OpenAI launches ChatGPT Plus, a paid subscription tier

OpenAI began piloting ChatGPT Plus, a $20-a-month subscription offering general access to the chatbot even during periods of heavy demand, faster response times, and priority access to new features. It launched to a waitlist of US users two months after ChatGPT’s free public launch had produced demand that regularly overwhelmed capacity, leaving many users locked out during peak hours; OpenAI said it would expand the paid tier to more countries “soon,” and did so within the following weeks.

The free version of ChatGPT remained available alongside the paid one, meaning Plus was framed as a reliability and priority upgrade rather than a gate on the product itself. At launch it did not include an underlying model upgrade — GPT-4 access for Plus subscribers followed only after that model’s release the following month — so the initial pitch was capacity and speed, not capability.

ChatGPT Plus was OpenAI’s first direct-to-consumer revenue line, distinct from the API business it had run since GPT-3, and it established a subscription model — a flat monthly fee for priority compute access — that the company and its competitors would repeat and tier further, with higher-priced plans for heavier users, over the following years. It marked the start of ChatGPT’s transition from a free research demo into a consumer product with its own revenue and, eventually, its own profit-and-loss line inside OpenAI.