In defense of not paying for AI

The free versions of ChatGPT and Claude are fine, no matter what AI boosters tell you.

[Photo: PM Images/Getty Images]

If you don’t want to be left behind by the AI revolution, you really need to start paying for it.

At least that’s become the common refrain among some AI enthusiasts, who seem intent on instilling FOMO in less technical users. The free versions of ChatGPT and Claude, they say, are woefully inadequate if you want to understand where things are headed—so stop being a cheapskate and hand over your $20 (or $200) a month like the rest of us.

“Judging AI based on free-tier ChatGPT is like evaluating the state of smartphones by using a flip phone,” HyperWrite CEO Matt Shumer recently wrote in a widely shared essay on AI’s impact. “The people paying for the best tools, and actually using them daily for real work, know what’s coming.”

I’m giving you permission to safely ignore this advice, and to not feel bad about it. While an AI subscription might make sense if you’re running into specific frustrations with the free versions, you can still get plenty of mileage without paying, and learn a lot about the state of AI in the process. Don’t be frightened into buying something that hasn’t actually proven its value to you.

The state of the art is still free

One way that AI boosters try to scare you into paying for AI is by arguing that the free versions are already obsolete, so any negative impressions you might’ve gotten from them are misguided.

“Part of the problem is that most people are using the free version of AI tools,” Shumer wrote in his essay. “The free version is over a year behind what paying users have access to.”

This claim is provably false:

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