OpenAI is rapidly expanding its affordable ChatGPT Go plan, priced under $5, to 16 new countries in Asia. This subscription tier is currently available in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam.
In some countries, such as Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, and Pakistan, the company allows users to pay in local currencies. In the remaining countries, users will have to pay a price of approximately $5 in USD, but the final cost will depend on local taxes.
ChatGPT Go has higher daily limits for daily messages, image generation, and file or image uploads. This plan also offers twice the memory as the free plan and allows for more personalized responses.
OpenAI said the expansion comes as the company grows its weekly active user base in Southeast Asia by up to four times. The scheme was first launched in India in August, followed by Indonesia in September. OpenAI reports that paid subscribers in India have doubled since its launch.
OpenAI is competing with Google to make affordable AI chatbot subscription plans available in more regions. Google launched a similarly priced Google AI Plus plan in Indonesia in September and has since expanded to more than 40 countries. At the Plus tier, users get access to Google’s most advanced AI model, Gemini 2.5 Pro, as well as creative tools for image and video creation such as Flow (for design), Whisk (for image remixing), Veo 3 Fast (for video creation), and 200 GB of cloud storage.
This expansion comes at a pivotal moment for OpenAI. At the DevDay 2025 conference in San Francisco this week, CEO Sam Altman announced that ChatGPT now has 800 million weekly active users worldwide, up from 700 million in August. The company also announced a major platform shift, introducing an app that works directly within ChatGPT and transforms chatbots into an app store-like ecosystem with partners like Spotify, Zillow, and Coursera.
“The evolution we’re looking to make over the next few years is that ChatGPT itself becomes more like an operating system that applications can use,” ChatGPT head Nick Turley told TechCrunch about the development on the sidelines of the event. “If you want to write, there’s an app for that. If you want to write code, there’s an app for that. If you want to manipulate a product or service, there’s an app for that.”
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Despite OpenAI’s rapid growth and recent valuation of $500 billion, the company reported an operating loss of $7.8 billion in the first half of 2025 as it continues to spend heavily on AI infrastructure. The company’s affordable subscription tiers, such as ChatGPT Go, are seen as a key step toward achieving profitability while expanding its global user base, especially in high-growth markets in Asia where both OpenAI and Google are aggressively competing for market share.
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