OpenAI has made its budget subscription tier ChatGPT Go available worldwide and announced plans to introduce advertising to its chatbot platform. The move marks a significant shift in the company’s monetization strategy as it seeks to fund expansion while competing with Google and Anthropic.
ChatGPT Go costs $8 per month in the United States and provides access to the GPT-5.2 Instant model. Subscribers receive ten times more messages, file uploads, and image creation capabilities compared to the free tier. The plan also offers longer memory and context windows, allowing ChatGPT to remember more details from past conversations.
OpenAI first introduced ChatGPT Go in India in August 2025 before expanding to 170 additional countries. The company now offers three consumer subscription tiers: ChatGPT Go at $8 per month, ChatGPT Plus at $20 per month, and ChatGPT Pro at $200 per month. ChatGPT Plus includes access to the more advanced GPT-5.2 Thinking model designed for tasks requiring deeper reasoning, while ChatGPT Pro offers full access to GPT-5.2 Pro with maximum memory and context.
Read more about ChatGPT features and pricing plans …
How advertising will work in ChatGPT
OpenAI plans to begin testing advertisements in the free tier and ChatGPT Go subscription in the United States in the coming weeks. Ads will appear at the bottom of ChatGPT answers when there is a relevant sponsored product or service based on the current conversation. The company states that ads will be clearly labeled and separated from answers.
According to OpenAI CEO of applications Fidji Simo, the company will not sell user data to advertisers and conversations will remain private from advertisers. OpenAI says ads will not influence the organic answers that ChatGPT provides. Users will be able to learn why they are seeing a particular ad and dismiss any ad.
The company has established restrictions on ad placement. Ads will not appear in conversations involving sensitive or regulated topics such as health, mental health, or politics. OpenAI will not serve ads to users it believes are under 18 years old. ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise subscriptions will remain ad-free.
OpenAI anticipates generating low billions of dollars from advertising this year, according to a person close to the company cited by the Financial Times. The company is exploring advertising as it faces spending commitments of roughly $1.4 trillion on computing resources over the next decade.
The Financial Times reports that OpenAI delayed advertising plans last year after triggering a code red internally to focus on competition with Google and Anthropic. The company has more than 800 million weekly active users, most of whom use the free version.
Sources: OpenAI, MacRumors, Financial Times, Wired
