We explore the pros and cons of ChatGPT Plus. When it makes sense to pay for it, and when people should look at free alternatives instead.

What is ChatGPT Plus?

OpenAI, the developers of ChatGPT released a new paid tier of ChatGPT called ChatGPT Plus. It was announced along with the release of their latest version of the Large Language Model (LLM) ChatGPT-4.

As of writing, paying for a ChatGPT Plus subscription is the only way to access ChatGPT-4 directly from OpenAI. The upgraded model brings a lot of benefits along with it and is a must have for busy professionals.

What are the Benefits of Chat GPT Plus?

There are many benefits to ChatGPT Plus. The biggest one is access to GPT-4. It’s a dramatically improved model over the previous version, GPT-3.5 that’s available with a free account on OpenAI.

Benefits include:

Priority Access during busy periods and less outages.
Writing sounds more human like when using the GPT-4 Model
Faster Response Speeds
ChatGPT Plus provides better and more accurate responses
Less downtime
Fewer service outages

With ChatGPT Plus there are no changes to the user interface other than a small note that you are using GPT-4. The default model is still 3.5, and you have to manually switch it over to version 4 each time you login. The answers themselves usually take longer to write than ChatGPT 3.5 but it’s a small trade-off for improved accuracy and responses that are better written.

What are the Limitations of ChatGPT Plus?

ChatGPT Plus is unlimited in that you can use it as much as you want during a monthly. The website notes that there is a limit of 25 questions per 3 hour period. We have used ChatGPT Plus more than that and have never been notified of a cap. It may be selectively enforced in periods where there is heavy usage and service needs to be limited to maintain service levels.

Even with ChatGPT Plus, it will not give you automatic access to ChatGPT Plugins. Because ChatGPT Plus does not automatically give you plugin access, ChatGPT Plus does not have access to the internet. You will still have to use alternative AI Chatbots for up to date responses using data more recent than September 2021..

How Much Does ChatGPT Plus Cost?

ChatGPT Plus Costs $20 per month in the United States. It is a monthly subscription and requires a credit card or a debit card to sign up. Billing is a recurring monthly charge, and you can sign up for an account through OpenAI’s Website.

Is ChatGPT Worth It?

For us, it is absolutely worth $20 a month. We use ChatGPT daily to help answer technical consulting questions about accounting and process automation every day. It’s incredibly good at generating Python code, DAX Formulas and is an indispensable tool for improving our productivity.

The amount of time that we save by not having to search Google for answers more than makes up for the monthly subscription cost. We have also found the quality of information it provides matches or exceeds many websites, and the capability to ask follow-up questions is invaluable.

If you are not using ChatGPT for your business, we recommend first trying out free resources like Bing Chat or Google Bard. They can offer better answers than ChatGPT 3.5, the current free version without a monthly fee. However, you may need to join a waitlist to begin using these services.

There are also some alternatives coming to market that are specifically target towards content creation and may suit your needs better than ChatGPT Plus.

Are there alternatives to ChatGPT Plus?

There are many alternatives to ChatGPT in the market today. Even with competitors the lead that ChatGPT has on them is hard to dispute. Google Bard recently added the ability to do computer programming, but in use cases like using it as a reference for business intelligence tools like Power BI it provides a lot of incorrect information. Most likely this will improve over time, but it’s not there yet.

Bing Chat uses the GPT-4 model which is the same as OpenAI Plus. It’s available at chat.bing.com. The drawback is that answers have been designed to be very brief. Microsoft has integrated Bing Chat into their Microsoft Edge Browser and the ability to generate long form text like blog articles, e-mails, and stories but the answers are not as in-depth as interacting directly with ChatGPT Plus from OpenAI.

Products like Jasper.AI have recently come to market that are targeted towards content creators. Jasper specifically charges by word generated per month, but is designed to help bloggers and marketeers. Compared to the per word model, we prefer ChatGPT plus single monthly rate to generate as much text and answer as many questions as we want it.

Conclusion

It is going to be up to each individual user to determine if access to better information, less downtime and other benefits are worth the $20 monthly fee. If you’re a heavy user of the service, we think it’s more than worth the money. Its exceptionally useful for business purposes and is a productivity multiplier when ChatGPT is used effectively.

If you’re on the fence about paying the fee, outside the service area, or have specialized use cases, we recommend looking at ChatGPT alternatives. Some are free, have access to the internet, and others cost more but are more business and content creator focused.