ChatGPT and gpt-4o are different things. ChatGPT is an application built around a LLM like gpt-4o. It does some retrieval and has custom prompts, etc. They’re not going charging you by token because some of those tokens are search results and their own prompts, which are out of your control, so it makes sense for them to charge a flat fee.
> That said, there are now many open source tools that allow you to plug in an API key and get a similar experience.
Yup - and the price differentials are huge. API key and deepseek…you’re spending cents a month.
So the subscriptions are mostly creature comforts like voice and websearch etc