Doubao Starts Charging

Doubao has begun charging users, surprising many with its late timing and high prices: the standard version costs 68 yuan per month, the enhanced version 200 yuan, and the professional version 500 yuan per month, with an annual fee exceeding 5,000 yuan. Just last year, domestic competitors were still focused on offering free services and token subsidies to retain users.

However, this article does not aim to simply report on the pricing news. When a widely-used AI application with 227 million monthly active users decides to start charging, and at such high rates, it raises more questions than just a price list.

This situation involves at least three key questions: Why did ByteDance choose this timing? What exactly is the 500 yuan monthly fee for, and who is it aimed at? What does this charging experiment mean for the entire domestic AI industry?

The Cost of Free Services

First, it is essential to note that Doubao is not charging hastily. In terms of user base, it is more than qualified to discuss pricing compared to any domestic competitor. According to QuestMobile, Doubao’s monthly active users surged to 227 million in Q4 2025, maintaining its position as the industry leader and becoming the first AI-native application in China to surpass 100 million daily active users. ByteDance’s three AI applications—Doubao, Jimeng AI, and Doubao Aixue—total around 250 million monthly active users, ranking among the top ten in both monthly active users and downloads.

What does this number signify? There are only a handful of internet products in China that can be considered “national-level.” Doubao achieved this scale with far less expenditure than many might expect.

Data from AppGrowing, a domestic mobile advertising monitoring agency, shows that Doubao’s advertising spending decreased throughout 2025: from 161 million yuan in Q1 to 117 million yuan in Q2, then halving to 65 million yuan in Q3, and slightly rebounding to 92 million yuan in Q4.

Looking at user retention, Doubao’s 30-day retention rate averaged 44% from January to November 2025, significantly outpacing its nearest competitor, Kimi. More granular data even shows that Doubao’s 180-day retention rate exceeds its 90-day retention rate, demonstrating a rare “smile curve” for AI chat products.

This indicates that Doubao is not merely a product built on financial burn; it is genuinely used and retained by users. In an industry where customer acquisition costs are exorbitant and user loyalty is almost non-existent, these figures are remarkable.

However, the larger the scale, the more challenging the financials become. The cost of a free model involves considerations of GPU clusters, the linear expansion of inference costs, and the unpredictable future of computational power investments.

According to the latest data disclosed by Volcano Engine, Doubao’s model token usage skyrocketed from 120 billion in May 2024 to over 30 trillion by September 2025, a growth of more than 200 times. Each additional daily active user, every conversation, and every command like “help me generate a PPT” consumes computational power.

With 100 million daily active users, allowing them to continue using increasingly complex model capabilities for free is akin to turning the treasury into a public square where anyone can help themselves.

Examining ByteDance’s overall computational power strategy reveals the urgency behind this charging experiment. According to a report from Zheshang Securities, ByteDance’s capital expenditure in 2025 is expected to reach 160 billion yuan, with approximately 90 billion yuan allocated for AI computational power procurement and 70 billion yuan for IDC infrastructure and network equipment.

Moreover, this is not the endpoint. Doubao’s daily token consumption is still growing exponentially, and ByteDance anticipates “higher” future token consumption, requiring continued investment in computational power. According to estimates from Dongfang Securities, if Doubao’s daily active users reach 50 million by 2027, with an average daily token usage of 50 trillion, it would require over 565,000 GPUs, indicating a significant shortfall.

On one side, there is a flood of 227 million monthly active users and over 100 million daily active users; on the other, there is a capital expenditure of 160 billion yuan. Every computational expense translates to real money, and someone has to foot the bill sooner or later.

Who is Paying 500 Yuan a Month?

With the pricing table now public, the immediate reaction in the domestic market is undoubtedly “expensive.” The standard version costs 68 yuan, the enhanced version 200 yuan, and the professional version 500 yuan per month, with an annual fee of 5,088 yuan, more than double the annual subscription price of ChatGPT Plus (around $240/year).

Given the long-standing narrative in the domestic internet space of “winner takes all and free for all,” this figure indeed feels strikingly out of place.

However, this is precisely where the most thought-provoking aspect lies. Doubao does not intend for everyone to pay this fee. The official response from Doubao is clear: “Doubao will continue to provide free services while exploring additional value-added services, with related plans currently in the testing phase.”

Sources close to Doubao have further revealed that the paid features will primarily focus on complex tasks and productivity scenarios, such as PPT generation, data analysis, and film production. As the model capabilities continue to upgrade, the product can meet increasingly complex high-value tasks, which require more computational power and inference time, thus necessitating the introduction of paid services. The free version will still cater to users’ everyday needs.

In other words, Doubao is drawing a line: lightweight uses like casual chatting, writing, and information retrieval will remain free; only those who use AI for work and genuinely treat the large model as a productivity tool will need to pay.

This is a pricing logic based on “tiered computational costs”; light users are covered by Doubao’s free service, while medium to heavy users pay for their computational consumption. In fact, this pricing strategy has seen successful examples abroad. Claude Code officially launched its subscription model in 2025, achieving an annualized revenue of $1 billion within six months, and by February this year, it had surged to $2.5 billion, relying on high-performance models and subscription fees.

So why is Doubao’s professional version priced at 500 yuan/month? Frankly, this may not be because Doubao believes its product is worth 500 yuan, but rather because it aims to establish a domestic price anchor for the “AI productivity tool” category.

In the realm of consumer AI subscriptions, there are virtually no benchmarks or industry standards in China. Doubao’s impressive numbers can serve as proof that this is not a cheap tool nor a new gadget that needs to win over users with low prices; it is something that can genuinely replace part of professional productivity.

As for how many people in the market are willing to pay for this, that is another matter. First, it needs to secure its position and anchor the price; subsequently, there will be ample room for promotions, discounts, or splitting packages by functionality.

Broaden the perspective, and Doubao is not an isolated case.

The commercialization of consumer AI assistants in China is entering a phase of intensive exploration from late 2025 to early 2026. Kimi launched its paid membership last year, offering three tiers: a free version with limited access to deep research and OK Computer functions; 49 yuan/month for an equivalent API exchange voucher; and 99 yuan/month for increased quotas and concurrent support.

Internal communications from Kimi revealed that since November 2025, overseas API revenue has quadrupled, with month-on-month growth in paid users exceeding 170%. Kimi’s “OK Computer” incurs a single conversation cost of 4-5 yuan, making a paid model essential for scaling.

Earlier, Baidu’s Wenxin Yiyan launched a professional version in 2023, priced at 59.9 yuan/month, with a continuous monthly discount of 49.9 yuan. This was the first paid large model product targeting consumers among major domestic companies. However, in April 2025, Wenxin Yiyan announced a return to full free access, reflecting both competitive pressure from DeepSeek’s free model and Baidu’s struggles in the consumer AI application space.

As for Tencent Yuanbao, it still adheres to a fully free strategy, keeping all core functions open to users without launching an independent membership subscription system.

Upon reviewing the situation, a clear pattern emerges: the entire industry is transitioning from “free trials” to “tiered payments,” with differences only in their respective paces and approaches.

Doubao’s pricing is the highest and its steps the largest, likely because it has the most stable user base and the greatest cost pressures; Kimi is taking a mid-range approach, differentiating with coding tools and agent models; Baidu attempted to charge first but ultimately returned to full free access; Tencent Yuanbao is still observing, trying to attract users with free services while cautiously exploring future payment possibilities.

The Real Stakes of the Charging Experiment

When we focus solely on a company’s decision to charge, it is easy to get caught up in superficial discussions about whether the price is too high or whether users will leave.

From an industry perspective, the significance of Doubao’s charging lies in the essential question it poses to the domestic AI industry.

This question is almost existential: when the free benefits are exhausted, when the financing window tightens, and when IPO exits seem distant, can domestic AI companies sustain themselves based on their products, rather than relying on customized projects for businesses, selling computational power, or government contracts?

The difficulty of this question is partially reflected in the data. For example, MiniMax reported a total revenue of $79.03 million in 2025, with overseas revenue accounting for 73%. Its overall gross margin was 25.4%. This is currently the best-performing domestic consumer AI product, but its core revenue source is the overseas market, while the domestic market’s willingness and ability to pay for AI products remain the largest uncertainties in the industry.

In contrast, the story is entirely different overseas. OpenAI’s revenue in the first half of 2025 was $4.3 billion, with an estimated annual revenue of $13 billion, of which over 80% comes from paid subscription users of ChatGPT, including Plus personal subscriptions, enterprise versions, and team versions. OpenAI’s paid enterprise users have surpassed 3 million, and ChatGPT’s weekly active users exceed 800 million.

Gartner predicts that global GenAI model end-user spending will reach $14.2 billion in 2025, while its actual ARR has already surpassed $20 billion, showing a rapid growth trend in revenue generated by the commercialization of AI applications. In overseas markets, personal subscriptions can support the revenue expectations of a company valued in the hundreds of billions.

However, in China, the situation is much more complex. A core difference lies in the payment culture: overseas, from GitHub Copilot to JetBrains, it is common for programmers to spend hundreds of dollars annually on IDEs, as the culture of paying for tools has been cultivated over decades.

In contrast, the habit of paying for software tools among consumer users in China has yet to be firmly established. More troubling is the severe homogeneity of domestic large model products; competitors can almost instantly replicate any features you offer, making true differentiation extremely scarce. Once charging begins, the cost of users switching to another free app is nearly zero.

In this environment, the first company to charge risks being undermined by competitors employing free strategies.

This is why Doubao chose to start charging only after surpassing 100 million daily active users and 227 million monthly active users; its scale provides enough room for user selection and trial-and-error. Even with a mere 1%-2% conversion rate to paid users, the corresponding revenue scale is still significant. In contrast, Kimi’s paid volume and user base are much smaller. Tencent Yuanbao has yet to charge, likely waiting for a more opportune moment.

From a longer-term perspective, Doubao’s charging action brings to light a logic that everyone in the industry has been contemplating but few have articulated: large models are neither public services nor charitable endeavors; they are businesses that need to recoup costs.

When the largest consumer AI application in China begins to ask users for money, the entire industry can no longer evade the commercialization question by claiming it is still in the “technological dividend period” or “still in the land grab phase.”

For open-source free models like DeepSeek, the pressure will be transmitted rapidly. DeepSeek has always promoted a free route, but in early 2026, it faced the departure of key team members from its core technology lines, including foundational models, inference, OCR, and multimodal capabilities, as competitors offered annual salaries in the millions.

The logic of “Huanfang earns enough to burn” has become increasingly inadequate in the face of the intensity of talent competition. Doubao firing the first shot in charging signifies, to some extent, that the industry is competing for self-sustainability; only by earning money through products can it retain top talent, thereby creating better products and forming a positive cycle.

Reflecting on the past year of the AI entrepreneurship wave, an uncomfortable truth remains: while domestic large model companies have rapidly caught up in technical capabilities, achieving even some indicators of surpassing, they have collectively failed to establish a commercial closure on this most fundamental issue.

The temporary premium brought about by technological leadership is quickly neutralized by followers, and price wars and free strategies have plunged the entire industry into a prisoner’s dilemma. Doubao’s recent actions, regardless of their ultimate success, at least provide a reference point for the industry—what is the value of large model services, what should it be worth, and what capabilities are users willing to pay for in AI?

We believe that given Doubao’s current scale and ByteDance’s strategic patience, this charging experiment is likely to continue for quite some time. It will experience user losses, public controversy, product iterations, and price adjustments, ultimately finding a dynamic equilibrium through ongoing negotiations.

For the industry, if Doubao can maintain its user base and market position while charging, it will demonstrate that even in China, AI can survive on user payments rather than relying on blood transfusions. Conversely, if charging leads to significant user losses and competitors seize the opportunity to overtake, the industry may struggle in the free quagmire for a long time.

“What is free often comes at the highest cost.” This statement is particularly apt in the AI industry; it suggests not only that users must pay some price for free services but also that companies must pay for “free” as well.