The free ChatGPT program is about to end.

OpenAI wants to change the fee model for ChatGPT. Photo: Bloomberg.

According to Business Insider , ChatGPT's fixed-price model is about to change. Nick Turley, head of ChatGPT development at OpenAI, said the company is considering eliminating unlimited plans as computing costs continue to escalate.

"There's no world where prices stay the same when technology is developing at such a breakneck pace," Turley said on the Bg2 Pod podcast on March 15th. He compared maintaining an unlimited AI package to people's daily electricity bills and suggested OpenAI might increase usage fees in the near future.

Currently, ChatGPT offers a free plan with usage limits, a Plus plan at $20/month with higher limits, and a Pro plan at $200/month with faster performance and unlimited usage.

Turley admitted that the current subscription model is actually a stopgap solution. "We inadvertently entered a monthly payment model," he said.

OpenAI's management described it as a serendipitous solution to the early-stage problem of server capacity management. ChatGPT was initially launched as a temporary trial, scheduled to shut down after a month. It was only when it exploded in popularity and users loved it that OpenAI realized it was a genuine product.

Now that AI is becoming more powerful, it also consumes enormous computing resources. Heavy tasks like in-depth reasoning or automated AI agents consume many times more GPU resources than typical question-and-answer sessions. OpenAI is researching models that charge based on actual usage and even experimenting with advertising as a way to expand its reach to users.

Turley said OpenAI's biggest goal remains widespread accessibility. However, he stated he would be "very surprised if the price doesn't change," especially considering the scale and importance of the current technological breakthroughs.

Turley isn't the first in the industry to share this view. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said that AI will be sold like electricity, priced based on consumption as demand explodes. Meanwhile, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has mentioned charging based on the AI agent rather than the user.

Anthropic and Google are now using a token-based payment model for many services. Even consulting firms like Globant are experimenting with monthly packages that include token limits instead of hourly rates.

The AI market is expected to spend hundreds of billions of dollars building computing infrastructure this year. As operating costs rise and models become more complex, publishers are forced to recalculate paper costs to avoid losses.