What is ChatGPT Work? A guide for EU businesses

OpenAI launched ChatGPT Work on 9 July 2026 as an agent for longer tasks, meaning a program that takes a goal and works through the steps without a prompt for each one.¹ Since then the question we hear from European teams has moved from email drafts to finished spreadsheets.

OpenAI includes ChatGPT Work in Business and Enterprise, gives Plus expanded access on desktop, web and mobile, and lets Free and Go try a limited version on desktop.²³ The agent builds documents, spreadsheets, presentations, reports and small websites from the apps and files you connect.¹

satori. delivers ChatGPT Business for European companies on one invoice in euros, while most of what we build ourselves runs on Claude from Anthropic. This guide covers what the agent does, what it costs in euros, where your files go and when Claude Cowork fits better.

What is ChatGPT Work, and what does it actually do?

Regular chat answers the message you just typed and stops there, while ChatGPT Work takes a goal, splits it into steps and keeps going until it has a file to hand over.¹ You follow its progress, answer its questions and approve the actions that matter while it runs, according to OpenAI's release notes of 9 July 2026.¹

On the web and in the mobile app, Work runs in OpenAI's cloud, and in the new desktop app for macOS and Windows it can also open local files and apps with your permission.¹⁴ OpenAI's product page says GPT-6 now powers Work, with models such as GPT-6.1 Sol that a regular chat cannot select.⁵⁴

ChatGPT Work on a schedule or a trigger

Scheduled Tasks let a Work task run once, repeat on a schedule or watch for changes, so a Monday sales summary can be waiting before anyone opens a laptop.⁴ Since 25 August 2026 a task can also start from a new Gmail message, a new Slack channel message or activity on a GitHub pull request, meaning a proposed code change.⁶ Free and Go accounts cannot use these event triggers.⁴

OpenAI introduced workspace agents on 22 April 2026, meaning saved agents that a team builds once and shares, and they now run in Business, Enterprise and Edu.⁷ Each colleague who copies a shared task still connects the apps with their own permissions.⁴

What does ChatGPT Work cost for a European team?

ChatGPT Work comes with the plan rather than at a separate price, and the agent time you get grows with what you pay.²³ Euro figures use the European Central Bank rate of 25 September 2026, 1.1403 dollars to the euro, before value added tax (VAT).⁸

Seat types can be mixed in one workspace, which matters because only a few people in most teams run an agent for hours a day.² OpenAI also says plan usage will share one limit across ChatGPT and Codex, its coding agent, from December 2026.²

Worked example, our own arithmetic: eight Standard seats on annual billing cost $1,920 a year, about €1,684, while eight Premium seats cost $9,600, about €8,419. Pick six Standard and two Premium seats at $3,840 a year, about €3,368, when two people will run the agent all day.

Our guide to buying ChatGPT Business licences walks through checkout and the reverse charge, and ChatGPT in Europe sets the plans against European rules. Self-serve Business takes a credit card only, while Enterprise goes through OpenAI's sales team with options such as invoicing.³

Can ChatGPT Work handle real knowledge work?

Knowledge work, meaning the analysis and writing done at a keyboard, is where OpenAI's own customer stories put their numbers.⁵ Virgin Atlantic had ChatGPT Work research its customer journeys against competitors, and its head of digital products says an analysis that took weeks now takes hours.⁵ At RingCentral the agent helped one manager scale an early access programme from 6 pilot customers to about 80, pulling status from Salesforce and Jira.⁵

Both stories come from OpenAI's own product page and name no failed runs, so read them as best cases rather than as averages for your team. Our ChatGPT training practises that check on the team's own files, because someone still reads the agent's result line by line before it goes out.

Agent time also runs out. A Standard seat gets roughly 15 to 150 local messages per five-hour window on GPT-6.1 Sol, and cloud tasks can use more of the allowance.¹⁰ OpenAI writes that a fixed message count is not a reliable measure of what remains, because use depends on the model, the size of the task and how long the model thinks.¹⁰ A person still checks the figures before they reach a board.

ChatGPT Work and Claude Cowork side by side

Claude Cowork is Anthropic's mode for the same kind of work, and since 16 September 2026 it lives inside the normal Claude app.¹¹ Both agents now run tasks in the cloud and reach local files only through a desktop app.⁴¹²

When Claude Cowork fits better

Claude Cowork fits a team that lives in Office, since Claude for Excel shares context with Claude for PowerPoint, Word and Outlook in a single conversation.¹⁹ It also fits an IT team that must keep processing inside the European Union, because Claude Desktop, Cowork included, can run on Amazon Bedrock.¹⁸ Called from an EU region, EU cross-region inference on Amazon Bedrock, meaning routing among EU data centres only, keeps each request inside six EU regions from Frankfurt to Stockholm.²⁰ That route drops Claude Design and computer use, so it suits a regulated team rather than a curious one.¹⁸

We build most of our own work on Claude, and our guide to Claude for business sets out the plans from Team to Enterprise. The Claude Cowork setup guide gets one person to a first finished document in about thirty minutes.

When ChatGPT Work fits better

ChatGPT Work fits a team that already lives in ChatGPT and wants tasks to start from a Gmail inbox, a Slack channel or a GitHub repository.⁴ Business also stores content in Europe on a self-serve plan, which Claude Team cannot offer.¹⁴¹⁵

Where do your files go, and what does the GDPR ask?

A Business workspace picks its storage region at checkout, and the European option covers the European Economic Area plus Switzerland.¹⁴¹⁷ The region decides where prompts and responses are stored, not where ChatGPT processes them, and OpenAI is still rolling it out.¹⁴ A copy of every prompt and response also stays in the US for a limited time for abuse monitoring.¹⁴

Work adds two points of its own. Task context may be stored in the cloud even when a task runs on your computer, and data that a connected app stores or processes falls outside OpenAI's storage region.⁴¹⁷ New Enterprise and Edu workspaces can store content in Europe and, where eligible, process it there.¹⁷

OpenAI does not train on Business data by default, including data the agent reads from apps, and deleted chats leave its systems within 30 days unless law or safety requires longer.²¹ Customers in the European Economic Area sign its Data Processing Addendum with OpenAI Ireland Ltd, which is the processor contract that Article 28 of the GDPR asks for.²²²³

Transfers out of Europe rest on the Standard Contractual Clauses, meaning the EU's model contract for sending personal data abroad, in Modules Two and Three.²² OpenAI had no entry on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework list when we searched it on 4 November 2026, so those clauses carry the transfer.²⁴ Record the US transfer under Article 30, as our ChatGPT GDPR guide shows step by step.²³

How to test ChatGPT Work in two weeks

A two-week test costs no more than two Business Standard seats on monthly billing, $50 or about €44 for the month, cancelled afterwards if the numbers do not hold.² Pick two people who do the same recurring task and let them run it by hand and with the agent for ten working days.

• One task: a job that recurs at least three times a week, such as the Monday sales summary
• Before figure: minutes per run by hand, measured before anyone opens Work
• After figure: minutes per run with Work, including the time spent checking the result
• Fix count: one line every time someone had to correct the output
• App list: the connected apps the agent needed, saved in work-test.md

ChatGPT training for teams covers ChatGPT Work in the half-day format at €390 per user, from 8 users and excluding VAT. Two hours cost €280 and a full day €560 per user, while eight people on the half day pay €3,120.

ChatGPT Work in summary

ChatGPT Work turns a goal into a finished file and comes with every Business seat from about €18 a month, with content kept in Europe once you pick that region at checkout.²¹⁴ Through satori-chatgpt the licence costs €22 for Standard or €110 for Premium per user a month, plus €14 per user a month and €490 setup once, all excluding VAT. EU business customers with a valid VAT number are invoiced without Swedish VAT under the reverse charge. Customers in Sweden pay Swedish VAT.

Book a free 30-minute call and bring the one task you would hand to the agent first, together with the number of people who do it today.

Open your calendar for last week and write down the one task that came back at least three times, with the minutes it took on each run. In under twenty minutes you have the before figure your test has to beat.

Sources

Footnotes

1. OpenAI Help Center (2026). ChatGPT Business release notes, entry of 9 July 2026, Introducing ChatGPT Work. https://help.openai.com/en/articles/11391654-chatgpt-business-release-notes ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. OpenAI (2026). Business Pricing, checked 4 November 2026. https://openai.com/business/pricing/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

3. OpenAI (2026). ChatGPT Plans and Pricing, checked 4 November 2026. https://chatgpt.com/pricing/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

4. OpenAI Help Center (2026). ChatGPT Work and Codex, checked 4 November 2026. https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001275-chatgpt-work-and-codex ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

5. OpenAI (2026). ChatGPT Work for every team, checked 4 November 2026. https://openai.com/chatgpt-work/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

6. OpenAI Help Center (2026). ChatGPT Business release notes, entries of 24 and 25 August 2026. https://help.openai.com/en/articles/11391654-chatgpt-business-release-notes ↩ ↩²

7. OpenAI (2026). Introducing workspace agents in ChatGPT, 22 April 2026. https://openai.com/index/introducing-workspace-agents-in-chatgpt/ ↩

8. European Central Bank (2026). US dollar (USD) euro reference exchange rate. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/policy_and_exchange_rates/euro_reference_exchange_rates/html/eurofxref-graph-usd.en.html ↩

9. OpenAI Help Center (2026). About ChatGPT Pro tiers, updated 3 November 2026. https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9793128-about-chatgpt-pro-tiers ↩

10. OpenAI Help Center (2026). ChatGPT Business models and limits, checked 4 November 2026. https://help.openai.com/en/articles/12003714-chatgpt-business-models-and-limits ↩ ↩²

11. Anthropic (2026). Claude Cowork and chat are now one Claude, 16 September 2026. https://claude.com/resources/articles/cowork-is-now-claude ↩

12. Anthropic (2026). Get started with Claude Cowork. Claude Help Center. https://support.claude.com/en/articles/13345190-get-started-with-claude-cowork ↩ ↩² ↩³

13. Anthropic (2026). Plans and Pricing. https://claude.com/pricing ↩

14. OpenAI Help Center (2026). Where your ChatGPT Business content is stored. https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001418-where-your-chatgpt-business-content-is-stored ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

15. Anthropic (2026). Where are your servers located? Do you host your models on EU servers? Anthropic Privacy Center. https://privacy.claude.com/en/articles/7996890-where-are-your-servers-located-do-you-host-your-models-on-eu-servers ↩ ↩²

16. Anthropic (2026). Enable US-only inference for your organization. Claude Help Center. https://support.claude.com/en/articles/15422948-enable-us-only-inference-for-your-organization ↩

17. OpenAI Help Center (2026). Data residency and inference residency for ChatGPT. https://help.openai.com/en/articles/9903489-data-residency-and-inference-residency-for-chatgpt ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

18. Amazon Web Services (2026). From developer desks to the whole organization: running Claude Desktop on Amazon Bedrock, with the June 2026 update. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/from-developer-desks-to-the-whole-organization-running-claude-cowork-in-amazon-bedrock/ ↩ ↩² ↩³

19. Anthropic (2026). Use Claude for Excel. https://claude.com/docs/office-agents/excel ↩

20. Amazon Web Services (2026). Anthropic Claude Sonnet 5.5 model card. Amazon Bedrock User Guide. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock/latest/userguide/model-card-anthropic-claude-sonnet-5-5.html ↩

21. OpenAI (2026). Enterprise privacy at OpenAI, updated 8 January 2026. https://openai.com/enterprise-privacy/ ↩

22. OpenAI (2025). OpenAI Data Processing Addendum, updated 1 December 2025, effective 1 January 2026. https://openai.com/policies/data-processing-addendum/ ↩ ↩²

23. European Union (2016). Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation), Articles 28, 30 and 44 to 49. EUR-Lex. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679/oj ↩ ↩²

24. International Trade Administration, US Department of Commerce (2026). Data Privacy Framework List, searched for OpenAI and Microsoft Corporation on 4 November 2026. https://www.dataprivacyframework.gov/list ↩