OpenAI's latest pricing strategy has completely lost the plot. Yesterday, there was a leak that OpenAI plans to charge up to $20,000 a month for "AI agents". More specifically:
Their “high-income knowledge worker” agent, will reportedly be priced at $2,000 a month.
A software developer agent will to cost $10,000 a month.
A "PhD-level research" agent will cost $20,000 a month.
$10,000 a month for an “AI software developer”? Pardon me, but that’s higher than the salary of most human software developers.
Also, why would I pay $10,000 a month for a software agent, when you have perfectly capable agents such as Cline (which has many forks that are gaining traction quite rapidly) for much less?
I mean I get it; OpenAI “lost roughly $5 billion last year after paying for costs related to running its services and other expenses”, according to the TechCrunch piece.
I don’t think you’ll cover that loss by charging and arm and a leg for AI Agents. Why not learn something from DeepSeek and make your algorithms cheaper to run? Unfortuantely, I don’t think “Open” AI is incentivized (at all) to do this. With Trump’s recent announcement about the $500 billion AI investment + OpenAI’s partnership with SoftBank, the theme of the day is: Burn cash.
If you pay $10,000 for an AI agent from OpenAI, ask yourself: Aren’t you better off hiring 3 human software devs who are “powered by” more “traditional” AI? I think latter is a much better choice, but time will tell.