Gemini, Gamma, Edpuzzle, Khanmigo, Perplexity, OpenAI Codex, Claude Code, Cursor and Base44 are not competing on the same track. Three lines separate them: whether the product treats you as a consumer, a developer or an institution; whether its terms let students in; and whether it bills per person or per school. Official September 2026 figures, plus the arithmetic for 100 staff.
Base44 is Wix's vibe-coding app builder — describe what you need and you get a web app with a database, login and hosting, with no code written. This guide covers the September 2026 plans and allowances (Free, Starter US$16/month, Builder US$40, Pro US$80, Elite US$160, all annual), why message credits and integration credits behave differently, the age-13 minimum, and the full life of a panel-level utility from idea to handover.
Claude Code comes with every paid Claude plan and not with Free. This guide sets out the September 2026 official prices (Pro US$20/month, Max from US$100, Team standard seats US$20–25 per user, Enterprise US$20 per seat plus usage), what it means that the five-hour rolling window is shared with your web chats, why the 18-and-over policy closes the student side completely, and a full walkthrough turning a timetable export into 60 individual staff timetables.
Cursor is Anysphere's AI code editor. As of September 2026 the plans are Hobby free, Pro US$20/month, Pro+ US$60, Ultra US$200, Teams US$40/user and Teams Premium US$120/user. This guide covers the two usage pools and what Composer 2.5 really costs, the Cursor Token Rate surcharge on Teams, what the 18-and-over terms mean for student accounts, and a full walkthrough of using it to teach debugging on the projector.
Edpuzzle is free for teachers, but the free Basic plan stores only 20 activities. This guide covers where to place checkpoints, what to check after auto-generated questions and Autograde, the Supported Assignments allowance trap, and the real cost structure behind Pro Teacher and Pro School, plus parental consent duties and the missing Traditional Chinese interface.
Gamma meters AI usage in credits, a free account gets 400 of them once at sign-up with no monthly refresh, and the terms of use require members to be at least 16. This guide walks through a controlled way to build a Secondary 3 subject-selection evening deck, works out where credits actually go, looks honestly at per-seat billing across 100 staff, and marks the place Gamma belongs in a school.
Gemini for Education is included at no extra cost in every Google Workspace for Education edition, but the Gemini sidebar inside Docs and Gmail needs the Google AI Pro for Education add-on at US$20 per user per month, restricted to users aged 18 and over. This guide separates the three layers, shows a controllable way to build differentiated worksheets, prices 100 licences honestly, and sets out what oversight and Traditional Chinese support really amount to.
Khan Academy's Khanmigo for Teachers is free to educators in more than 180 countries and territories and Hong Kong qualifies, but the paid student tutor at US$4 a month or US$44 a year is officially United States only. This guide separates the two product lines, states what Hong Kong can actually use, and shows how to land Socratic hints in the classroom.
Codex is OpenAI's agentic coding product — terminal CLI, IDE extension, cloud tasks and an iOS app — included with ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Edu and Enterprise. This guide covers September 2026 official prices, the credit rate card, GPT-5.6 versus GPT-6 Astra usage, why the free US K-12 teacher plan does not reach Hong Kong, and a full CLI walkthrough for a teacher-built classroom utility.
Every Perplexity answer carries its sources, which makes it strong for teaching verification. The Comet browser is free, Pro is US$20 a month or US$17 a month billed annually, and Enterprise Pro is US$40 per seat per month. This guide runs a Hong Kong Citizenship and Social Development project, supplies a pupil citation-checking sheet, and flags the age-13 clause and the absence of teacher monitoring.
