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ChatGPT’s price varies depending on which of the four tiers you choose – ChatGPT free, ChatGPT Plus, ChatGPT Team, or ChatGPT Enterprise. As a result, queries such as “How much is GPT-4” have been persistent since OpenAI’s ChatGPT was released in November 2022. With multiple tiers to choose from, we explain what the free version and paid plans are, and why having a paid membership could be the right choice for you. To ensure what we say is accurate, we have downloaded and reviewed ChatGPT extensively. We’ve also created a detailed guide on the free version of ChatGPT, and why it could be good for those looking to get started with the product.
Quick answer
ChatGPT offers a tiered pricing approach, with the second tier (ChatGPT Plus), intended for improved single user use, costing $20 per month. With this subscription you’ll benefit from features such as, faster response speeds, early access to new features, access to the GPT-4 model, and more.
ChatGPT pricing tiers
OpenAI takes a tiered approach to pricing. All users will have access to ChatGPT’s free version. This is accessible via the official OpenAI website on desktop and mobile browsers, as well as mobile apps for iOS and Android. There are also three paid tiers, each with different pricing plans. These are called:
- ChatGPT Plus – $20 per month
- ChatGPT Team – minimum cost $50 per month
- ChatGPT Enterprise – dependent on the number of employees
Read on to see what features you’ll receive with each version.
ChatGPT’s free version
OpenAI’s ChatGPT is free to use, and anyone can do so. This free version of ChatGPT has more limitations than the paid subscriptions, which is to be expected. ChatGPT Free uses an efficient, older AI model called GPT-3.5 (or GPT 3.5). All paid subscriptions to ChatGPT enable the GPT-4 (or GPT 4) foundational model, as well as GPT-4V and GPT-4 Turbo variants.
While the company works to stabilize compute requirements with daily fluctuations of users, there will be outages. Even if there isn’t an outage, users have reported that response times from ChatGPT can sometimes be slow – presumably if it is dealing with a large number of requests. One of the key differences between the free version and the paid versions is that the latter entitles users to priority processing speeds and GPT resources. In other words, paid users get faster responses.
Unfortunately, not everyone has free access to the service. Several countries, including China, Russia, and Cuba, have implemented bans on the AI chatbot. In these cases, you might consider a ChatGPT alternative like Beta Character AI. Even in countries where ChatGPT is not banned, it can go down. For more options, make sure to check out our best ChatGPT alternatives.
ChatGPT Plus price
ChatGPT’s paid subscription “ChatGPT Plus” costs $20 per month. It is now available in almost all global territories (see above) and includes the following benefits:
- General access to ChatGPT, even during peak times
- Faster response times
- Priority access to new features and improvements
Zhahid Khawaja, a developer, initially sparked rumors about the paid plan when he tweeted a video of his access to the plan on January 21st, 2023. On February 1st, 2023, OpenAI announced ChatGPT Plus, dispelling the rumors. As explained in further detail on the AI chatbot page, a ChatGPT Plus subscription plan enables a number of things.
Benefits of ChatGPT Plus
Availability even during peak times
ChatGPT Plus provides availability even during peak times, this avoids the notification seen by users attempting access during times of heavy load: “ChatGPT is at capacity right now. Get notified when we’re back”. This is proof of the popularity of ChatGPT, which struggles with success at peak times. Constant access, even at peak times when active users are higher, is great for those who are trying to hit a deadline and need to use the AI chatbot.
Faster response speed
Another benefit to be expected when paying for access to OpenAI’s chat model is a faster response time. This means faster response times for queries and prompts and subsequently more productivity in use.
Access to the GPT-4 model
OpenAI has since updated its AI model to the next generation called GPT-4. With this new update, you will now have access to their image-to-text model. This opens up new capabilities to users such as recipe suggestions, image descriptions, and more accurate responses. GPT-4 is also objectively more powerful than GPT-3.5 and provides more accurate and relevant answers.
ChatGPT plugins price
ChatGPT plugins are free of charge. You can download unlimited plugins, install them, and use them without paying for the plugin itself. However, free users don’t have access to ChatGPT’s third-party plugins. These add-ons grant extremely useful integrations into a suite of popular software. You can now access data and features from third-party suppliers like Expedia, OpenTable, and more. All of these software and more can be operated by artificial intelligence. This makes ChatGPT more useful and powerful than the free version. The software you can integrate with ChatGPT is not necessarily free of charge.
Early access to new features
We have already seen evidence of this. With ChatGPT Plus, users have priority access to new features developed by OpenAI’s engineers. In the past, this has included access to newer versions of ChatGPT and exclusive features such as third-party plugins.
ChatGPT Team Price
The price of ChatGPT Team is $25/month/user, with a minimum user requirement of 2. This means that the minimum cost of a ChatGPT Team subscription is $50/month, with an additional cost of $25 per month for each additional user. A ChatGPT Teams subscription provides a team management dashboard for managers to oversee the use of AI by other employees.
ChatGPT Team provides all the features of the Plus model, in addition to some extra functions designed to aid a working environment. With a team membership users are provided a higher message cap, which means you’re able to prompt the chatbot more frequently over a specified time period. Additionally, you can generate and share GPTs in your workspace, with full reassurance of your business’s data being private and secure.
ChatGPT Enterprise price
ChatGPT Enterprise costs a scalable amount based on how many employees you’re paying for. The price per head is not revealed upfront, and instead, inquiries must go through a human sales representative. This is different from the self-serve upgrade option of ChatGPT Plus or ChatGPT Team.
Your ChatGPT Enterprise price will vary based on your number of employees. OpenAI caters to this tier for company sizes of 1-50, 51-150, 151-1,000, 1,001-10,000, and lastly 10,000+ (the largest companies in the world). As a result of upgrading your business to ChatGPT Enterprise, you will enjoy “enterprise-grade security and privacy, unlimited higher-speed GPT-4 access, longer context windows for processing longer inputs, advanced data analysis capabilities, and customization options”. In order to gain access to a ChatGPT enterprise subscription, you are required to talk to a sales representative as opposed to the self-serve upgrade system of other models.
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How much is GPT-4?
Access to GPT-4 is free, via OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Microsoft’s Bing Chat. There is a caveat, however. The former uses GPT 3.5 unless you upgrade to Chat GPT Plus (or another paid subscription tier), which uses GPT 4 by default. People asking this question usually ask “How much is ChatGPT?” instead. GPT 4 is an LLM (Large Language Model), and you won’t actually be using the AI model directly. Other examples of LLM are Microsoft’s Bing Chat and Google Bard. Chat GPT is a free web service (with a paid subscription available) that uses GPT 4 to power its AI-generated responses. Chat GPT and GPT 4 are different things.
Is ChatGPT 4 worth it?
In summary, yes, a paid subscription to ChatGPT 4 is worth it to millions of users worldwide. The higher quality of inference and answers you’ll get alone are worth it if you intend to use the copy directly. It can also be worth it for the greatest variety of plugins available for any AI chatbot. The custom GPTs platform is more mature and well-polished than any alternative, allowing for useful custom functionality.
In addition, the computer vision capabilities of GPT-4V also make ChatGPT 4 worth it. This allows OpenAI’s chatbot to read and understand images, as well as produce its own with DALL-E 3 — which comes included in the subscription. As other AIU image generators typically charge $10/month+, you could consider this a very objective saving, if you ever considered paying for a chatbot and AI art generator separately.
Will OpenAI add new payment options to ChatGPT?
Looking towards the future, OpenAI says it “plan[s] to refine and expand this offering based on your feedback and needs. We’ll also soon be launching the ChatGPT API waitlist, and we are actively exploring options for lower-cost plans, business plans, and data packs for more availability.” These “lower-cost” plans are unnamed and unreleased.
As popular and innovative as ChatGPT is, price is always a consideration, and, with the growing number of ChatGPT alternatives, OpenAI needs to balance costs and availability with discoverability and access for those keen to test. User feedback will also be crucial in ensuring that new versions of the AI chatbot are actually worth it for a variety of use cases, especially with the competition ramping up as of late. We’ll keep an eye on the ChatGPT price going forward, and a lot of other interesting areas being opened up in the AI-powered space.
Summary
Using ChatGPT with GPT-3.5 is free. ChatGPT with GPT-4 is $20/month. Whether the upgrade in power and service provisions is worth it is up to you. Although, considering the number of additional features you get with the Plus subscription, the upgrade The paid plan came as no surprise. Referring to a purported six-to-seven figure daily run rate, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted on December 5th:
“We will have to monetize it somehow at some point; the compute costs are eye-watering”
OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman
That’s proven to be true as the professional and plus plans roll out. It’s also not impossible that further pricing adjustments might occur in the future, given the success of ChatGPT Plus. The paid version of ChatGPT undoubtedly provides fans with more advanced capabilities. Making it worth the upgrade for regular users. For those looking to just give ChatGPT a try, we strongly recommend opting for the free version. At least this way you don’t have to pay anything and can familiarise yourself with the tools and ways of working.
