OpenAI is quickly expanding its affordable ChatGPT Go package, which costs less than $5 a month, to 16 new countries in Asia. The subscription package is now available in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Timor-Leste and Vietnam.
In some countries, including Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines and Pakistan, the company allows users to pay in local currencies. In other countries, users must pay in U.S. dollars, and the price is around $5, with the final cost varying based on local taxes.
ChatGPT Go offers users higher daily limits, including messaging, image generation, and file or image upload. This plan also offers double the memory capacity of the free plan, allowing for more personalized responses.
According to OpenAI, the expansion comes as the company's weekly active user base in Southeast Asia has grown by as much as fourfold. The package was initially launched in India in August, followed by Indonesia in September. OpenAI reports that the number of paying subscribers in India has doubled since its launch.
OpenAI is competing with Google to launch affordable AI chatbot subscription packages in more regions. Google launched its similarly priced Google AI Plus package in Indonesia in September and has since expanded to more than 40 countries. The Plus plan gives users access to Gemini 2.5 Pro, Google's most advanced AI model, as well as creative tools for image and video creation - including Flow (a design tool), Whisk (an image remixing tool) and Veo 3 Fast (a video creation tool) - and 200GB of cloud storage.
This expansion comes at a critical time for OpenAI. At this week's DevDay 2025 conference in San Francisco, CEO Sam Altman announced that ChatGPT has reached 800 million weekly active users worldwide, up from 700 million in August. The company also launched a major platform shift, introducing apps that run directly inside ChatGPT, transforming the chatbot into an app store-like ecosystem with partners including Spotify, DoorDash, and Uber.
"The evolution we're trying to achieve over the next few years is to make ChatGPT itself more like an operating system, where users can use various applications," ChatGPT head Nick Turley told TechCrunch during the event. "If you want to write, there are apps for it. If you want to program, there are apps for it. If you want to interact with goods and services, there are apps for it."
Despite OpenAI's rapid growth and recent valuation of $500 billion, the company reported an operating loss of $7.8 billion in the first half of 2025 as it continues to invest heavily in AI infrastructure. Affordable subscription packages like ChatGPT Go are seen as an important step towards achieving profitability while expanding its global user base, especially in the high-growth markets of Asia, where OpenAI and Google are fiercely competing for market share.