OpenAI recently announced that it has expanded its affordable ChatGPT Go plan to 16 new countries in Asia, with a monthly fee of less than $5, making it highly attractive. This expansion covers Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, East Timor, and Vietnam, aiming to bring the convenience of smart chatting to more users.
In these 16 countries, users can pay in local currency, such as in Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Pakistan. In other regions, users will need to pay in US dollars, at approximately $5, with specific fees varying based on local tax policies. The ChatGPT Go plan offers users higher daily usage limits, including sending messages, generating images, and uploading files or images. Additionally, compared to the free plan, this plan provides double the memory capacity, allowing users to have a more personalized interactive experience.
According to OpenAI, the background of this plan expansion is the fourfold increase in user activity in Southeast Asia. The ChatGPT Go plan was initially launched in India in August, and then in Indonesia in September. The number of paying users in India has doubled since its launch, showing strong market demand.
Google is also competing with OpenAI. Google launched a similar Google AI Plus plan in September and quickly expanded it to over 40 countries. This plan not only gives users access to Google's most advanced AI model, Gemini 2.5 Pro, but also offers rich creative tools and 200GB of cloud storage space. This competition comes at an important moment for OpenAI. At the recent DevDay 2025 conference, the company's CEO, Sam Altman, announced that the global weekly active users have reached 800 million, an increase of 100 million since August.
Despite OpenAI's rapid growth and a valuation of $500 billion, the company reported an operating loss of $7.8 billion in the first half of 2025. In this situation, launching affordable subscription plans like ChatGPT Go is seen as an important step toward achieving profitability and expanding the user base, especially in the high-growth Asian market, where competition between OpenAI and Google is expected to intensify.
