Doubao will soon start charging, with a maximum annual fee of 5,088 yuan. Is the era of free domestic AI coming to an end?

The charging time for Doubao has been set.

On June 1st, 36Kr reported that Doubao's paid content will be launched later this month, and relevant functions will be updated at the same - time Force Conference.

If everything goes smoothly, Doubao will further integrate e - commerce functions to improve the paid scenarios in the third quarter, and attract traffic to the Douyin Mall through subsidies. It will enter the operation period in the fourth quarter.

In response, some people said bluntly, "I'll uninstall it if it starts charging", and questioned whether Doubao's current capabilities are worth paying for.

Some others believe that this is just in line with the practice abroad, and a reasonable payment system will contribute to the healthy development of the enterprise and even the industry.

Is the pricing cheap or expensive?

On May 4th, 2026, Doubao quietly updated three levels of subscription prices on the in - app purchase page of the App Store, with the highest being 5,088 yuan per year.

This news caused quite a stir, and the topic "Doubao starts charging" topped the Weibo hot search list.

The official response: "Doubao always provides free services. On the basis of free services, we are also exploring the launch of more value - added content to meet the different needs of different users."

That is to say, basic functions such as daily chat, Q&A, writing copy, and simple image generation can still be used for free.

Specifically, the standard version's continuous monthly subscription is 68 yuan per month, and the continuous annual subscription is 688 yuan per year; the enhanced version's continuous monthly subscription is 200 yuan per month, and the continuous annual subscription is 2,048 yuan per year; the professional version's continuous monthly subscription is 500 yuan per month, and the continuous annual subscription is 5,088 yuan per year.

To judge whether the monthly fee of 68 yuan is reasonable, we can compare it with domestic and foreign products.

First, look at Kimi. It launched a paid subscription as early as 2025. The lowest level is 39 yuan, but the highest level requires 559 yuan, and the annual fee is 6,708 yuan.

Secondly, Zhipu, which is preparing for A - share listing recently, has a VIP monthly fee of 79 yuan (49 yuan for the first month), and the SVIP is 339 yuan (229 yuan for the first month).

Overseas, the monthly fees of ChatGPT Go and Google AI Plus are both 8 US dollars (about 55 yuan), but the more advanced paid package, such as Google AI Ultra, has a monthly fee as high as 99.99 US dollars (about 675 yuan).

Overall, compared with other domestic AI products, the basic level price of Doubao's current payment model is in the upper - middle position, and the more advanced paid packages are at a price close to the average.

Is Doubao still the same after paying?

Whether the pricing is reasonable is a matter for the enterprise to consider. What users really care about are only two questions: Will the free version of Doubao become "stupid"? Can paying really meet the needs?

Under the topic of "Doubao starts charging", two conflicting highly - praised comments are next to each other.

These two mindsets revolve around the core anxiety of whether the free version will be "dumbed down".

This is not unfounded worry. After all, in the history of the Internet, from cloud storage to online documents, as the scale continues to grow, the scenario of "limiting speed and usage times" for free users has been repeated.

Even though the Doubao official promises that the basic functions will not be affected, users are worried about another thing - will the number of times for the free version be limited like the early GPT? Or will there be a situation where free users have to "queue" for paid users?

Another question is: Is it really worth paying?

So far, users don't know what the paid version is better than the free version. Is it a longer context, more accurate reasoning, or fewer "hallucinations"?

If the paid version only has a faster response speed and a higher usage limit, the general users' willingness to pay is not strong.

According to LatePost, currently the average daily usage time of a single Doubao user is only 10 minutes. Without significant technological barriers and with competitors still offering free services, opening subscriptions may lead to user loss.

However, Zhu Keli, the founding dean of the National Institute of New Economics Research, said that leading AI application products such as Qianwen, Yuanbao, and Kimi have been testing paid functions or limiting free usage. Subsequently, they may introduce a tiered plan based on their own user structure and capabilities.

As the scale of AI assistants grows and they gradually transform from ordinary Internet products into production tools, charging is a foreseeable result.

But many users are curious: After being free for more than two years, why start charging now? The answer lies in the cost.

The cost dilemma

As of March 2026, Doubao's monthly active users reached 345 million, and the daily active users exceeded 140 million. The daily average Token usage of the large - model exceeded 120 trillion - this figure is 1000 times that of when it was launched in May 2024.

Behind the explosive growth of the user scale is a similarly rapidly growing bill.

According to the South China Morning Post, ByteDance has raised its AI infrastructure budget from 160 billion yuan last year to 200 billion yuan (about 30 billion US dollars). It spends more than 500 million yuan on AI every day on average.

According to 36Kr, although ByteDance's overseas revenue increased by nearly 50% in 2025, due to the huge investment in the AI business, the overall net profit decreased by more than 70% (the official later clarified that this decrease was mainly due to international accounting standards).

The key to the problem is not how much money is spent, but that the logic of spending money has fundamentally changed. The marginal cost of traditional Internet products decreases - the more users there are, the lower the cost per user. Search engines and social platforms have been operating for twenty years with the model of attracting users for free and then monetizing through advertising.

However, for large - models, each conversation and each task generation consumes computing power and electricity. The more users there are, the higher the total cost.

AI products are caught in the strange cycle of "the more successful, the more money - burning": The larger the user scale and the stronger the model's capabilities, the more out - of - control the computing power cost becomes.

In addition to the consumption of computing power, the soaring prices of HBM storage and high - end chips, as well as the fierce "talent war", are all real pressures that enterprises need to face.

Doubao's high - profile pricing may become the starting point of large - scale subscription systems for domestic AI.

Conclusion

Anxiety is spreading among the major technology companies.

In Tencent's latest quarterly financial report, new AI products dragged down the operating profit by about 8.8 billion yuan in a single quarter. At the same time, in terms of capital expenditure, the management said that most of the 31.9 billion yuan in the first quarter was also used for AI - related investments.

Ma Huateng did not avoid this issue and used the metaphor of "boarding a ship" to describe Tencent's situation in the AI industry: "A year ago, we thought we had boarded the ship, but later we found that the ship was leaking. Now we feel that we've stepped on it, but we still can't sit down. We still hope the ship can sail faster."

However, with continuous capital investment, the model of technology giants only talking about technological ideals without considering commercial returns is no longer sustainable.

Using Ma Huateng's "ship" metaphor: The ship is on the sea, and fuel can't be free forever.

For AI products with an unclear profit model at present, the subscription system has become a direction to stop losses quickly.

Doubao has taken this step. As for how fast and far the "ship" can go, it depends on whether it can demonstrate capabilities worthy of the price.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Technology Daily Push" (ID: apptoday), written by Technology Daily Push, and published by 36Kr with authorization.