Comment by jasode
1 year ago
>The price feels outrageous,
I haven't used ChatGPT enough to judge what a "fair price" is but $200/month seems to be in the ballpark of other "software-tools-for-highly-paid-knowledge-workers" with premium pricing:
- mathematicians: Wolfram Mathematica is $154/mo
- attorneys: WestLaw legal research service is ~$200/month with common options added
- engineers for printed circuit boards : Altium Designer is $355/month
- CAD/CAM designers: Siemens NX base subscription is $615/month
- financial traders : Bloomberg Terminal is ~$2100/month
It will be interesting to see if OpenAI can maintain the $200/month pricing power like the sustainable examples above. The examples in other industries have sustained their premium prices even though there are cheaper less-featured alternatives (sometimes including open source). Indeed, they often increase their prices each year instead of discount them.
One difference from them is that OpenAI has much more intense competition than those older businesses.
This is a really interesting take. I don't think individuals pay for these subscriptions though, it's usually an organizational license.
They also come with extensive support, documentation and people have vast experience using them. They are also integrated into all other tools if the field very well. This makes them very entrenched. I am not sure OpenAI has any of those things. I also don't know what those things would entail for LLMs.
Maybe they need to add modes that are good for certain tasks or integrate with tools that their users most commonly use like email, document processors.