OpenAI dots vs Usenti: The Always-On Agent and the European Alternative

dots launch date, at OpenAI DevDay

Sep 29

apps a dot can reach through plugins

4,000+

per Business Premium seat a month, billed annually ($125 monthly)

$100

regions where dots on ChatGPT Pro is not offered: EEA, Switzerland, UK

3

per Usenti user a month, after a $1, 14-day trial

$45

Usenti's jurisdiction, supervised by Datatilsynet

DK

What OpenAI dots actually is

OpenAI introduced dots at DevDay in San Francisco on September 29, 2026. A dot is an agent that keeps going when you close the chat. Your first one is your primary dot, and you can give it a name. It runs on OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra model and lives inside ChatGPT on the web, in the desktop apps and on mobile, where you can also call it by voice. You can reach it in Slack and Microsoft Teams too, and it carries context between those places.

Each dot gets its own cloud computer and browser. You can watch it work at any time, and it can use your own laptop only if you switch that on. Through OpenAI's plugin ecosystem a dot can connect to more than 4,000 apps, and it can run several projects at once, day and night.

When nothing is assigned, a dot does what OpenAI calls proactive research. It scans your connected apps for things worth raising, using read-only tools only. OpenAI shared one early tester's story: his dot spotted an unsent freelance invoice, drafted it from an email thread, and sent it as a PDF once he approved it.

Where dots is genuinely strong

Judging dots on privacy alone would be unfair. OpenAI has put more visible safety work into it than most agent makers have.

• Rules you set. Under Custom rules, each kind of action gets one of four behaviours: act without asking, act if pre-approved, ask first, or hand it back to you. Pre-approved means you asked for that exact action in your prompt.
• A second check. An auto-review step checks any action that could affect your accounts or share information against your rules, and an Activity View shows what the dot is doing.
• Hard limits. Some tasks, such as changing a password, always come back to you, whatever your rules say.
• Business plumbing. ChatGPT Business includes SAML SSO, MFA, an admin console and central billing, and OpenAI lists SOC 2 Type 2 for the plan. OpenAI says it does not train on Business, Enterprise or Edu workspace data by default.
• A contract for Europe. OpenAI's data processing addendum names OpenAI Ireland as the contracting party for customers in the EEA and Switzerland, with transfers covered by the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.

For a company already on ChatGPT, that is a credible package. The open questions are price and Europe.

dots pricing, as of October 2026

OpenAI doesn't sell dots on its own. Your first dot comes bundled with one of two things.

• ChatGPT Pro, for individuals, in tiers from $100 to $500 a month.
• A ChatGPT Business Premium seat, for teams, at $100 per user per month billed annually or $125 billed monthly. Standard seats ($20 or $25) don't include a dot, and a Business workspace needs at least two seats. The smallest setup with a dot is one Premium seat plus one Standard seat.

Enterprise, Edu and Healthcare workspaces can try dots as a beta that an admin must switch on. For the first month after launch, OpenAI says dots comes with extended usage limits. OpenAI says extra dots, more speed and more monthly capacity will follow, but it hasn't published prices for any of them.

Usenti's pricing is simpler. Every account starts with a 14-day trial for a one-time $1, then costs $45 per user per month. There is no free plan, and larger rollouts can get Enterprise pricing on request.

For a ten-person team where everyone wants an assistant, that comes to about $1,000 a month for dots on annual Business Premium billing, or $1,250 on monthly billing, against $450 a month for Usenti. The products do different jobs, so it isn't like-for-like, but it shows what each dots seat has to earn.

Can you use dots in Europe?

OpenAI's help centre says dots on Pro is rolling out "in markets excluding the European Economic Area, Switzerland, and the UK." Business Premium, by contrast, is offered "across all supported ChatGPT regions." A freelancer in Copenhagen can't buy dots on a personal plan; a company in the same street can buy Business Premium seats.

OpenAI hasn't said why Pro is excluded or when that will change. European press has pointed to the GDPR, the EU AI Act and the Digital Services Act as likely reasons, but OpenAI hasn't confirmed any of them. Two details matter more to a European business than the launch map does.

Where the data lives

OpenAI offers data residency in Europe for ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu. Its business pricing page marks data residency as not included on the Business plan, which is the plan that carries Business Premium seats.

What the agent remembers

A dot draws on ChatGPT memory and can save its own notes, including from connected apps. OpenAI's help centre says that disconnecting an app doesn't delete what the dot already got from it. The way to wipe a dot's memories is Reset, which deletes the dot, its conversations, its saved memories and its scheduled tasks together. One independent review notes there is no way to edit or delete single memories. If a client asks you to erase what your systems hold about them, that is a blunt tool.

Where Usenti is different

Usenti doesn't try to be a general agent for 4,000 apps. It is an AI workspace for the part of the week where most office hours go: email, meetings, the calendar and the to-dos that come out of them. Its assistant, Donna, sits on top of all four.

A Danish company, answerable to a Danish regulator

Usenti is incorporated under Danish jurisdiction, and its lead supervisory authority is Datatilsynet, the Danish Data Protection Agency. Europe is Usenti's home market, not a region waiting for a rollout.

EU hosting without an Enterprise contract

Usenti's database is hosted in the EU region, and the meeting notetaker records in Frankfurt by default. Where a vendor operates in the US, the transfer rests on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses inside that vendor's processing agreement. The sub-processor list is published, with each vendor's role and location.

No training on your content, and no setting to check

Email, chat messages and meeting transcripts go to an AI model only to produce a result for you. They aren't used to train, tune or evaluate models, by Usenti or by its providers. With dots, training is off by default for business workspaces and is a toggle on personal plans. With Usenti, it isn't a toggle at all.

One fixed rule for anything you can't undo

dots lets you decide, action by action, when it may act without asking. Usenti makes one rule non-negotiable. Reversible actions, such as creating or moving a to-do, run at once and come back with an Undo. Anything that can't be taken back, such as sending an email, cancelling a meeting with attendees, or deleting something, appears on a card with the real recipient and the actual words. It runs only when a person presses the button. Email bodies are treated as data, never as instructions, so a crafted email can at worst produce a card you decline.

Built around the inbox, the meeting and the calendar

A dot reaches your email through a connector. Usenti is the inbox. It connects Gmail and Google Workspace, Outlook and Microsoft 365, Zoho Mail, AWS WorkMail and any IMAP or SMTP server, plus Slack and Microsoft Teams, in one view. It sorts mail in real time into lanes such as To Respond, Awaiting Reply and Important, and drafts replies in your tone, in the language the message arrived in. The notetaker joins Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Slack huddles, posts a notice in the meeting chat saying whose notetaker it is, and writes up decisions and action items. One calendar covers Google, Outlook and Apple, and Donna gives you a morning brief across all of it, in chat or by voice.

A per-user price that finance can plan for

At $45 per user per month, Usenti costs less than half of a Business Premium seat on annual billing. AI use is metered against a per-plan allowance rather than an open-ended meter, so a busy month doesn't become a surprise invoice.

OpenAI dots vs Usenti, at a glance

Each row reflects what OpenAI and Usenti have published, or what independent coverage has reported, as of October 20, 2026. dots is three weeks old and changing fast, so a dash can mean "not documented" rather than "impossible."

✓ = confirmed / built in  ·  ~ = partial, conditional or approached differently  ·  – = not offered or not publicly documented. dots rows reflect OpenAI's own pages and the coverage cited below; Usenti rows reflect Usenti's published policies and live product.

Who should choose which

Choose dots if your company already standardises on ChatGPT, you want one agent that works across thousands of apps and its own browser, your procurement needs SAML SSO or a SOC 2 report from the vendor today, and $100 to $125 per seat fits the budget.

Choose Usenti if you're in the EU, EEA, Switzerland or the UK, or you handle the personal data of people who are. It fits when most of your working day is email, meetings and the calendar, and when you want EU hosting and a no-training guarantee without negotiating an Enterprise contract. It also fits if you want a person to sign off every send, cancellation and delete.

Comparing more than one agent? See the European alternative to Muse, Instinct, Grok Bot and dots, or, if you're rolling an assistant out to a whole team, Usenti as the business version of the 2026 personal agents. For email-first tools only, read the best AI email assistants in 2026, ranked.

Frequently asked questions