OpenAI Briefly Revealed Pricing for ChatGPT Pro and Then Removed It
Would you pay $42 for guaranteed access to ChatGPT?
Twitter and the OpenAI Discord server are all abuzz with what appears to be an inadvertent early reveal of the new ChatGPT Pro program. However, it appears that the option to upgrade to the professional plan was only available for a couple of hours before being removed. However, at least one Discord user claimed they signed up, and $42 was charged to their credit card.
The way to access this option was in the lower left of the side panel, so that is where to look for it when the program finally launches.
This was not just one Twitter post. There were many that showed screenshots of the offer on desktop and mobile.
The expectation was that this is a beta program and would not be immediately available to everyone. There was an application process last week. That form is still available if you still want to sign up for consideration for the ChatGPT Pro beta. Of course, now that you know it is $42, you may be less inclined.
The fact that many people cannot see the offer would not be surprising. However, the indication that it was available and then removed suggests an early release might have been a mistake. They may have brought it live, and everyone could see it when they only intended to make it available to accounts they had approved through the application process.
Granted, it may be live again by the time you read this. Regardless, there are some interesting ideas to consider surrounding ChatGPT Pro and where it fits in the larger generative AI application ecosystem.
What to Expect from ChatGPT Pro
The features of ChatGPT Pro were listed as:
Available when demand is high
Faster response speed
Priority access to new features
Availability is an important issue. ChatGPT is so popular that it is often unavailable due to high usage. Granted, it doesn’t exactly say you will always have access. It may be that when demand is high, you get into the queue faster. But it is fair to say this is an important feature that some people will definitely pay for.
The faster response speed is interesting. There is some latency today with ChatGPT response, which can vary depending on the prompt and the load on the server from other simultaneous users. Getting priority access to both availability that bypasses high demand and gets your response in queue faster will be valuable for anyone using ChatGPT for business activities and others that just want convenience.
Priority access to new features is likely the most valuable of these benefits. This goes into the area of uncertainty, but I assume that new features are planned, and many will be important upgrades to ChatGPT. Even if it appears that $42 per month is high today, that may seem inexpensive, depending on what features are introduced.
However, there are other things you should be aware of if you do jump on the ChatGPT Pro bandwagon when it does formally launch. We have only the word of one self-proclaimed user that immediately signed up for ChatGPT Pro, so you might also take this with a grain of salt. However, I saw other comments last week that suggest even Pro users might be limited in how much they can use the service.
The OpenAI Discord user beama said that the free version generally cuts off users after somewhere between 20-25 prompts in an hour. “With Pro version it is roughly 40-50 prompts per hour.” The user also claimed to have already reached that limit even after the Pro sign-up.
The takeaway here is that ChatGPT Pro is unlikely to offer unlimited use. The number of prompts is just one consideration. The length of the prompts or the length of the output could have other limits. This might be particularly important if you want to use ChatGPT for the summarization of long passages of text or hope to get long outputs from the system.
What Would You Pay for ChatGPT Pro?
There is also the question of what unfettered (or less fettered) access to ChatGPT is worth to you. OpenAI’s beta access survey asked a number of questions about pricing to gauge the price elasticity of demand. If $42 is the actual price and not a meme reference to Monty Python, then the survey responses suggested this was an appropriate level for the number of users they hope to have in the beta. It is not necessarily designed as a profit-maximizing price or something to maximize market share or to simply cover the compute costs of the service.
Another consideration is that ChatGPT does not exist in a market vacuum. There are other AI writing assistants that have direct access to the davinci-003 model for GPT-3.5 that powers ChatGPT. They don’t have the same fine-tuning as the ChatGPT service, but they may have better fine-tuning for specific use cases. These other services offer more features than ChatGPT today and already have pricing that can be compared to the new Pro plan from OpenAI.
The starter package for Jasper AI is $40 per month for 35,000 words, and it has many more features. Plus, there is an upgrade path to even more features and higher word counts. Copy.ai charges $49 per month for more features than ChatGPT and unlimited words per month. Wordtune has plans that begin at $10 per month with an entirely different set of features that are more appropriate for many use cases.
Our Discord friend beama is not convinced $42 is worth it. In its current form, beama says that it is a “terrible deal for $42 a month, I’m not likely to continue the subscription after this month.”
That may depend on the new features and when the market starts to compare a paid ChatGPT with the other subscription programs out there. A free ChatGPT didn’t force anyone to consider alternatives, particularly those that included a monthly charge. A paid ChatGPT will lead to some service abandonment and some comparison shopping.
The awareness of AI writing assistants has exploded since ChatGPT launched. Shane Orlick, the president of Jasper AI, told me in a recent podcast interview that their daily sign-ups are consistently setting new records since the beginning of January. ChatGPT didn’t create this market, but its presence certainly boosted it. Soon we will see how much users value the service as opposed to the hype.
So, what would you pay for ChatGPT Pro?
And does your answer have anything to do with the meaning of life?
$42 goes a long way in the OpenAI playground. Or with the GPT-3 API. This seems to be a deal for people who’ve been wowed by ChatGPT, but haven’t really done much research on alternatives.
Hi Bret,
Am both excited and concerned reading this post. Am perfectly happy to pay for ChatGPT Pro with additional benefits and priority access. But 42 USD is a bit much especially given some of us are still figuring out the precise ROI from using ChatGPT. 42 USD would mean we should at least earn more than 300 USD to afford it.
The other concern is excessive reliance on ChatGPT. Am usually a very sharp copyeditor and use ChatGPT for better work management. This has helped me maintain quality and speed up delivery, but can these alone be reasons to buy ChatGPT Pro services?