The AI ​​price war begins: ChatGPT will soon be significantly cheaper

Due to growing competition from Anthropic and Google, OpenAI is planning a drastic price cut for its artificial intelligence. Private and corporate users could soon pay significantly less for ChatGPT services.

Price war between AI providers begins

OpenAI is currently considering a major reduction in the prices of its offerings. The Californian company is reacting to the growing pressure from its direct competitors Anthropic (Claude) and Google (Gemini). For end users and companies that pay to use language models like ChatGPT, this could significantly reduce monthly expenses. The planned adjustments are triggered by complaints from business. Many companies have already exhausted the budget for autonomous AI agents in 2026. Executives criticize the high costs of so-called tokens.

This is the basic billing unit that AI providers use to calculate the amount of text processed. In order to prevent customer defections, OpenAI is now planning noticeable price reductions. Like insiders versus the Wall Street Journal According to reports, OpenAI expects Anthropic to announce similar perks in the near future. Anthropic recently reported strong revenue growth after its Claude Code programming tool gained popularity among software developers. With a valuation of 964 billion dollars (around 835 billion euros), the start-up briefly overtook the ChatGPT developer in May.

Google is increasing competition

Google is also becoming more and more of a factor: the search engine company’s Gemini models are already undercutting the prices of OpenAI and Anthropic, and the company only announced a price reduction a few days ago. While OpenAI charges between eight and 100 dollars (around 7 to 87 euros) per month for ChatGPT subscriptions, Google offers comparable business plans for almost half that. Of course, the price wars bring noticeable financial benefits for consumers. Not so for companies, because the approach poses considerable risks for providers. Both companies – OpenAI and Anthropic – are already recording billions in losses because the data centers required incur enormous costs. Lower revenue per token further deteriorates already strained profitability.

The economic impact is critical as both OpenAI and Anthropic recently filed confidential IPO filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Falling profit margins could deter potential investors. In the technology industry, usage behavior has also sparked a debate about so-called tokenmaxxing. Companies use large amounts of tokens to artificially increase productivity, even if this does not produce measurable financial returns. Cheaper prices could further fuel such inefficient behavior.