The bean bag charging shoe has never fallen, and related speculations have always existed, and there has been a lot of hot discussion recently. To this end, Doubao today released the "Instructions on the upcoming professional version of Doubao", mentioning that the Doubao functions that users use daily, including search Q&A, writing and drawing, and voice and video conversations, will remain the current free service.


Among them, the professional version launched to meet the productivity needs of professional groups will include professional services such as software development, data analysis, professional design, process automation, financial analysis, and scientific research. The professional version of the service will also be free within a certain amount.

It is understood that Doubao Professional Edition is still in the testing phase. It was previously predicted that Beanbao would officially start charging in late June, but there was no official response from Beanbao.

However, when opening the Doubao app, a reporter from the "Kechuangban Daily" found that above the dialogue entrance, a series of tasks such as "ask before buying Doubao, AI creation, Doubao P-picture, help me write, AI podcast, video call, in-depth research, photo Q&A, photo animation, PPT generation, Seedance2.0, music generation" etc.

Among them, such as PPT generation, data analysis, etc., are likely to be included in the scope of value-added paid services in the future.


Why do you charge for bean bags?

There has been an ongoing discussion about charging for bean bags. Whether it is "the price is a bit expensive" or "it depends on your needs" or "the wool comes from the sheep" or "high-end computing power charges are understandable, there is no free lunch in the world", there are many discussions, and Doubao is also very cautious in exploring the commercialization of subscriptions.

This caution comes partly from Doubao’s huge customer base. As of March 2026, the number of monthly active users of AI native apps has reached 440 million, of which Doubao’s monthly active users have reached 345 million, accounting for about 78%, exceeding the combined monthly active users of Qianwen (166 million) and DeepSeek (127 million).

The red envelope war during the Spring Festival brought active users to Doubao, but Doubao is worried about whether it can continue to be No. 1 in monthly active users once fees are charged. After all, Qianwen and DeepSeek, the other two top three monthly active users, do not yet have charging plans for C-side users.

But if there is no charge, how long can you burn money?

Large models are a costly business, at least for now. For Doubao, this money-burning battle is measured in days and billions. According to statistics, as of March 2026, the average daily Token usage of the Doubao model has exceeded ‌120 trillion‌, which has doubled in three months and is 1,000 times that of when it was first launched in 2024.

Some organizations have calculated that Doubao’s computing power cost per day is conservatively tens of millions of RMB. If we extrapolate based on the amount of tokens and calculate half of the input and half of the output, even with the lowest unit price model, the consumption of 120 trillion tokens will cost nearly 100 million yuan per day, and the annual computing power expenditure may exceed 30 billion yuan.


But now, in addition to models, the expansion of upstream computing power prices has also put this cost line in a "burning at both ends" situation. In the first quarter of 2026, the price of a one-year lease for Nvidia H100 GPU has soared from US$1.70/hour in October last year to US$2.35/hour in March, an increase of nearly 40%.

As for domestic leading cloud manufacturers, the prices of computing power products have also been continuously increased, ranging from 5% to 400%.

For example, Alibaba Cloud decided to adjust the prices of AI computing power, CPFS (intelligent computing version) and other services starting from April 18. Among them, computing power card products such as Pingtou Ge Zhenwu 810E increased by 5% to 34%, and the file storage product CPFS (intelligent computing version) increased by 30%. Baidu Smart Cloud announced that it will adjust the prices of AI computing power, storage and other products starting from April 18. AI computing power-related products and services will increase by about 5% to 30%, and parallel file storage will increase by about 30%.

Earlier, Tencent Cloud also stated that it would increase the price of Hunyuan series models starting from March 13, with some core products increasing by as much as 400%.

Can self-developed chips relieve stress?

Byte has always wanted to alleviate the pressure on computing power through self-developed chips, but a semiconductor practitioner told a reporter from the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that for a GPU company to launch a new card, it is conservatively estimated to take 2 to 3 years. "It takes a year to get a card. If you are really familiar with this industry, you will know that it is a very extreme thing."

Byte's chip team has also been established as early as 2021. According to previous media reports, its AI inference chip, codenamed SeedChip, plans to obtain the first batch of samples before the end of March 2026, with a target of mass production of at least 100,000 units within the year and gradually increasing to 350,000 units.

But at present, outsourcing is still the main way for Byte to supplement its computing resources. This year, ByteDance plans to invest approximately 85 billion specifically in purchasing AI chips.

Recently, there has been news about Byte's outsourcing of chips, but Byte has not publicly confirmed it.

When you open the app store, you will find that the prices of different grades previously released by Doubao have not changed. However, Byte’s anxiety about computing power continues. Experts believe that in the past month, there have been constant news about bean bag charging, and officials have also issued new news from time to time. On the one hand, the basic functions and charging system of bean bags need a period of adaptation and transformation. On the other hand, the company is also silently paying attention to consumers' attitudes towards this.

Regarding charging, major foreign manufacturers have taken the lead earlier.

For example, ChatGPT launched a paid model for the first time as early as 2023, priced at $20/month. In the same year, Anthropic's Claude also launched paid services, priced at $20/month, directly competing with ChatGPT at the time.

Later, as the price of computing power continued to rise, the subscription services of some manufacturers have increased their prices, with more and more price ranges. The price war will continue until 2026, and everyone’s pricing strategies will become more and more segmented, and the money charged for models will not be easy to earn.

Recently, Google's Gemini has also caused public opinion due to unreasonable quota settings in the latest billing model update. Google quickly remedied the issue and permanently increased the quota in core development scenarios by three times to quell the controversy.

At present, there are relatively few scenarios where users are willing to pay, such as video generation and programming productivity tools that can significantly improve efficiency. It is not yet known when Doubao, a paid boot, will be launched. However, judging from the history of subscription charging by foreign manufacturers, charging is just the beginning, and the commercialization of large models is a protracted battle.