People are starting to think ChatGPT is too cheap and that might be a
problem for OpenAI

Date:
Tue, 16 Jun 2026 15:50:04 +0000

Description:
ChatGPT's expanding capabilities and unchanged subscription price have
sparked a debate over whether it's a good deal or headed for a cliff

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Technology companies usually spend a lot of time trying to persuade customers that a subscription is worth the money. ChatGPT has stumbled into a very different problem. A growing number of users are looking at the price and wondering whether they're
somehow getting away with something.

The question has become harder to dismiss as ChatGPT has evolved. The $20-a-month ChatGPT Plus and $200-a-month ChatGPT Pro subscription prices haven't changed since OpenAI announced them. Yet ChatGPT is much more powerful, with many more features, even if it still has plenty of built-in wrinkles and limits. Nonetheless, questioning its value has become more
common as the chatbot has expanded from being an impressive novelty into something people use every day. That combination of expanding capabilities
and stable pricing has led many users to ask whether ChatGPT costs less than it should. It's been an issue from the beginning, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman complaining that ChatGPT Pro loses money for the company due to its
popularity a year and a half ago: Latest Videos From Watch full video here: insane thing: we are currently losing money on openai pro
subscriptions!people use it much more than we expected. January 6, 2025 It isn't unusual for a product to cost more to provide than customers realize. What's unusual is when customers start noticing the gap themselves.

AI might be especially vulnerable to that dynamic as AI systems require enormous computing resources. Every response is powered by vast networks of specialized hardware operating in data centers that consume significant amounts of electricity. Those costs add up quickly, particularly when
millions of people use the service every day. You may like ChatGPTs backup model just got smarter as OpenAI adds a new Pro option 'We love you, and we want you to win' OpenAI releases GPT-5.5 for ChatGPT Google just undercut OpenAI with a $4.99 Gemini plan heres what you get

Some estimates indicate that power users could theoretically consume
thousands of dollars' worth of compute resources a month, while paying only a fraction of that amount in subscription fees. Meanwhile, AI companies
continue investing enormous sums in data centers, hardware, and electricity. Short-term splurge Part of the reason the debate has gained traction is that AI is not cheap to run. Every response generated by ChatGPT relies on huge amounts of computing power, specialized hardware, and data center infrastructure. Those systems consume enormous quantities of electricity, and the bills only grow larger as usage increases. Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.

AI models generate ongoing expenses every time someone submits a prompt. Millions of users asking questions each day creates a very different economic equation than most subscription services have to manage.

Heavy ChatGPT users could therefore eat up far more computing resources than they are paying for at market price. At the same time, AI companies continue pouring billions of dollars into new data centers, cutting-edge hardware, and future model development. That reality has led some users to believe today's prices are less about profitability and more about securing market share
while the AI industry is still taking shape.

"All investment and business strategies are still operating on the "old
rules" which have yet to be replaced because AI has yet to completely up end the global order. They all know we're hurtling towards a cliff, but the off ramp isn't visible yet, and they all assume it will magically appear before they run out of road," one Reddit user speculated . "The only logical way to "win the game" then is to keep speeding along so that you're the first one onto the off ramp. And nobody wants to be left behind so..." What to read
next ChatGPTs adult mode being shelved reveals a much bigger AI problem 'We are growing revenue four times faster than the companies who defined the Internet and mobile eras': OpenAI says it's making $2 billion a month mostly from enterprise users ChatGPT can be tricky about what model it uses Underpriced AI ChatGPT occupies a rare position in the technology industry, seeming like a good bargain amid a growing chorus of complaints that technology and related services are actually getting worse every year. Many ChatGPT users genuinely feel they are getting more value from the service today than they did a year ago, despite paying the same monthly fee. And some think the question of underpricing ignores the bigger picture of how AI
models are produced.

"People calculate their usage using public API prices and assume Anthropic or OpenAI lost that amount on them. But API pricing is not the companys actual internal cost. It already includes profit margin, and we have no idea what their real cost is after caching, batching and infrastructure optimizations," another Reddit user pointed out . "I also believe the released models themselves are profitable. The companies still report losses because they are spending billions on training the next models, buying hardware and expanding infrastructure. So while GPT-5.4 is generating profit, they may be spending all of that money and more on GPT-5.5.

For most people, the argument that ChatGPT is underpriced is actually pretty simple. They are not studying OpenAI's balance sheet or calculating data center costs. They are looking at their own habits and realizing they use the chatbot far more often than they ever expected.

That helps explain why the conversation keeps coming up. People complain all the time when a product gets more expensive. They almost never complain that something feels too cheap. Whether ChatGPT is actually underpriced is a question OpenAI will have to answer eventually. For now, many users seem to have reached their own conclusion. They are paying the same price they paid months or even years ago, but they feel like they are getting a lot more in return. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. The best business laptops for all budgets Our top picks, based on real-world testing and comparisons

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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/ai-platforms-assistants/people-are-starting-to-think -chatgpt-is-too-cheap-and-that-might-be-a-problem-for-openai


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