ChatGPT makes money for OpenAI in four ways: consumer subscriptions (Go, Plus and Pro), workplace subscriptions with usage-based pricing for teams and enterprises, advertising shown on the Free and Go plans, and commerce such as Instant Checkout inside chats. The same models are sold to developers through usage-based APIs. OpenAI’s CFO Sarah Friar wrote in January 2026 that annualized revenue rose from $2 billion in 2023 to more than $20 billion in 2025, tracking the compute OpenAI could secure.
OpenAI introduced consumer subscriptions as people asked for more capability and reliability, then workplace subscriptions with usage-based pricing, according to its CFO's January 2026 post.
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A free tier paid for by ads and commerce
Ads appear only on the Free and Go plans; Plus, Pro and Enterprise stay ad-free. OpenAI says ads are labelled, kept separate from answers and do not influence them, and that it does not sell customer data.
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Shopping inside the chat
Instant Checkout lets US ChatGPT users buy from Etsy sellers in the conversation, with Shopify merchants announced next; Stripe processes the payments and co-developed the Agentic Commerce Protocol with OpenAI.
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APIs for developers
Developers pay per use to put the same models in their own products. When OpenAI opened ChatGPT's model as an API on 1 March 2023, gpt-3.5-turbo cost $0.002 per 1,000 tokens.
What changed in 2025-26
Revenue tracks compute
OpenAI’s CFO reported annualized revenue of $2 billion in 2023, $6 billion in 2024 and more than $20 billion in 2025, while its compute grew from 0.2 GW to about 1.9 GW over the same period (Friar, 2026).
Ads go global
OpenAI said on 21 October 2026 that more than 100,000 advertisers had run campaigns on ChatGPT since ads launched just over eight months earlier, and expanded ChatGPT Ads to 89 countries (OpenAI, 2026).
Microsoft's cut changes
Under terms announced in April 2026, Microsoft no longer pays a revenue share to OpenAI, while OpenAI’s payments to Microsoft continue through 2030 at the same percentage, subject to a total cap. Microsoft recorded $24.1 billion of revenue from arrangements with OpenAI in fiscal 2026 (Microsoft, 2026).
OpenAI can now serve its products to customers on any cloud provider, though products still ship first on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud, unless Microsoft cannot or chooses not to support them.
Marketers: test ChatGPT Ads where they are available; they reach people as they compare options and decide what to buy.
Merchants: look at the Agentic Commerce Protocol and Instant Checkout, which let a chat end in a purchase.
Companies buying seats: budget for usage, not only seats; workplace plans now add usage-based pricing.
Builders: decide between building on the API and competing with features ChatGPT ships to its own users.
Investors: read OpenAI's revenue alongside its compute commitments; its CFO says the two have moved together.
The Business Engineer lens
ChatGPT now has the shape of a consumer internet platform with a business software line attached: a free tier funded by ads and commerce, paid tiers for heavy users, and seats for companies. The Business Engineer view is that its ceiling is set by compute, so revenuegrowth and infrastructure commitments have to be read together.
Through consumer and workplace subscriptions, ads on the Free and Go plans, in-chat commerce and, via OpenAI's platform, usage-based API fees from developers.
Does ChatGPT show ads?
Yes, on the Free and Go plans only; Plus, Pro and Enterprise remain ad-free. By October 2026 ads were available in 89 countries.
The complete explainer, cleaned up and reformatted for mobile.
ChatGPT leverages a freemium model, with a free version with limited capability and a premium version (starting at $20/mo), which also comprises access in peak times, faster response times, and early access to new features and improvements. In addition, ChatGPT might also make money via API access.
ChatGPT Pricing Model
ChatGPT gained popularity, reaching over a million users in a few days.
Its user base kept growing quickly through 2023.
Drawing by The Business Engineer.
By early January, the team at OpenAI started to look into pricing options for its free tool, thus opening up a waitlist with a few very simple questions.
This first pricingmodel is quite interesting, as it shows, OpenAI wants to try to bring in a wide user base, not only in the B2B space but also in the consumer space (meaning the pricing is as low as almost a Netflix plan).
Over time, we might see OpenAI release new pricing tiers for B2B.
ChatGPT API Access
Another revenue generation for ChatGPT might be the access to its API, which will give a chance to developers to integrate ChatGPT into any kind of tools they are building.
Another way the API access to ChatGPT might be working is via so-called tooling.
Meaning that developers might be able to build applications on top of ChatGPT through its APIs to make it more effective at specific tasks.
In both ways, the API part of ChatGPT is critical to transforming ChatGPT from a breakthrough product to a businessplatform and ecosystem able to rival companies like Apple and Google.
ChatGPT Premium
ChatGPT is available as a premium version that can be accessed for $20/mo, enabling the user to get a faster version that performs better.
The functionalities are the same as the free version; what changes is speed, performance, and ability to have tasks completed with more tokens, compared to the free version, which might stop after a specific token request.
For instance, in the free version, if you ask ChatGPT to formulate a very long essay, that might stop at a certain point, whereas in the premium one, it should have no specific limits.
ChatGPT APIs
ChatGPT was also launched as an API endpoint.
Meaning it can be integrated via its APIs into any web application.
The ChatGPT model family we are releasing today, gpt-3.5-turbo, is the same model used in the ChatGPT product. It is priced at $0.002 per 1k tokens, which is 10x cheaper than our existing GPT-3.5 models. It’s also our best model for many non-chat use cases—we’ve seen early testers migrate from text-davinci-003 to gpt-3.5-turbo with only a small amount of adjustment needed to their prompts.
As OpenAI explains in its documentation, ChatGPT was powered by gpt-3.5-turbo when the API launched in March 2023; it has since moved to newer models.
Using the OpenAI API, you can build your applications with gpt-3.5-turbo to do things like:
Draft an email or other piece of writing
Write Python code
Answer questions about a set of documents
Create conversational agents
Give your software a natural language interface
Tutor in a range of subjects
Translate languages
Simulate characters for video games and much more
ChatGPT APIs within Microsoft Azure
Another way ChatGPT will be monetized is through Microsoft’s Azure platform. Indeed, Azure is one of the most successful cloud providers in the world.
The interesting part is that each time OpenAI releases a new product via APIs, this will get integrated also within the Azure cloud platform, thanks to the commercial partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI. Since April 2026 Microsoft’s licence is non-exclusive and OpenAI can serve its products on any cloud, though they still ship first on Azure.
In this way, Microsoft Azure can leverage the success of the OpenAI APIs to expand the adoption of its cloud infrastructure further, as developers will be incentivized to host their applications on top of Azure, thanks to the integrations of ChatGPT’s APIs.
Key highlights
Freemium Model: ChatGPT offers both a free version with limited capabilities and a premium version starting at $20/mo. The premium version provides general access to ChatGPT during peak times, faster response times, and priority access to new features and improvements.
Van Westendorp Pricing Model: OpenAI conducted pricing research and opened a waitlist for the premium version before officially releasing it in early February 2023.
API Access: Developers can access ChatGPT’s API to integrate it into their applications or build specific tooling to enhance its effectiveness for various tasks. API access serves as a revenue generation opportunity for OpenAI.
ChatGPT Premium: The premium version of ChatGPT offers the same functionalities as the free version but with increased speed, performance, and the ability to complete tasks with more tokens.
ChatGPT APIs: ChatGPT is also available as an API endpoint, enabling integration into web applications. The model used in the ChatGPT product, called gpt-3.5-turbo, is priced at $0.002 per 1k tokens.
Monetization through Microsoft Azure: Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, OpenAI’s primary cloud partner (non-exclusive since April 2026), enables the integration of ChatGPT’s APIs within the Azure infrastructure. This expands the adoption of Azure as developers are incentivized to host their applications on the platform.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
