How OpenAI Doubled Subscribers by Rethinking Price
Co-Founder
On August 19, 2025, OpenAI launched a special plan for India, priced at just ₹399. A month later, the head of ChatGPT, Nick Turley, announced the result: they had more than doubled their subscribers in India.
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— Nick Turley (@nickaturley) September 23, 2025
Indonesia is the second country where we’ve launched ChatGPT Go, after India — where total ChatGPT subscribers more than doubled since its launch a month ago.
The experiment was a massive success. It is a playbook every SaaS founder needs to see. A masterclass in how to grow in a market that thinks differently about price. Lets dig into why a one-size-fits-all price does not work and how OpenAI got it right.
Why a $20 plan is a $70 problem in India
ChatGPT’s standard subscription is $20 a month in the US. In India, when you convert that to the local currency, the actual plan costs about ₹1,999. Seems fair right? But here is the catch. How much does a bottle of water cost in the US? Around $1.60 on average. When you convert this to INR, it should be around ₹140 (1 USD = 89 INR). But a one-liter bottle of water costs only ₹20 in India. Why is it 7 times cheaper than the direct currency conversion? Because the purchasing power of the USA and India is different.
To make it simple, think about the barter system we had earlier, you exchange things of the same value for other things of the same value. In the US, you can exchange about 13 bottles of water to get a ChatGPT subscription ($20 / $1.60). But someone in India has to exchange nearly 100 bottles of water to get the same ChatGPT subscription (₹1,999 / ₹20).
What ChatGPT has executed is a simple idea. Set prices by country so the local price feels the same as it does in your home market. You adjust for what people can actually buy with their local income.
Think of it like this
- A plan is $20 in the US
- In a country where incomes are lower, that $20 can feel like $70
- With PPP, you might price it at $6 to $8 so it feels like $20 to a local
This isn’t a new trick. Big companies have been doing this for years. Look at Netflix. For years, Netflix struggled in India because its premium prices didn’t fit the market. But after they adjusted the prices in late 2021, the results were immediate: revenue in India grew by 24% and user engagement jumped by nearly 30% the very next year.
The strategy was so successful that Netflix used India as its playbook for cutting prices in over 100 other countries. Today, India is Netflix’s second-largest market for subscriber growth. Similarly, giants like Google and Microsoft have different pricing for different countries, which is exactly what OpenAI is doing now. This is a proven strategy, but somehow, not many founders think about it.
So, the bottom line is, if you are not getting sales from India, stop blaming Indians. It is you and your pricing that is holding them back from subscribing.
A new plan for a new market
So, why not just cut the price of the main $20 plan to $5?
Because it’s not sustainable. The cost of running these AI models is incredibly high, mostly due to expensive GPUs. A simple price cut would lose money and devalue the premium plan for everyone else.
Instead, OpenAI created a new tier: ChatGPT Go. It was the perfect middle ground. A win-win.
The offer was simple: a “10x improvement” over the free version. For ₹399, users got
- 10x More Usage: Ten times more messages, images, and file uploads
- Access to GPT-5: Use of OpenAI’s latest and best model
- Longer Memory: The AI remembers more of your conversation
- Advanced Tools: Access to data analysis and custom GPTs
They also made it easy to pay. The plan was priced in Indian Rupees and supported UPI, India’s most popular payment app.
Why India, why now?
OpenAI’s focus on India was a calculated move.
- It is their second-largest market and one of the fastest-growing.
- CEO Sam Altman believes India could eventually become their #1 market
- Nearly half of all users in India are under 24
The new plan was aimed for students, freelancers, and small businesses who found the main plan too expensive
Why you are leaving money on the table?
OpenAI’s story has a clear lesson for the rest of us.
- One Price, Many Worlds: A single USD price doesn’t work. It ignores the reality of your customers and makes your product feel expensiv and out of reach.
- Unlocking Hidden Markets: Your current pricing is not affordable for over 85% of internet users. Adapting your prices to fit each market could unlock your next major wave of growth
- Building Trust: Local pricing and payments show you respect a market. It tells people, ‘We built this for you’, and that build real loyalty.
How to setup geographical pricing for your product?
The lesson from OpenAI is clear. Stripe says that enabling location-based pricing on the checkout page itself can add 17% more revenue, and many companies see up to a 35% increase in revenue by launching in multiple countries.
But let’s be honest, doing this yourself is a headache. How do you manage prices across dozens of countries? How do you figure out the right price for Brazil, Nigeria, or Vietnam? How do you prevent this from being abused using VPNs?
That is where tools like ParityDeals.
- Automated Parity Pricing: ParityDeals takes the complexity out of localization. Instead of doing all the research yourself, ParityDeals platform helps you set smart, region specific prices based on economic data.
- Seamless Implementation: You don’t need to be a global finance expert. We make it easy to set up a world class pricing strategy.
- Built-in fraud detection: ParityDeals has built-in security features like VPN and proxy server protection, so only people who are from the eligible countries will see the pricing.
