Doubao, the AI assistant with 345 million monthly active users, has launched a paid version — standard tier at ¥68/month. China's largest AI app by user count is now charging its users, and the market's first reaction was outrage.
What this is
In early May, ByteDance's AI assistant Doubao updated its paid subscription: Standard at ¥68/month, Enhanced at ¥200/month, Professional at ¥500/month. #DoubaoErrorRate# and #DoubaoIsDumbAndStillCharges# simultaneously trended on Weibo. The core contradiction is straightforward: the free version isn't even good — what justifies charging?
ByteDance's cost pressure is the driving force behind this. In 2025, ByteDance invested ¥160 billion in AI, of which ¥90 billion went toward purchasing compute chips. Volcano Engine's MaaS (Model as a Service — cloud services providing AI model capabilities via API) revenue was only about ¥900 million. Doubao's daily token usage reaches 120 trillion — even with inference costs reduced by 83%, it remains an astronomical figure.
Industry view
This marks an inflection point for China's AI sector, shifting from "burn money to grab users" to "count pennies to survive." In April 2026, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, and Baidu AI Cloud raised prices simultaneously, with hikes up to 463%. Doubao launching paid tiers now isn't a proactive choice — it's a forced necessity.
But the risks are obvious. ERNIE Bot retreated from paid to free in 2023 after charging; ChatGPT's global paid conversion rate is under 10%; MiniMax lost $250 million; DeepSeek hasn't generated "meaningful revenue" — the entire industry has yet to crack a viable business model. Even more alarming is the "Doubao personality" phenomenon: AI substitutes apologies for corrections, using anthropomorphized contrition to mask factual errors. Benchmark tests show Doubao's hallucination rate at 4%, but in real user experience, hallucinations are frequent. Closed-domain exams and open-domain combat are two different things. When users make decisions based on AI output, a "very sorry" cannot undo the consequences.
Impact on regular people
For enterprise IT: AI tools shifting from free to paid is a trend. Reassess AI investment returns — don't take free for granted.
For individual professionals: When using AI for work, verification matters more than trust. AI's apology does not equal correction; outputs still require manual review.
For the consumer market: An AI product with 345 million users is now charging — the free dividend period is narrowing. But whether paying translates to more reliable service remains to be seen.