§ 03 — Guides
What to know before you pay for one
3 guides, written to answer the questions people actually type rather than the ones we would like to answer. Where self-subscribing is the better move, they say so.
ChatGPT subscription guide
How Plus actually gets turned on from outside the US, what each route costs you in practice, and which failures are worth planning for.
Claude subscription guide
Pro on your own Anthropic account: what the sign-up actually gates on, and why this one is arranged by hand rather than automated.
Grok subscription guide
Two entry points that are not the same purchase, and what to check before paying for either.
Why these are questions and not an article
Because that is the shape of the thing people search for, and it is the shape answer engines can quote. An essay about subscription access gets read by nobody and cited by nothing; a page that answers “do you need my password?” in one paragraph gets both.
Everything here is written to be checkable. Where a figure would go stale — vendor pricing, plan names, regional availability — the guide tells you which page to open instead of repeating a number that was true once.
Last read through on 2026-09-05.
