Claude Duet vs Gemini vs ChatGPT Dots for Small Business

In 22 days three of the largest AI vendors each shipped something aimed at the same person. OpenAI's ChatGPT Dots, launched September 29, 2026, are always-on agents with their own cloud computer. Google added a small business hub to the Gemini app on October 20, with brand styles, finance help and connected apps from Google Ads to Xero. Anthropic opened a research preview of Claude Duet on October 21 and wrote that it built Duet "for professionals and small business owners with more on their plates than they can track". If you run a small company and are deciding which one to pay for and connect to your books, your inbox and your store, this is the comparison. We read only the vendors' own pages, on October 21, 2026, and we do not name a winner.

One framing first. Duet and Dots are agents: they hold a thread with you, work while you are away and act in your apps with your approval. Gemini's hub is a set of skills and connections inside a chat app, and Google's pages describe no background agent, no general approval rules and no payments for it. So the honest comparison is not three versions of one thing. It is two agents with different prices and borders, and one hub that is free to try and does a narrower job well. Each product's own launch is covered in our Claude Duet explainer, our Gemini small business hub guide and our ChatGPT Dots post.

The table holds the facts a small business owner asks first. Every cell is from the vendor's own page read on October 21, 2026, and "not stated" means the vendor's pages do not say. Quoted phrases are the vendor's words. The sections after it take each job in turn.

None of the three charges for the assistant itself. Each is bundled into a plan, so the real question is the cheapest plan that qualifies. Anthropic's pricing page lists Pro at $17 a month on an annual plan ($200 billed up front) or $20 monthly, and Max from $100; its help centre says Duet is included in Pro and Max at no extra cost during the preview, and that mobile pricing may differ. OpenAI's Pro tiers are $100, $200 and $500 a month and the pricing page shows Dots as included from the $100 tier; a Business Premium seat is $100 a month billed annually or $125 monthly, and Business plans start at two users. OpenAI's pages do not say whether the three Pro tiers get different dot allowances. Google's October 20 post names no plan for the hub at all. For context only, Google's US plans page lists Free at $0, AI Plus at $4.99, AI Pro at $19.99 and AI Ultra at $99.99 or $199.99; none of those is tied to the hub on any Google page we read.

The failure case is reading the headline price as the comparison. A solo owner in the US can try Duet for $20. The same owner cannot get a dot for less than $100: Pro starts there, and Business plans start at two users, and OpenAI's pages do not say whether one Premium seat and one Standard seat count. Our ChatGPT plans comparison and Google AI plans guide have the full tier tables.

For many readers geography settles the choice before features do. Anthropic's help centre states that Duet is available in the US only during the research preview, that access is by waitlist with invitations going out in waves, and that Link payments need a US payment method. OpenAI's help centre says dots are rolling out to Pro users in markets excluding the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the UK, to users over 18, while Business Premium is available across supported ChatGPT regions. Google says the hub is beginning to roll out globally to all Gemini app users in the coming days and names no exclusion, though its June 2026 Business Profile rollout had excluded the EEA and UK and the current help page says that feature is available wherever the Gemini web app is. Treat EEA and UK availability of the hub as unconfirmed until it appears in your app. Google's connected-apps table also lists the hub's third-party apps as English-only, with Shopify and Dropbox for US users only and the Zoho apps for India only.

This is the job the two agents were built around. Anthropic's post describes a morning brief across connected apps and checks of your accounts every few hours, with the reason stated plainly: checking nonstop would use up your plan's limits much faster. Its product FAQ says Duet can flag what needs you in your inbox and calendar and draft replies for you to approve, and Gmail, Google Calendar and Slack are named connectors; Microsoft 365 is not available yet. Dots do the same through scheduled checks, with OpenAI's own example being a dot that reviews your calendar each morning, a connected personal email account, and messaging in Slack and Teams. Gemini's hub post does not claim triage; Google's general connected apps help mentions summarising Gmail and creating calendar events, but nothing proactive.

The example from Anthropic's post is a real-estate broker whose Duet flagged a showing booked on the wrong day. The failure case is Anthropic's own: it says Duet checks at set intervals, so something urgent can arrive between checks, and that it may still misread a thread or miscalibrate what is urgent. An owner who stops reading their own inbox because an agent does is trusting a product both vendors call fallible: Anthropic calls Duet a research preview, and OpenAI says dots can still make mistakes.

Here the three diverge most. Anthropic's post names actions: check Intuit QuickBooks or Stripe for unpaid invoices and draft reminders, work with Gusto payroll, and, in its restaurant owner's account, work through invoices store by store. Google's post names Xero and Zoho as connected apps (Google's connected-apps table describes the Xero app as cash-flow and unpaid-invoice tracking, and lists the Zoho apps as CRM, mail, desk and project tools for India only) and says Gemini can turn messy spreadsheets, receipts and purchase records into financial graphics and interactive models; that is analysis, and Google's pages describe no invoicing or reconciling action. OpenAI's dots pages give one tester anecdote of a dot preparing an invoice and sending it after approval, and list invoice processing only under enterprise specialist-dot pilots. No accounting app is named on the dots pages.

So for an owner whose pain is unpaid invoices, Duet's pages make the most specific promise and Gemini's make the most specific analysis promise. The failure case is the reconciliation nobody checked: all three vendors say their assistants make mistakes, and an invoice reminder sent to the wrong customer is a mistake the owner wears. Our Claude for small business guide covers what the QuickBooks connection can and cannot read.

Gemini is the one product whose own pages support Google Ads. A Google Ads connected app answers questions like how your campaigns are performing and, per Google's help page, may open your Google Ads account in a separate tab to complete tasks; it is available everywhere both Google Ads and Gemini are supported, in English only. The Business Profile connection can draft review replies and posts. The hub's brand-style feature lets an owner upload a website, brand kit, fonts or colour palette, and Google says Gemini retains that style so later assets stay on-brand without re-uploading the guidelines.

Duet's marketing examples are a social campaign in Canva, HubSpot follow-ups and LinkedIn job posts; Google Ads is not named. Dots' examples are content-creator and launch material; no ad platform is named. For completeness, Meta's Muse connects Meta ad accounts, Instagram analytics and Klaviyo, per Meta's September posts. The failure case is the obvious one for an agency reader: an assistant that can open your Ads account in a tab and complete tasks has write access to your spend, and Google's pages describe no confirmation rules for it. Until they do, keep the Ads connection on an account with a budget cap you would accept being spent.

Anthropic's post says Duet can set up, design and manage a Shopify store, with a richer visual editor marked coming soon, and can check out with Shop Pay. Google names Shopify and Wix as connected apps and Google's connected-apps table says the Shopify app can manage a storefront, process orders, track inventory and create listings, for US users only, in English, on a personal Google Account. OpenAI's dots pages name no store platform; Shopify appears only in a DevDay recap image caption about plugins, not about dots.

On payments, Duet's rules are the most detailed. It pays through Link, Stripe's wallet, with a virtual card so the real card number is not shared, needs approval in the Link app for each purchase, needs a US payment method, cannot make recurring payments, and cannot move money between accounts even with approval. Dots can buy with cards already saved on a merchant's site, with approval, and must hand transfers between financial accounts back to the user. Gemini's hub pages state no payment capability. Our wider personal agents comparison covers Muse and Manus on the same questions.

For a business owner the approval rules matter more than the model name, because they decide what can go wrong without you. Anthropic draws a fixed line: before Duet sends a message, makes a payment, signs a document or deletes anything, it shows what it is about to do and waits, and some actions stay off-limits even with approval, including trading securities, moving money between accounts and accessing someone else's account. Actions pass through what Anthropic calls its auto mode classifier. OpenAI lets you choose per type of action between four behaviours, take action without asking, take action if pre-approved, ask before taking action, and hand off to you, and always confirms before permanently deleting data, installing software from an unrecognised source or granting new security-sensitive access; changing a password or transferring money between accounts is handed back to the user. Google's hub pages describe no general confirmation rules; the one exception found is the Dropbox app, where Google says deleting, sharing or changing permissions on files must be confirmed.

No winner, but a clear routing. The grid below is our judgement, built on the vendors' stated borders and features above. It assumes the owner wants one assistant, not three, and that an unavailable product is not a choice.

Three groups should wait on all of them. Anyone whose work runs on Microsoft 365: Duet does not support it yet, and Google's Ads and Business Profile connections do not work on work accounts. Anyone under 18 or buying for someone under 18: OpenAI excludes them from dots. And anyone who cannot accept an assistant making mistakes while following its own rules, which is a limitation all three vendors state about their own product. The wider question of what a small business should automate first is in our small business AI adoption guide, and the sequencing we use with clients is part of our AI transformation work.