ChatLLM by Abacus.AI Review (2026): 100+ Models for $10 a Month — and the Credit System Nobody Explains
Disclosure: this post contains affiliate links to ChatLLM. If you subscribe through them we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Every price below was.
ChatLLM is Abacus.AI’s consumer and small-team product — what the company calls a “Super Assistant”. The pitch is simple and genuinely unusual: one subscription, $10 per user per month, that gives you more or less every frontier model at once, plus an agent, a coding IDE, and image and video generation. That is half what ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro and Perplexity Pro each charge on their own.
This review covers what you actually get for the money, how the credit system works, and the one thing about it that generates most of the complaints.
ChatLLM pricing in 2026
| Plan | Price | Credits | Agent access |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $7 first month, then $10 per user per month | 20,000 / month | 3 AI Agent conversations per month, max 2,500 credits each |
| Pro | $20 per month (Basic plus $10) | 30,000 / month | Unrestricted, while you have credits |
| Abacus.AI Enterprise | Starting at $5,000 | — | Separate product entirely |
Read from abacus.ai/pricing and the ChatLLM billing FAQ on 1 October 2026. Unused purchased credits roll over to the next month. There is no seat minimum — Abacus states there is “no limit to the number of users you can invite”. The $5,000 Enterprise figure is published without a billing period, so we are not calling it monthly or annual.
Three pricing facts worth knowing before you subscribe
- There is no annual plan. Every ChatLLM price Abacus publishes is monthly. Claude Pro drops to $17/month if you pay annually; ChatLLM has no equivalent discount.
- There is no free tier. The $7 first month is the entry point. The only “free trial” wording on the site is an enterprise lead form.
- Some models are unmetered. Abacus says RouteLLM, GPT-5.4 Mini and Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite can be used “on an unlimited basis” — credits are for the expensive models and the agent.
How it compares to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity
| Product | Monthly price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| ChatLLM | $10 | $7 first month. No annual option published. |
| ChatGPT Plus | $20 | Billed monthly. |
| Claude Pro | $20 | $17/month equivalent if billed annually ($200 up front). |
| Google AI Pro | $19.99 | Formerly called Gemini Advanced. Google AI Plus is $4.99. |
| Perplexity Pro | $20 | Max tier is $200. |
| Poe | from $4.99 | Tier structure not verifiable — Poe blocks its pricing page to crawlers. |
On headline price nothing else comes close for the breadth on offer. The honest comparison, though, is not price against price. ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity meter you with vague-but-flat usage limits; ChatLLM meters you with credits. Which one works out cheaper depends entirely on how hard you use it — and ChatLLM makes that harder to predict, for the reason below.
What you actually get for $10
The models
As displayed on the ChatLLM homepage on 1 October 2026: GPT 6.1 Sol, GPT 6 Astra, Luna, GPT 5.6 Terra, Fable 5.1, Sonnet 5.5, Opus 5.5, Gemini 3.1 Pro, Gemini 3.8 Flash, Kimi K3, GLM 5.3, DeepSeek v4.1, Abacus Smaug and Grok-4.7, plus Qwen 3.8 Max and Flash Next. For images and video: GPT Image 2.5, Seedance 2.5, Kling 3.0, Seedream 2.0, Flux Ultra, and Abacus names Nano Banana Pro and Sora 2 on the pricing page.
Treat that as a snapshot, not a stable roster. Abacus’ own help documentation currently lists different model versions from its homepage, and at least one reviewer reports models disappearing from the picker. Check what is live before you subscribe for a specific model.
The tools bundled in
Included in the $10 subscription
- Abacus AI Agent (formerly DeepAgent) — generates and hosts apps, builds slides and videos, does research, automates with tasks and triggers, and connects to Gmail, Google Workspace and Jira.
- CodeLLM — an AI code editor with completion, chat, review and refactoring, including Abacus’ own Dracarys coding model and automatic routing to the best model for a task.
- Abacus AI Desktop — desktop assistant with a coding CLI and a Chrome extension for agentic browsing.
- Abacus AI Studio — images, video, music and voiceovers.
- SuperComputer (Pro tier) — an always-on Ubuntu VM with root access, SSH, databases and storage, metered at 1 credit per 5 minutes while running.
- Document and data analysis, web search, deep research, text-to-speech, and chat-history import from ChatGPT or Claude.
- iOS and Android apps with voice mode, plus Slack and Teams integration and a claimed 1-click connect to 100+ services.
On privacy, Abacus states plainly: “We don’t use your data for training”, data is encrypted at all times, and it claims SOC-2 Type-2 and HIPAA compliance, with admin controls over chat history. No data-retention period is published.
The problem with the credit system
Here is the part a shorter review would skip. Abacus tells you that Basic includes 20,000 credits a month. It does not publish what anything costs in credits. There is no rate card for models, no per-message figure, no per-image figure. The only credit price published anywhere is SuperComputer at 1 credit per 5 minutes.
That matters because an unpriced meter is impossible to budget against. And it lines up precisely with what the loudest user complaints are about.
What reviewers report — unverified user sentiment, not our testing
- Abacus.AI holds a 3.4 out of 5 on Trustpilot from about 200 reviews, but the distribution is bimodal: roughly 47% five-star and 38% one-star, with very little in between.
- The separate ChatLLM listing on Trustpilot sits at 1.9 out of 5 from 15 reviews, almost all one-star. Two listings this far apart is itself a reason not to quote either as “the” score.
- The recurring themes: credits draining faster than the in-app usage monitor suggested, “very opaque pricing”, being asked to pay again soon after subscribing, and slow support on refund requests.
We have not independently measured credit burn, so we are not presenting those reports as fact — but the absence of a published credit rate card is a fact, and it is the obvious root of the complaint. If you subscribe, watch your credit balance in the first week against what you actually did.
Worth stating as well: we could not find a single independent review of ChatLLM in reputable tech press. Everything that ranks for it is affiliate or partner content. That is unusual for a product this cheap and this widely marketed.
Who ChatLLM is for
Good fit
- You currently pay for two or more of ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, Perplexity Pro or Gemini — ChatLLM replaces several for less than one.
- You switch models often and resent paying four subscriptions to do it.
- You want an agent, a coding IDE and image/video generation without buying three more tools.
- You are a small team: per-seat at $10 with no minimum is hard to beat.
Poor fit
- You need predictable costs. Until Abacus publishes credit rates, you cannot forecast a heavy month.
- You want an annual discount. There is not one.
- You rely on one specific model version staying put — the roster visibly churns.
- You want to try before paying. There is no free tier.
If it fits, the first month is $7: start a ChatLLM subscription here. If you are not sure, subscribe for one month, do a normal week of work, and look at what the credit counter did before you commit beyond that.
Frequently asked questions
How much does ChatLLM cost?
$10 per user per month, with the first month at $7. A Pro tier is $20 per month total. Abacus publishes no annual billing option.
Is there a free version of ChatLLM?
No. Abacus publishes no free tier or free trial for ChatLLM; the $7 first month is the entry point. The only free-trial offer on the site is an enterprise lead form.
What are ChatLLM credits and how many do you get?
Credits are Abacus’ usage unit. Basic includes 20,000 a month and Pro 30,000, and unused purchased credits roll over. Abacus does not publish how many credits a given model, image or agent task consumes — the only published rate is SuperComputer at 1 credit per 5 minutes.
Which models does ChatLLM include?
As listed on 1 October 2026: GPT 6.1 Sol, GPT 6 Astra, Luna, GPT 5.6 Terra, Fable 5.1, Sonnet 5.5, Opus 5.5, Gemini 3.1 Pro and 3.8 Flash, Kimi K3, GLM 5.3, DeepSeek v4.1, Qwen 3.8, Abacus Smaug and Grok-4.7, plus image and video models. The list changes, so verify before subscribing for a specific model.
Is ChatLLM cheaper than ChatGPT Plus?
Yes. ChatLLM is $10 a month against $20 for ChatGPT Plus, and it includes models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI and others in the same subscription. The trade-off is that ChatLLM meters usage in credits whose rates are not published.
Does Abacus.AI train on your data?
Abacus states it does not use customer data to train models, that data is encrypted at all times, and that it holds SOC-2 Type-2 and HIPAA compliance. No data-retention period is published.
Who makes ChatLLM?
Abacus.AI, founded in 2019 (originally RealityEngines.AI) and headquartered in San Francisco. CEO and co-founder Bindu Reddy previously worked at AWS. The company raised a $50M Series C led by Tiger Global in October 2021.
What we could not verify
Open questions
- Credit cost per model, per image or per agent task — no rate card is published.
- Any file upload size cap, file count limit or context-window length.
- Any numeric rate limit. Abacus says only that you can send “1000s of messages” and that “large attachments will trigger usage limits”.
- The data-retention period, and whether the SOC-2 and HIPAA claims cover ChatLLM specifically or the Enterprise platform.
- Whether API access via RouteLLM is included in the $10 plan or billed separately, and at what rate.
- Whether the billing period on the $5,000 Enterprise starting price is monthly or annual.
If you use ChatLLM heavily and have watched your credit balance, tell us what burned through them. First-hand numbers are what this page is missing, and we will add them.
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