OpenAI is expanding its budget-friendly ChatGPT subscription plan beyond India, where it first launched a month ago. The company is now rolling out its ChatGPT Go paid plan in Indonesia for Rp75,000, which is approximately $4.50 per month. The ChatGPT Go plan is a mid-tier subscription option that is more affordable than the premium $20-per-month ChatGPT Plus plan but offers significantly more features than the free version.
According to Nick Turley, ChatGPT head, the plan gives users access to GPT-5 with 10 times higher usage limits for sending questions or prompts, generating images, and uploading files. It also allows ChatGPT to remember previous conversations better, enabling more personalized responses over time. The company has seen significant success with the plan in India, where paid subscribers have more than doubled since its launch.
A Competitive Move in a Key Market
This expansion puts OpenAI in direct competition with Google, which launched its own similarly priced AI Plus subscription plan in Indonesia earlier this month. Google’s plan also costs Rp75,000 per month and provides users with access to its Gemini 2.5 Pro chatbot, along with creative tools for image and video creation like Flow, Whisk, and Veo 3 Fast. The Google AI Plus plan also includes enhanced features for Google’s AI research assistant NotebookLM, integrates AI capabilities into Gmail, Docs, and Sheets, and comes with 200GB of cloud storage.
The launch of these affordable plans in Indonesia and India signals a new phase of competition between the two tech giants. Indonesia is a particularly important market, as Turley noted it is “already one of ChatGPT’s top five markets by weekly active users.” The focus on low-cost, feature-rich plans is a clear strategy to capture a wide base of consumers and professionals in these fast-growing digital economies.
What The Author Thinks
The launch of budget-friendly AI plans in countries like Indonesia and India signals a new phase in the AI race. Tech giants are no longer focused solely on premium markets but are now in a battle for the next billion users in emerging economies. By offering a more accessible price point, OpenAI and Google are attempting to establish their platforms as the default AI tool for a massive, untapped audience, which could have significant long-term implications for their global dominance. This shift from a “one-size-fits-all” pricing model to a more localized and affordable one shows that companies are willing to adapt their strategies to compete on a global scale, and the winner of this race will likely be determined in the world’s most populous and price-sensitive markets.
Featured image credit: Sanket Mishra via Pexels
For more stories like it, click the +Follow button at the top of this page to follow us.