ChatGPT Plus costs US$20 a month, almost NT$8000 a year. Is it worth it? For heavy users, yes. But not everyone needs it.
Why I Upgraded to Plus
The free plan hit a wall after two weeks.
Every afternoon, my GPT-5.5 quota would be gone. Once it dropped back to GPT-4o, the quality drop was obvious. Ask the same question, and GPT-5.5 gives a precise answer with context. GPT-4o gives you a blob of technically-correct text that misses the point.
It feels like getting used to an automatic car, then suddenly being thrown back into a manual. You can still drive, but you know there is a smoother option.
After subscribing to Plus, I can basically use GPT-5.5 as much as I want. Thirty to forty conversations a day almost never hit the ceiling. When I use it heavily in a short burst, it may slow down a little, but it usually recovers after a few minutes.
What Do You Actually Get With Plus?
The differences you feel every day:
GPT-5.5 quota is the biggest difference. The free plan downgrades after a dozen or so conversations. Plus almost never blocks you. If you use ChatGPT as a work tool, the gap is huge.
Image generation no longer feels like rationing. The free plan tops out after three to five images a day. With Plus, I have generated more than a dozen images in a day without being stopped. People making social content will feel this immediately.
You can build your own GPTs. For example, you can make a GPT dedicated to proofreading Traditional Chinese. Set the rules once, then every time you drop in an article, it checks against those rules. The free plan does not have this feature.
Advanced data analysis has way more headroom. Upload Excel or CSV files and let ChatGPT analyze them or draw charts. The free plan has usage limits; Plus is almost unrestricted in normal use. It is very practical if you review social metrics every week and want to spot trends quickly.
Voice conversation quota is higher. On your phone, you can talk to ChatGPT directly and have it answer by voice. It is especially useful while driving or doing housework. The free plan has less voice quota.
Coding gets better too. GPT-5.5 integrates Codex, and its coding performance is noticeably better than earlier generations. Simple debugging, scripts, and technical questions are fine inside ChatGPT. Complex large projects are still steadier with Claude Code, but ChatGPT is already very usable as a coding assistant. GitHub Copilot is essentially ChatGPT under the hood, so going straight to OpenAI’s own Codex usually cuts out the middleman.
The Downsides of Plus
Paying does not mean everything is fixed.
I still can’t rein it in. Ask for 300 words, and it gives you 800. Tell it not to add subheadings, and it adds them anyway. This problem is the same on the free plan and Plus because it is a model behavior issue, not a plan issue. I still give long-form writing to Claude.
The occasional slowdown is frustrating. It rarely happens, but when you are rushing a draft and get rate-limited, those few minutes of waiting feel much longer.
US$20 a month is not pocket change. Especially if you also subscribe to Claude Pro and Perplexity Pro, AI tool subscriptions can easily add up to more than NT$2000 a month.
Who Should Subscribe, and Who Should Skip It?
Three rough buckets:
Subscribe if you use ChatGPT for more than half an hour every day. At that point it is already part of your workflow, and the free-plan limits will get in your way every day. The US$20 buys you smoothness, and the time it saves is absolutely worth more than US$20.
Optional if you use it three or four times a week. The free plan is honestly enough. But if you often still want to keep going after the free quota runs out, that is the moment to subscribe.
Skip it if you use it fewer than ten times a month. The free plan is completely enough. Save the money.
How Should You Choose Between Go, Plus, and Pro?
In 2026, OpenAI added a Go plan between Free and Plus. It costs US$8/month, roughly NT$270. Go gives more GPT-4o quota than the free plan, but GPT-5.5 usage is still limited. If you only use the free plan a few times a day, you can stay free. If you’re burning through Go’s quota every day, it still won’t be enough; just go to Plus. Go is better for people who use ChatGPT occasionally but do not want to get blocked by the free plan.
Pro costs about US$200 a month. What do you get? Higher GPT-5.5 limits, advanced reasoning models such as o1-pro, and slightly faster responses. But on Plus, I rarely hit the limit. For most people, the extra Pro quota will sit unused.
o1-pro’s reasoning ability is genuinely strong. It performs better than regular GPT-5.5 on complex math problems and programming debugging. But everyday use does not need reasoning at that level, and the frequency is too low to justify spending another US$180 every month.
Bottom line: Plus is enough for the vast majority of people. Pro is for people who use AI as a primary production tool and run hundreds of conversations a day.
Penchan’s Experience
I’m currently subscribed to ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, and Perplexity Pro at the same time, roughly NT$2000 a month. The three tools have different jobs every day: ChatGPT for ideation + quick Q&A + image generation, Claude for long-form writing + code, and Perplexity for research + Deep Research.
If I could only pick one on a tight budget, I would choose Claude Pro first. The long-form writing quality gap is something the other tools just can’t make up for. But if I only cared about general coverage, ChatGPT Plus is the broadest option.
I tried Pro for one month and went back to Plus. I could not use up the extra quota, o1-pro came up too rarely, and the extra US$180 a month just didn’t pencil out.
FAQ
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Further Reading
— Penchan