Beautiful.ai vs Gamma: Locked Team Slides or Web-Ready Decks

The short answer: at $40 a seat a month on annual billing, the two team plans cost the same per person, so price does not settle this pair; what happens to the deck after you send it does (Gamma Business article, Beautiful.ai pricing, both checked on 26 October 2026). Choose Gamma if your job is decks that also become web pages, documents or social posts, and an agent or script that makes them. Choose Beautiful.ai if your job is one approved slide deck that a sales or account team reuses every week without moving the furniture.

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Three questions before either trial:

1. What a deck costs in credits. Gamma meters AI; Beautiful.ai does not, since every seat includes unlimited AI content generation (Beautiful.ai pricing). For example, at Gamma's developer rates of 1 to 3 credits per card and 2 to 15 per standard image (access and pricing), a 12-card deck with 6 standard images costs at most 12 x 3 + 6 x 15 = 126 credits. Plus includes 1,000 credits a month, so 7 decks at that ceiling, and unused plan credits roll over up to twice the plan size (credits article).
2. The PowerPoint file you already have. Gamma 5 imports a .pptx of up to 200 MB and keeps its original layouts editable (import article). Beautiful.ai imports it too, but the slides arrive as Classic Slides that do not adapt, per its template guide, so the slides your team edits most need rebuilding there.
3. The engagement number you will read. Pick one before sending: the share of viewers who reach the pricing slide, say. Gamma shows views and time per slide in full on Pro and above (analytics article); Beautiful.ai lists viewer and slide analytics on Team (pricing).

Feature by feature, with the page behind each row

Three differences that decide it

A deck, or a page that happens to have slides

Gamma treats a presentation as one of four outputs and lets a gamma go out as a site on your own domain. A proposal that a buyer reads on a phone, scrolls and forwards fits that shape. Beautiful.ai is built for the slide that gets projected or shared as a deck link, and its Smart Slides keep spacing and alignment correct as the words change (homepage).

Where the lock lives

Both let an owner protect slides, but at different moments. Gamma's template instructions hold a lock on the cover, a legal line or the pricing table, and its generator leaves those slides untouched when it builds from the template (template guide). Beautiful.ai locks the slide inside the team library, so the lock holds while people edit by hand (pricing). If most decks are generated, Gamma's lock is the one that matters; if most are edited, Beautiful.ai's.

Paying for credits or for seats

On Gamma, a heavy generation month draws down credits, and the plan size caps the rollover. On Beautiful.ai, a seat is a seat however much AI it uses. A team that redrafts constantly pays more predictably on Beautiful.ai; a team that generates in bursts can bank credits on Gamma.

The prices that could be read

Checked on 26 October 2026. Gamma's pricing page returned a bot check to every automated reader that day, so the Plus and Pro prices are not on this page. Its help centre lists the plans as Free, Plus, Pro, Ultra and Business, with 1,000, 4,000 and 20,000 monthly credits on Plus, Pro and Ultra, and says annual plans carry a 28% discount on the monthly rate (plans article); Business is $40 per member a month billed annually. Beautiful.ai's pricing page shows Pro at $14.50 a month billed annually or $45 billed monthly, and Team at $40 billed annually or $50 billed monthly.

One brief, two template engines

Both vendors document an agent that builds from an approved template. In Gamma, the generate_from_template MCP tool takes a workspace template and a brief, starts a generation, and returns the new gamma's link when polling reports it complete; generations and edits spend credits, while reads and exports do not (template guide). Put "follow this template's structure and style exactly" in the prompt, as the guide advises, and lock the pricing slide in the template itself. In Beautiful.ai, create_presentation_from_template copies the approved template into the workspace for someone to fill (MCP article).

The human check is the same in both. The template's owner opens the generated deck, compares every figure with the brief, and corrects it in the generated copy, never in the template. Only then does a link go to a client. If the brief asks the agent to state results or compare competitors, run the figure-by-figure review in Draft a Sales Deck With AI, Then Source Every Number first.

The invite button is a billing event

Gamma's business article says each additional member who accepts an invite to the workspace generates a further bill, and every member sits on the same plan (Gamma Business). Inviting the finance lead in to "have a look" is therefore the step that adds a seat. Decide who edits before anyone is invited; everyone else can read the link a client would get.

Test free, then decide

Gamma's Free plan costs nothing and needs no card: 400 credits on sign-up that do not refresh, and up to 10 slides per prompt (credits article, plans article). Run your real brief there first. Beautiful.ai's 14-day trial needs a card on day one and turns into a paid Pro subscription when it ends (trial article), so start it only on the day you will build the team template.

• Choose Gamma if your job is turning one brief into decks, pages and posts, publishing some of them on your own domain, or letting a script or agent produce them.
• Choose Beautiful.ai if your job is a library of approved slides that several people reuse by hand, with AI that never runs out mid-month.

The Beautiful.ai glossary entry covers its plans and limits; Beautiful.ai vs Canva weighs it against a general design suite.

FAQ

Why are Gamma's Plus and Pro prices missing here?

Gamma's pricing page served a bot check on 26 October 2026, and the help centre states only the Business price, $40 per member a month billed annually (Gamma Business). Read the pricing page in a browser before you buy.

Can a Beautiful.ai deck move into Gamma?

Yes, through PowerPoint. Beautiful.ai includes PowerPoint export in every seat (pricing), and Gamma 5 imports a .pptx and keeps its layouts (import article).

Can I pay Gamma for one month only?

Yes. Plus and Pro can be paid monthly and cancelled before the next billing date, and access runs to the end of the month already paid (one-month article).