ChatGPT Won't Stay Free for Long? OpenAI Expects 220 Million to Pay Up by 2030

Shockingly, OpenAI made a grand mission statement that about 220 million people could be paying for ChatGPT by 2030 and it feels like the next evolution as it leads the AI and tech worlds. Because if the projection is true, it would imply a gigantic leap from tens of millions of paid sign ups today to one of the world's largest subscription businesses within 5 years it seems. Moreover, this mission has led to queries about how OpenAI will balance growth, profitability and the pressures of needed monetisation while keeping the product attractive to billions of users.

Will ChatGPT Stop Being Free for Users?

Well, not exactly as OpenAI's prediction, reportedly is based on the expectation that ChatGPT's weekly user base could reach about 2.6 billion people and that about 8.5% of them will convert to paid tiers by 2030. Now for context here, today's paid base is far smaller as per sources as of July, roughly 35 million users were on paid plans such as Plus or Pro, a fraction of the total active audience. So the jump to 220 million paying customers would therefore require steady product innovation and a clear value proposition for a broad swathe of users.

Now this does not mean that the free tier is over, so why would people pay more widely for ChatGPT? OpenAI has many ways to do this it seems. Because it is diversifying over and above the main chat experience into new paid products and services. Moreover, recent company moves include higher end subscriptions, enterprise features, and a personal shopping assistant that points toward commerce and advertising linked revenue. And the shift from purely voluntary payments to a structured subscription economy is very similar to the path taken by other software platforms that monetised free users once they had embedded themselves into everyday workflows.

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Can Revenue Overtake the Cost of Making AI?

Now in theory the numbers look surprisingly good as some sources report OpenAI's annualised revenue run rate could reach about $20 billion (which is £15.2 billion approx) by the end of this year. Yet the company is not yet consistently profitable.

In the first half of 2025 OpenAI reportedly generated around $4.3 billion (£3.3 billion approx) while burning around $2.5 billion (£1.9 billion approx), mainly because of the huge compute and research costs associated with training and operating advanced models. Moreover, that gap explains why the firm is under pressure to find scalable revenue streams rather than rely solely on investor funding as the AI market is expanding into billions very rapidly.

Furthermore, there are a few levers OpenAI can pull to turn paying users into durable income. Firstly, expanding enterprise and developer offerings tends to give higher average revenue per user. Secondly, shopping and targeted commerce features could convert the chat interface into a transaction platform that earns commission or advertising dollars. Thirdly, tiered subscriptions with clear, differentiated benefits make it easier to upsell existing users. But each of these strategies has trade offs. Like more aggressive ad or commerce integration risks pissing off users who value a neutral assistant. Also, heavier enterprise focus could push consumer features to less importance seemingly. So finding the right balance will be a live test for OpenAI's product and policy teams.