If your district runs on Google Workspace, turn on Gemini for Education first: it is already inside the admin console you own, it costs nothing extra, and it is the only one of the five that a district can switch on for students as well as staff. If you want the largest free general-purpose assistant with a student data agreement your state may already have signed, ChatGPT for Teachers is the stronger pick. Choose Claude for Teachers when the job is standards-linked lesson design and your district wants to hold the data agreement itself rather than have teachers sign up one by one. Microsoft districts already have Copilot Chat; Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) is the one to add for source-grounded planning whatever else you choose.
Why this decision landed on district desks this week
Two things happened at the end of August that turned a teacher-by-teacher question into a district one. On 26 August OpenAI said ChatGPT for Teachers now reaches more than 100 K-12 organisations across 30 states and moved its student data terms onto the Student Data Privacy Consortium's National Data Privacy Agreement, with signed General Offers in a set of states it lists, including Texas, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey and Washington, plus a separate California agreement (OpenAI, 26 August 2026). Two days later Anthropic opened Claude for Teachers to district-managed Enterprise deployments, free for a year to US K-12 systems that sign up by 30 June 2027 (Anthropic, 28 August 2026).
Then the regulators spoke. New York City placed a moratorium on student-facing generative AI from 2-K to 8th grade for the 2026-27 school year, while confirming that "teachers will continue to be permitted to use AI for instructional planning and operational tasks" (NYC Mayor's Office, 2 September 2026). The District of Columbia published a staff model policy the day before that puts lesson planning and communications in the green category, grading in the yellow, IEP eligibility in the red, and "recommends that LEA staff use only approved enterprise tools" (OSSE, 1 September 2026).
So the question for a superintendent, chief academic officer or director of technology is no longer whether teachers will use a general-purpose assistant: RAND found 53 per cent of English, maths and science teachers already did in 2024-25, while only 45 per cent of principals reported any policy on it (RAND, September 2025). The question is which enterprise platform the district approves, so that the tool teachers reach for is the one the district controls.
The free tier is not the product. The data agreement is the product.
How this comparison was built
The pool is the five general-purpose AI platforms listed in the directory's tutoring and personalised learning category that offer a no-cost tier to US K-12 staff: ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, Gemini Notebook and Microsoft Copilot. Each was checked this run against the vendor's own plan page, help centre or privacy documentation; every price, date and data claim below links to the page it came from, and all were checked on 7 September 2026.
The criteria were the ones a district signs on: who holds the data agreement, whether student work is used for training, what admin controls exist, whether students can be given accounts, what it costs when the free period ends, and what teachers can actually do with it on a Monday. No vendor pays for inclusion on this blog or in the directory.
I left out the teacher-workflow layer that sits on top of these models, MagicSchool, Brisk Teaching and Diffit, because they are different purchases, and Khanmigo, because it is a student-facing tutor rather than a staff platform. One observation from the directory data: four of the five platforms carry an independent 9ine security assessment, against 36 of the 126 tools listed overall, yet none of the five has FERPA, COPPA or data-hosting status recorded in the directory. The vendor pages below fill that gap.
ChatGPT for Teachers vs Claude for Teachers vs Gemini vs Copilot: the comparison
| Platform | Best use | Strengths | Limitations | Price / free tier (checked 7 Sep 2026) | Privacy considerations |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT for Teachers | Largest free general assistant for staff | Flagship model, file uploads, custom GPTs, shared projects, SSO and domain claiming; SDPC agreement in listed states | Staff only; no student accounts; pricing may change after June 2028 | Free through June 2028 for verified US K-12 staff (OpenAI) | Not used for training by default; district can claim domain; state SDPC General Offers |
| Claude for Teachers | Standards-linked lesson design, district-held DPA | Teaching skills library, standards for 50 states via Learning Commons, connectors to MagicSchool, Brisk, Diffit; Enterprise admin controls | 18+ and educators only; individual accounts limited to de-identified classroom data; one free year | Free; individuals and districts must sign up by 30 June 2027 for a full year (Anthropic) | Never trained on conversations; K-12 Data Processing Agreement held by the district |
| Gemini for Education | Google Workspace districts, staff and students | Already in the admin console; on/off per user; under-18 experience with extra guardrails; Gems, Deep Research, Canvas | Free tier has "limited access" to premium models; full Docs and Gmail integration is paid | Included in every Workspace for Education edition; Google AI Pro for Education $20 per user per month annual, $24 monthly, $15 with Education Plus volume discount (Google) | Not human reviewed or used to train; Google says it supports compliance with FERPA and COPPA |
| Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) | Source-grounded planning, PD and curriculum work | Answers only from uploaded sources, with citations; audio overviews; study guides; highest directory rating of the five | Not a general chat assistant; premium limits are part of the paid add-on | Included at no cost in Workspace for Education; higher limits with Google AI Pro for Education (Google) | Education accounts: uploads, queries and responses not reviewed by humans and not used to train (Google) |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat | Microsoft 365 districts | Inherits tenant security and compliance settings; GPT-5 powered chat; students 13+ can be enabled | Full Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word, Teams and Outlook is a paid add-on | Copilot Chat at no additional cost with A1, A3 or A5; Microsoft 365 Copilot $18 per user per month academic (Microsoft) | Data isolated in the tenant and never used to train foundation models; student access off by default |
The privacy column reports what each vendor states on its own pages. It is not an audit, and it is not a compliance verdict. The independent check in the directory is the 9ine security assessment, which four of these five hold; you can see which on the security assessments page.
ChatGPT for Teachers: the largest free footprint, with the agreement your state may already hold
ChatGPT for Teachers is the best fit for a district that wants one general-purpose assistant for every member of staff and does not want to negotiate a data agreement from scratch, because OpenAI has signed the Student Data Privacy Consortium's National Data Privacy Agreement as General Offers in a set of states (OpenAI).
What you get is a managed workspace. OpenAI's help centre lists file uploads, web search, voice, image generation, data analysis, custom GPTs, shared projects, and admin controls including SSO, role-based access and analytics, with GPT-5.1 Instant, Auto and Reasoning-Mini as the included models (OpenAI Help Center). Eligibility is anyone "currently employed by an accredited K-12 school or district in the United States", verified through SheerID, and district admins can claim their domain so that teachers who signed up alone are pulled into the district's workspace (OpenAI). Teachers in the directory community rate ChatGPT 4.35 from 23 reviews.
Watch out for: the plan is explicitly "not currently available for students", so any classroom use still needs a different product, and OpenAI says that after June 2028 it "may adjust pricing" (OpenAI Help Center). Our view is that the workspace is only as safe as the domain claim: a district that lets teachers keep individual accounts has not actually adopted the enterprise tool.
Pricing: free through June 2028 for verified US K-12 educators and staff (OpenAI plans page, checked 7 September 2026).
Safety: OpenAI states that "anything you share with ChatGPT for Teachers is not used to train our models by default" and describes "FERPA-aligned protections and a student data privacy agreement" (OpenAI Help Center). Whether that agreement covers your district depends on whether your state is on OpenAI's list of signed General Offers; if it is not, the district signs its own. The directory holds no FERPA, COPPA or hosting record for ChatGPT, so this line rests on the vendor's pages, and the district still has to decide whether a teacher may put identifiable student work into it at all.
Claude for Teachers: standards-linked planning with a district-held data agreement
Claude for Teachers is the best fit for a district whose priority is lesson and unit design against its own state standards, because Anthropic ships a teaching skills library built with Learning Commons that maps curricula to academic standards in all 50 states, and connectors to nine K-12 tools including MagicSchool, Brisk Teaching, Diffit and TeachFX (Anthropic, 14 July 2026).
The district version is an Enterprise plan with SSO, role-based access, domain capture that migrates existing verified teachers automatically, and adoption reporting across schools; usage limits match individual Claude for Teachers accounts and overage billing is off unless an administrator turns it on (Anthropic, 28 August 2026). The directory's teacher community rates Claude 4.57 from 21 reviews, and the directory records an independent 9ine security assessment.
Watch out for: it is for adults only. Anthropic sets the minimum age at 18 and says "Claude for Teachers is for educators only", and an individual teacher account is limited to de-identified classroom data; identifiable student records require the school or district offering (Anthropic). Ed Week reported in July that a former district technology leader criticised the individual sign-up route for bypassing district vetting (Education Week, 17 July 2026); the district plan launched six weeks later answers that, but only if the district claims its domain. The other critique in the same piece, that generic model output lacks deep pedagogical knowledge, applies to every platform on this page.
Pricing: free; individual educators who sign up by 30 June 2027 get a full year, and schools and districts that sign up by the same date get a full year of the Enterprise plan (Anthropic, checked 7 September 2026). Anthropic has not published what the district plan costs after that year.
Safety: Anthropic states "we never train our models on your Claude for Teacher conversations" and that student information is covered by its K-12 Data Processing Agreement with "FERPA-aligned commitments" (Anthropic). The agreement is held by the school or district on the Enterprise plan, which is the arrangement the US Department of Education's Privacy Technical Assistance Center describes when it says a provider must be "under the direct control of the school or district with regard to the use and maintenance of education records" to qualify as a school official (PTAC). No FERPA, COPPA or hosting status is recorded in the directory; check the DPA against your state law before staff upload anything with a name on it.
Gemini for Education: the only free platform here that reaches students too
Gemini for Education is the best fit for a district already on Google Workspace for Education, because it is included at no cost in every edition, is switched on or off per user from the same admin console the district already runs, and offers "a distinct product experience with extra guardrails" for users under 18 (Google for Education).
The free tier gives staff the standalone Gemini app, Gems (custom assistants), Deep Research and Audio Overviews with "limited access to our premium AI models", plus admin controls and reporting (Google for Education). Teachers rate it 4.59 in the directory from 41 reviews, with a 9ine assessment on record. Google says Gemini for Education and Gemini Notebook are available "for users of all ages", while the Workspace-integrated add-on is for users 18 and over (Google for Education).
Watch out for: "limited access" to premium models is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and the integration teachers most want, Gemini inside Docs, Gmail, Forms and Meet, sits in the paid add-on. Read this week's news before switching it on for students, too: NYC's moratorium reportedly covers Gemini on district Chromebooks for K-8 (Chalkbeat, 2 September 2026). "Can" is not "should"; our view is that the student toggle stays off until the board has decided.
Pricing: Gemini for Education, Gemini Notebook and Gemini in Classroom are included at no cost in Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals and above; Google AI Pro for Education is listed at $20 per user per month on a one-year commitment, $24 month to month, or $15 with the 25 per cent discount for Education Plus customers buying 50 to 999 licences (Google for Education, checked 7 September 2026).
Safety: Google states that data "is not human reviewed or used to train AI models" and that the service "supports compliance with" COPPA and FERPA (Google for Education). "Supports compliance" is the vendor's phrase, and it means the controls exist, not that your configuration is compliant; the district's Workspace agreement is the document that matters, and the under-13 question is decided by how the admin configures it, not by Google.
Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM): the one to add whichever assistant you pick
Gemini Notebook is the best fit for curriculum teams, coaches and anyone planning from documents rather than from a blank prompt, because it answers only from the sources you upload and cites them, which is the closest any of these five comes to keeping the thinking with the teacher; it also holds the highest teacher rating in the directory of the five, 4.84 from 90 reviews.
Upload the scope and sequence, the state standards PDF, last year's unit and the adopted textbook chapter, and it will build a study guide, a quiz, an audio overview or a lesson outline that stays inside those sources. That is a different job from a general chat assistant, which is why it belongs alongside, not instead of, whichever platform you choose above.
Watch out for: teachers who want to draft a parent email or a rubric from scratch will still reach for Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot. Directory records show no 9ine assessment for Gemini Notebook, the only one of the five without one, and the higher limits, including five times the notebook capacity, are part of the paid Google AI Pro for Education add-on (Google for Education).
Pricing: included at no cost with Google Workspace for Education; expanded limits with Google AI Pro for Education at the prices above (Google for Education, checked 7 September 2026).
Safety: on Workspace for Education accounts Google states that "your uploads, queries and the model's responses in Gemini Notebook will not be reviewed by human reviewers even when you provide thumbs up or down feedback, and will not be used to train AI models"; on personal Google accounts content is not used to train "unless you choose to provide feedback" (Google). That difference is the whole argument for using a district account rather than a personal one.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat: already switched on in Microsoft districts
Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is the best fit for a district on Microsoft 365 A1, A3 or A5, because it comes at no additional cost when staff sign in with their school account and inherits the security, compliance and identity policies the district has already set in the tenant (Microsoft Education).
Microsoft describes it as "secure AI chat powered by GPT-5", so a Microsoft district gets OpenAI's model family inside its own tenant boundary without a separate contract (Microsoft Education). Students aged 13 and over can be given Copilot Chat, but access is off by default and "administrators will need to take additional steps to grant access" (Microsoft Education Blog, May 2025). Teachers rate it 4.67 in the directory from 12 reviews, the smallest sample of the five, and it holds a 9ine assessment.
Watch out for: the version teachers see in adverts, Copilot drafting inside Word, summarising in Teams and triaging Outlook, is the paid Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, not the free chat. Chat alone lacks the custom-assistant and connector features that ChatGPT for Teachers and Claude for Teachers include free.
Pricing: Copilot Chat at no additional cost with Microsoft 365 A1, A3 or A5; Microsoft 365 Copilot is listed at $18 per user per month as an academic offering (Microsoft Education, checked 7 September 2026).
Safety: Microsoft states "your data is isolated within your Microsoft 365 tenant and never used to train foundation models" (Microsoft Education). The product page does not mention FERPA or COPPA by name, so the relevant document is the district's existing Microsoft 365 education agreement and its data protection addendum; the directory record is blank on all three, and the student toggle is a governance decision, not a default.
The other names people ask about
Khanmigo is a student-facing tutor, not a staff platform, and after this week's NYC moratorium it is a separate K-8 decision; see the Khanmigo page. MagicSchool, Brisk Teaching and Diffit are teacher-workflow tools that sit on top of these models, and Anthropic now lists all three as Claude for Teachers connectors (Anthropic); our MagicSchool alternatives piece covers that layer. Quizlet is a student study product and outside this comparison entirely.
How to choose: four questions for the district office
Ask these in order and the answer usually falls out by the third.
Which console do we already administer? A Google district has Gemini for Education and Gemini Notebook inside its console today; a Microsoft district has Copilot Chat. Start there, because the identity, SSO and data agreement already exist, and add a second platform only for a job the first cannot do.
Who will hold the data agreement? If teachers sign up individually, the district is relying on click-through terms. PTAC's guidance says "districts or schools should develop policies outlining when individual teachers may download and use Click-Wrap software" (PTAC), and Amelia Vance of the Public Interest Privacy Center told Ed Week that FERPA compliance responsibility lies with districts, not vendors (Education Week). Claim the domain on whichever platform you choose; both OpenAI and Anthropic now let you.
Do we need a student path this year? Only Gemini for Education (all ages, admin-configured) and Copilot Chat (13+, off by default) offer one; ChatGPT for Teachers and Claude for Teachers do not. If your board has followed New York's lead for K-8, the staff-only platforms lose nothing.
What does year three cost? ChatGPT for Teachers is free through June 2028 and Claude for Teachers for one year from sign-up; Google's add-on is $20 and Microsoft's $18 per user per month at list. Write the exit price into the adoption memo now, because a tool that 800 teachers rely on is not free to switch off.
The rule underneath all four is the one I give every leadership team: outsource the doing, not the thinking. A platform that drafts the newsletter, levels the text and builds the quiz from the district's own standards is doing. A platform that decides a grade, an IEP eligibility or a discipline outcome is thinking that belongs to a human, and DC's red and yellow categories now say so in policy (OSSE).
Is ChatGPT for Teachers really free, and for how long?
Yes: OpenAI's plan page says ChatGPT for Teachers is free through June 2028 for staff "currently employed by an accredited K-12 school or district in the United States", after which OpenAI "may adjust pricing" (OpenAI). Claude for Teachers is free for a full year to individuals and districts that sign up by 30 June 2027 (Anthropic). Neither offer is available outside the United States. Teachers in England, Australia or Canada get Gemini for Education and Copilot Chat through their Workspace or Microsoft 365 education licences instead, and the same district-versus-individual question applies under the UK GDPR or provincial privacy law.
What a district should do this week
Pick the platform that matches your console, claim the domain, and turn the student toggle off until the board has met. Then give one department one job for one month: the middle school science team builds every unit's pre-assessment from the adopted standards in Gemini Notebook or Claude for Teachers, and the director of curriculum compares the drafts with last year's. The measure is not minutes saved; it is whether the questions asked more of students than last year's did.
The bottom line
Gemini for Education for Google districts, Copilot Chat for Microsoft districts, ChatGPT for Teachers where the state has already signed the SDPC agreement and the district wants the biggest free footprint, Claude for Teachers where standards-linked design and a district-held DPA matter most, and Gemini Notebook alongside any of them. Compare the rest of the tutoring and personalised learning tools in the directory, or browse every listed tool. Whichever you choose, make sure the district, not the teacher, is the one who clicked "agree".
Dan Fitzpatrick is a Forbes contributor, three-time bestselling author and founder of The AI Educator, and has trained more than 150,000 educators across 30+ countries. Author page.
