After relying almost exclusively on Doubao for more than a year, Li Si is considering whether to abandon China’s most popular AI chatbot.
The 20-year-old university student says chatbots have become significantly less reliable in recent weeks. “Now I forget everything within 10 minutes, and data processing has become extremely slow.”
Her complaints echo a growing wave of user complaints online as ByteDance, which owns Doubao and also owns TikTok, rolls out subscription plans for the chatbot ranging from 688 yuan to 5,088 yuan ($97 to $713) a year. Premium tier will be available later this month.
This pricing puts Doubao alongside rival premium plans such as Kimi, ChatGPT, and Google Gemini, and has sparked heated debate across Chinese social media. Proponents argue that the paid version offers faster inference and more advanced models, while critics question whether the new product simply repackages previously free features.
Related topics on microblogging platform Weibo attracted 370 million views and 147,000 discussions. Some of the most-liked comments included “I’ll uninstall it permanently” and “I understand charging if you can provide extra value.”
But for Lee, the subscription fee itself is not the main concern. “If it gets charged, just look for another charger,” she said. “What I’m more concerned about is the time and effort it takes to get used to new tools.”
ByteDance did not respond to Sixth Tone’s request for an interview, instead referring to a June 3 statement posted on WeChat.
In a statement, the company pledged to continue offering core features such as search, writing, image generation, audio and video chat for free to all users. It also said that the new Pro level, which is still being tested, will be targeted at professionals with tools for data analysis, software development, financial analysis, and scientific research.
Despite the backlash, Doubao remains China’s leading AI assistant, with 345 million monthly active users and over 140 million daily active users as of March. Users opened the app an average of 54.8 times a month in the first quarter, compared to rival Deep Seek’s 41.7 times, according to data from market research firm Quest Mobile. However, the app generates less than 1 million yuan in daily revenue, mainly from e-commerce fees, highlighting its limited ability to monetize its large user base.
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Wang Shiyan, a former intern at a Chinese tech company, worries that if China’s most popular AI assistant succeeds in convincing users to pay, other industries may not be far behind.
So far, Beijing-based Moonshot AI has introduced a paid tier for its chatbot Kimi, but DeepSeek, Tencent and Alibaba have yet to launch comparable consumer subscription services.
That’s why Wang believes Doubo’s timing is premature. He argued that while chatbots are positioned for the mass market, they still don’t deliver the level of performance users expect from paid services. “We got a little overconfident and lost sight of what users actually needed,” she says.
But industry observer Zhang Shule sees this change as inevitable. He said that as computing costs continue to rise, AI companies will increasingly adopt the same “free basic, paid premium” model that has existed throughout China’s internet space for years.
“The era of free lunches is coming to an end,” he says.
Qi Tao, associate professor of philosophy at Fudan University in Shanghai, believes the debate extends beyond business models. If the most powerful AI tools increasingly move behind paywalls, existing inequalities could widen, he argued.
“For wealthy users, AI could be a springboard to more creative and high-value work,” Qi said. “On the other hand, people with lower incomes and less education risk becoming mere movers of data and information.”
However, younger users in China often have a more realistic view. He Xin, a university student in Shanghai, said he understands why AI companies introduce paid tiers, even if he has no plans to join Doubao himself. The free version covers most of her needs, but for more advanced writing tasks she uses ChatGPT.
Based on his previous internship at ByteDance, he suspects companies will intentionally tamper with free products. “That would be like shooting yourself in the foot,” she said. Instead, she expects AI companies to continue offering free features while reserving cutting-edge features for paid users.
“If someone has a stronger, more demanding need for AI, it makes sense to charge for it. Otherwise, there’s no way to recover the R&D costs,” she said.
Additional reporting: Mao Rui; Editor: Apurva.
(Header image: VCG)
