Free in its beginnings, artificial intelligences are also available in payed subscriptions. Formulas that, for a few months, have been increasingly expensive. From around 20 euros per month, they can now reach 350 euros per month.
Companies such as OpenAI or Google launch one after another in this type of subscriptions, which offer a series of advantages in exchange for these high prices. But what are these subscriptions for?
Productivity and creativity
From Chatgpt to Grok through Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. All these Ais crossed a first level by offering a subscription to about twenty euros. These are sold as a way of helping users to be more productive and creative.
For this purpose, they impose less limits in terms of messages that can be sent or access to more efficient models than those offered in the free version. This includes in particular reasoning models, capable of thinking and answering more complex questions, in mathematics, for example, in a few seconds.
These subscriptions also allow access to certain functions, such as in -depth research, which is intended for complex tasks that require more research in several fields (finance, science, engineering …). Other advantages are also offered, which vary according to companies.
A $ 12 billion market
If these formulas seem at first glance to go to professionals, they also attract people compared to the functions they offer or with the limits that are reduced. But they are not very successful, on the contrary, according to a study published at the end of June by Menlo Ventures.
Made with more than 5,000 Americans last April, it reveals that only 3% of the users of these chatbots are subscribers. In detail, 61% of those questioned have used AI in the last six months. The company extrapolated this figure to conclude that up to 1.8 billion people use this type of tool worldwide.
If all these people pay a monthly subscription of around twenty euros in a year, this would represent $ 432 billion per year. And yet, the current market is only $ 12 billion, which means that 3% of users worldwide pay one of these subscriptions.
Subscriptions too expensive
This low rate did not prevent companies from continuing further, which now offer formulas at a much higher price. From 229 euros (Chatgpt Pro, Perplexity Max) to 349 euros (heavy supergrok) per month. But Openai, Google and the other companies do not address the general public with these subscriptions.
As indicated, they are aimed at professionals as creators of content, developers or researchers.
These formulas are intended for professionals because they offer functions that can be useful for them in the context of their work, such as the analysis of voluminous data or documents.
Perplexity ensures, for example, that its subscription is, among other things, designed for “professionals who need unlimited access to complete analysis tools” and “commercial strategists who carry out the market and competitive monitoring.
Proposal at 274.99 euros per month, Google AI Ultra allows you to create films using the flow and use its most advanced reasoning model while including advantages of external AI, such as a premium or 30 TB subscription for Google Photos, Drive and Gmail.
But if these subscriptions can be useful for professionals, their price makes them ineffective. And the latter are not very successful. To this is added that for some of these even more expensive formulas, the price seems too high compared to the advantages. For 349 euros, Supergrok Heavy offers, for example, only exclusive access to the most advanced version of Grok 4, early access to new functions or a broader context memory.
Source: BFM TV
