In AI, $20/Month is the New Free Tier

Let's stop pretending $20/month gets you professional-grade AI access. That era is over. Running LLM inference is expensive, and the honeymoon phase is over.

The $20 Illusion

Every major AI company has a $20/month plan:

• OpenAI ChatGPT Plus
• Anthropic Claude Pro
• Google Gemini Advanced
• Cursor
• And countless others

Initially, these felt like unlimited flatrates. Behind the scenes, the costs were clearly unsustainable.

The Real Professional Tiers

Now we're seeing the actual pricing emerge:

• OpenAI: $200/month for ChatGPT Pro (the only tier with sane limits for professional use)
• Anthropic: $100-200/month for their max plan
• Google: $250/month for Gemini Ultra
• Cursor: Quietly shifting to per-API-call pricing. Want max mode? Pay per call. Some models are max-mode exclusive. The founder is considering removing "slow requests" entirely.
• Windsurf: Already switched to API-based pricing

What This Means

The $20 plans are becoming what free tiers used to be: heavily throttled, good for casual use but not professional work. If you want:

• Latest models
• Reasonable rate limits
• Professional reliability

You're looking at $100-250/month minimum, or pay-per-API-call pricing.

This isn't necessarily bad. It's just reality catching up with the economics of AI.

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