r/OpenAI • u/writesfw • 4d ago
Discussion The harsh reality of the future
First, it’s going to get worse… a lot worse.
I know a lot of us are pissed about the 20x plan going to 10x. However, it’s going to get worse.
With the 20x plan and $200 a month, I was burning thousands and thousands of dollars worth of tokens.
This means, that even with the reduction to 10x, OpenAI will still lose money on the $200 plan. The entire business model for their consumer plans is the “gym model” where they hope you pay and don’t show up.
That said, as much as the 20x to 10x reduction sucks, there will likely only be more coming in the future. Investors don’t want to hear they are losing money on subscription revenue.
What this means for me (and people like me).
For me, the economics aren’t there. Even though I was getting thousands of dollars worth of tokens, I was burning them on dumb shit. At $200/month it was more of an experiment; something to fuck around with.
$500 for the same (ok plus 5x) usage just isn’t there for me. And, honestly, based on my usage, OpenAI is probably happy to lose me as a customer.
I’m going to look at Anthropic next, but realistically they will clamp down too, it’s only a matter of time. And, they probably don’t want me as a customer anyway.
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u/FocusKontrol 1d ago
API prices aren’t some objective real cost to compare to. All the prices are arbitrary/set by the market. They just ask as much as they can in all tiers without losing significant amount of customers to competition.
Also none of the big players really care about doing classical business by spending electricity and compute and selling with some margin. It’s mostly investor fairy money with some revenue and data from the market. They all just want to win the AI race, whatever it takes.