Buyer beware: ChatGPT's new affordable Go plan is a bad deal compared to Gemini

If you’ve followed business news over the past few weeks, you may know that AI companies are financially suffering in spite of the investor euphoria and optimism. Companies with deep pockets like Google and Meta have been spared the worst, but startups like OpenAI are banking on a continuous stream of funding from those very tech giants to stay afloat. And in response, OpenAI appears to be turning to a familiar solution from the tech playbook: advertising in ChatGPT.

That’s right, your ChatGPT chats will soon display ads along the bottom of the screen. Most users, including myself, are understandably upset by this news. But what makes it worse is that OpenAI isn’t stopping at the free tier but also alienating the people who are willing to pay for the new $8 per month Go tier.

So while we were initially quite optimistic about the new affordable ChatGPT Go subscription, I’m not thrilled about keeping the subscription, especially as Google’s new AI Plus tier might undercut it in terms of both features and price.

Ads in ChatGPT, and why they’re problematic

According to OpenAI, ads you’ll soon see in ChatGPT will appear alongside the chatbot’s responses and won’t affect the actual answers you get. Ask a question about smartphones and ChatGPT won’t tell you to buy a Samsung device just because the company paid off OpenAI. This is certainly the best case scenario — ads embedded within responses would be much more effective but will make the chatbot’s responses far less trustworthy.

However, that doesn’t mean ChatGPT won’t show targeted ads — in fact, we know the opposite is true. Like any modern ad platform, relevance is the entire point. If you use the chatbot for personal finance advice, it’s easy to imagine being inundated with sponsored credit cards, investment apps, or loan services. OpenAI could block problematic categories like health, but self-regulation has rarely worked in the tech industry. And the more users rely on ChatGPT for sensitive, high-intent queries, the more valuable those ad placements become.

You could draw parallels between ads in ChatGPT and sponsored links in Google Search based on the above screenshot, but I think the comparison quickly falls apart. A search engine doesn’t respond like it’s your friend or pretend to understand your goals. It simply presents a list of links, and sponsored results appear in the same format.

ChatGPT, on the other hand, has developed a reputation for being conversational and even empathetic. OpenAI says ads will just sit distinctly beside responses but conceptual screenshots already make it look like an endorsement. People are more likely to trust a friendly recommendation than something vying for attention online.

That said, I know OpenAI is stuck between a rock and a hard place. It has to monetize its service somehow, especially since less than five percent of its user base is willing to pay for the chatbot. But ChatGPT Plus’ $20-per-month price tag has always been a major part of that problem. It’s simply too expensive for a product most people use casually. OpenAI appears to have realized that, though, and it is likely why the company introduced the cheaper ChatGPT Go tier last year. The only problem? It’s also getting ads, while Google’s Gemini isn’t.

ChatGPT Go vs Google AI Plus: The choice is clear

Both ChatGPT Go and Google AI Plus debuted outside the US, targeted at developing economies with lower monthly price tags. On paper, both subscriptions promise decent value for the money. But now that they’re available globally and in the US, the value proposition has considerably shifted.

ChatGPT grants you a larger context window and 10x the message and file upload limit. However, you only get access to GPT-5.2 Instant, with the larger Thinking model locked behind the full ChatGPT Plus subscription. Back when the Go tier launched, you got access to the same model as Plus users.

Gemini AI Plus, meanwhile, costs the same but offers higher usage limits for Gemini 3 Pro in addition to Gemini 3 Flash. You also get access to Veo 3.1 for AI video generation and Nano Banana for image gen. But most importantly, this $8 per month subscription bundles 200GB of cloud storage for your Google account. Better yet, you can share the storage with five other users via family sharing.

If those differences weren’t already enough to convince you, there’s one more area where the two offerings diverge sharply: ads. With ChatGPT, advertising is coming to both the free and Go tiers.

Google, by contrast, has publicly made a point of saying it doesn’t plan to put ads into Gemini. In fact, even Gemini’s free tier won’t get in-app ads anytime soon. This is not surprising — Google’s core business already makes vast amounts of money from ads in search and across its ecosystem.

OpenAI also increasingly looks like the odd one out. Anthropic’s Claude took a direct shot at the AI startup with a Super Bowl ad that openly mocked the idea of ads showing up inside a chatbot. The jab clearly landed. OpenAI’s Sam Altman insisted the ad was misleading, but the damage is done. Rivals are now using ChatGPT ads as a punchline and committing to not follow suit.

Will people stop using ChatGPT? Likely not, but I cannot recommend paying for the Go tier given that Google’s AI Plus delivers better value at the same price point. I’ll still use ChatGPT here and there, until the ads are intrusive enough for me to consider jumping ship to Gemini wholesale.