Most people using AI use it for free… over 95% of users.
But their cashflow and profitability is from paid subscriptions.
For AI, that is just now starting.
And now AI is starting to get more aggressive.
- OpenAI/Chat GPT
OpenAI doesn’t regularly disclose exact current paid numbers, but multiple credible reports give estimates:
- 35 million paid subscribers around mid-2025 (about 5% of total users).
This includes “Plus” and higher-tier plans reported in Reuters/industry data.
- Projection: OpenAI aims for 220 million paid subscribers by 2030, which is 8.5% of their forecast user base.
- Google Gemini Paid
- Some analytics sources show 35 million daily active users.
Google hasn’t publicly broken out how many of those users are paying.
- Gemini Advanced / Google one AI Premium is a paid tier within the Google One Subscription ecosystem (similar price tier to ChatGPT Plus), but no official breakdown of paying users has been disclosed.
- xAI’s Grok Paid
- Grok itself has been free or ties to X Premium/X Premium+ access and xAI has not reported a standalone subscriber count for Grok.
- It’s estimated to be a few million, but no official paid user breakdown exists.
Action:
Can your product or service be on a subscription basis with recurring income?
Do you already have a subscription program?
My team at CDMG are subscription experts. We can launch or take you to the next level.
Call Michael at 615-933-4646 or email him at [email protected].