Juggling our various subscriptions means it's easy to lose track of your outgoings every month, and when you're paying for Amazon Prime, Netflix, Spotify, and more at the same time, they can quickly add up. Paying more to get a 'better' version of something that was previously free is a major point of contention, with the likes of YouTube Premium and X Premium being divisive among users.
Still, the $13.99 a month not to get ads on YouTube is a far cry from ChatGPT's new Pro version which comes in at a jaw-dropping $200 a month.
Paying $2,400 a year for ChatGPT seems like an inordinate sum, especially when it's 10 times what you're currently paying for a subbed version of the chatbot. Soon after OpenAI released ChatGPT, it started charging for unlimited access and promised you'd get the best version of it.
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The current tier costs $20 a month and gives you access to the likes of the hyper-intelligent GPT-o1 AI model and creepily realistic 'Advanced Voice mode' that was introduced earlier in 2024.
Are there really going to be those willing to pay $200 a month for an even fancier version?
In a post introducing ChatGPT Pro, OpenAI has vowed to give its subscribers "scaled access to the best of OpenAI’s models and tools."
Giving you all the bells and whistles that the $20 version does, your extra $180 a month includes 'o1 pro mode'. This is billed as a fancier version of o1 that uses more to compute but will 'think harder' to reportedly give answers to even harder questions. If you fancy yourself as something of an Albert Einstein and want to test your theories on ChatGPT, spending $200 a month could be for you.
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OpenAI concludes: "In the future, we expect to add more powerful, compute-intensive productivity features to this plan."
Users with the existing subscription will now get access to a 'full' o1 model, which apparently makes mistakes 34% less and can answer your queries 50% faster. The blog shows benchmarks of o1 Pro compared to earlier models, proving how much better it is at 'competition math', 'competition code', and 'PhD-level science questions.'
In terms of the upper tier of ChatGPT Pro is aimed at, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman explained in an announcement broadcast: "Power users of ChatGPT, at this point, they really use it a lot, and they want more compute than $20 can buy."
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After the $20 ChatGPT launched in February 2023, this is the latest offering in terms of premium pricing.
OpenAI plans to add more 'compute-intensive productivity features', hoping that ChatGPT Pro will grow as a way "for researchers, engineers, and other individuals who use research-grade intelligence daily to accelerate their productivity and be at the cutting edge of advancements in AI.”
You're still warned that while ChatGPT Pro users will still get 'unlimited access' to o1, GPT-4o, and the Advanced Voice Mode feature, violating its terms of use like sharing an account between multiple users will get you banned.
If you've got the money and want to try ChatGPT Pro, OpenAi is offering to refund your $200 within the first two weeks if you aren't satisfied with the update.