ChatGPT’s next wave of AI features will be freakishly expensive

By Nadeem Sarwar Published September 22, 2025

OpenAI is eying a bunch of new features for ChatGPT users that will be rolled out in the coming weeks, but you might want to start saving up for them. OpenAI chief Sam Altman says the upcoming features are going to be pretty intensive on the computing resources, and as such, they could cost a pretty penny, both in terms of subscriptions as well as standalone fees.

“Over the next few weeks, we are launching some new compute-intensive offerings. Because of the associated costs, some features will initially only be available to Pro subscribers, and some new products will have additional fees,” Altman wrote in a post on X.

To recall, ChatGPT is free for all users, but it offers increased usage and exclusive features with the Plus and Pro plans. The Plus subscription costs $20 per month and offers higher limits for image generation, file uploads, access to the latest GPT-5 model, custom chatbots, and ChatGPT Agent.

The Pro bundle, priced at $200 per month, offers unlimited GPT-5 usage as well as access to GPT-5 Pro. Additionally, it raises the limits for multi-modal input, Sora video generation, and ChatGPT Agent usage.

It’s pretty surprising to see that the next wave of ChatGPT features could be so demanding on computing resources that you will need a $200 monthly subscription and still may have to pay an extra fee on top. So far, the company hasn’t dropped any official teasers yet.

As per Reuters, OpenAI is working on an AI-powered web browser. “OpenAI’s browser is designed to keep some user interactions within a ChatGPT-like native chat interface instead of clicking through to websites, two of the sources said,” the outlet reported exclusively.

It will reportedly be built atop the Chromium engine and will take an approach similar to Perplexity’s Comet browser. Another leak mentions a “cloud browser” that will play alongside GPT Agent and will likely help automate tasks.