Plus AI works out at pennies, and every slide it exported was a flat picture. Cost per deck is worth knowing, but only alongside what comes out. One thing no vendor here publishes is what an image costs. Gamma says the price depends on the model, that you see it at the moment you press the button, and that the rates are subject to change. Canva says richer models drain the quota faster without saying by how much. On that question you cannot know before you buy, and neither could we.
Free export does not mean an editable file
Canva and SlidesAI both export a PowerPoint at no charge, and both give you real editable text, which is more than most of this field manages. Neither gives you an editable chart: those arrive as flat pictures, so the one slide you would most want to correct is the one you cannot. Plus AI goes further and exports every slide as a single image. A free export is worth having, but check what is inside it before you rely on it.
Two vendors charge Europeans more by simply swapping the symbol
Decktopus publishes $9.99 a month and $119.88 a year. Signed in from Germany, its upgrade wall quoted us €9.99 and €119.88, the identical numerals with a different currency. Plus AI does the same: $10, $20, $30 and $200 on its public pricing page become €10, €20, €30 and €200 once you are signed in from Europe. At August 2026 rates that is roughly eight percent more for the same plan, and you only find out after you have committed time to the product.
The most expensive tool was also the best
Microsoft Copilot needs a Microsoft 365 plan plus a per-seat licence, which makes it the hardest and costliest to reach. It was also the only tool of the nine whose chart exported as a real chart with an embedded worksheet, the only one whose figures ran to the current fiscal year, and the only one that printed its source on the slide. If your organization already pays for it, use it. The argument for a standalone tool is that most people are not going to buy a Microsoft 365 tenant to make one deck.