Featured Image Credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / Contributor via Getty
It might seem counterintuitive but there's a good chance OpenAI don't actually want you to make the most of your ChatGPT subscription, because the measly $200 per month fee for you could actually end up costing the company $14,000 if you max out its potential.
The elephant in the room for the AI industry is without a doubt the revenue issue, as while companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are able to raise billions of dollars in funding – and are expected to exceed trillion dollar valuations following impending IPOs – they're still spending far more than they make.
OpenAI in particular is suffering from a spending black hole, with significant losses causing some investors to panic despite ChatGPT remaining at the top of the AI food chain, and things could only get worse the more people use the models.
We've already heard reports of some of the biggest companies cutting back on their AI spending after employees engage in 'tokenmaxxing', yet you could also do some significant financial damage on an individual level by simply making the most of your monthly subscription's token allocation.
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As reported by TechSpot, the true cost of ChatGPT's most expensive 'Pro' subscription has been revealed, and it's an incredibly lopsided deal that favors the user significantly.
This was discovered by SemiAnalysis, a data analytics firm focused on the semiconductor and AI industries, who published its findings on X that recontextualized the popular belief that $200/month subscription plans 'max out' once you reach roughly $2,000 worth of token spending.
This would already be a bad deal for AI companies as they're having to stomach a usage cost that's far higher than what they're getting back – although most people won't get anywhere close to that figure – but it gets even worse somehow when you look at the actual figures.
The balance of consumer cost to usage spending isn't too bad for the basic $20/month models from both OpenAI and Anthropic, with this hitting a cap of around $700 and $400 per month respectively.
Recently, we purchased one of each Anthropic/OpenAI subscription plan and randomly ran long horizon coding tasks until we exhausted the weekly limit. It's widely believed that a $200/month plan maxes out at ~$2000/month worth of tokens (assuming API pricing). However, we found… pic.twitter.com/1e0zFhbFuo
— SemiAnalysis (@SemiAnalysis_) June 10, 2026
However, increasing this to the 20x subscriptions for either model shows a very different tale, with Claude's Max 20x providing a token spending limit of approximately $8,000, whereas ChatGPT Pro 20x going all the way up to $14,000.
For OpenAI in particular, estimates based on an assumed API gross margin of 75%, utilisation of the ChatGPT Pro 20x model is only profitable for the company between 1% and 5%, with anything above 5.7% losing money.
The margin on a subscription plan is a function of the average utilization. If we assume both companies have 75% API gross margins, this results in the following subscription margins. (3/4) pic.twitter.com/c0DCYhbCHb
— SemiAnalysis (@SemiAnalysis_) June 10, 2026
If you use just 50% of the subscription's potential you're causing a -775% gross margin for OpenAI, and this extends to a jaw-dropping -1,650% at full utilization.
Anthropic can sustain itself up to 10% utilization for profitability on its equivalent Claude subscription – and has a 43% gross margin at the same point that OpenAI starts losing money – but suffers a similar -900% position at full utilization.
