I stopped paying $20 for ChatGPT Plus (and maybe you should, too). Here's why

Let's face it: ChatGPT plans are ridiculous. Which one do you choose:

• The Free option's 'advanced features' (like file analysis) limits are so low you can essentially say they're not included at all.
• The Plus subscription for $20 has decent limits, but it feels like you're participating in a beta test and in addition paying for it for some reason.
• Pro for $200? We'll get to that later.

The main point is that ChatGPT's paid 'advanced features' aren't valuable enough to cost $20 — for several reasons.

Code? It's pretty bad at complex tasks if you know what you're doing (and even worse if you don't). It's more or less OK for simpler tasks, but those are pretty covered by the free plan.

Research? That's literally the worst thing you can use an AI chatbot for. Hallucinations make you do more research to validate the data ChatGPT is lulling you with the ultimate confidence.

Analyzing data? It follows instructions poorly, and tries to gaslight you about the tools and methods it's using when you notice they are not right. And yet again, hallucinations: after some practice you can predict and feel when they're coming, but it takes time and effort to locate and mitigate them. For complex tasks, using the right combination of Python, Pandas, and machine learning algorithms does the job much better, albeit sometimes slower. And if you're no coder, you can always ask a free version of ChatGPT for assistance.

Proofreading and editing texts? It's OK on a free plan, and I prefer to use my own head and a bit of DeepL for this anyway.

Advanced voice? It's cool, but that's it — for work purposes, it's useless; and for leisure I have lots of people to talk to for free (they're also smarter than ChatGPT, and have a personality).

In addition, one of the most annoying things is what users call 'lobotomizing'. From time to time OpenAI rolls out an 'upgrade' that makes some part of ChatGPT dumber. One day — and the day before that, and the month before that — it can do something rather well, and the next it produces utter gibberish within the same task, no matter how you juggle with prompts. When you're at work, you expect some predictability from your tools, don't you?

Now back to $200-ish Pro: no limits at all — but the product is the same with the same caveats.

It's not a matter of skill. I've been using various LLMs, AI and ML tools long enough, and I've even written a tutorial on how to squeeze the most out of ChatGPT itself. It's just an unfinished product in its early stages — a live beta-test, as I said — and it's not bad; I just ain't paying for this.

So if you're wondering if ChatGPT Plus is worth it, it's not. Only if it amuses you enough — and more than, say, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which costs the same.