ChatGPT subscription guide

What are the actual ways to get Plus?

Three, and they are not variations of the same thing. First: subscribe yourself with a card the payment processor accepts. Second: have a third party place the top-up against your own account. Third: buy access to an account somebody else owns.

The first and second leave the subscription on an account you control. The third does not, and that difference outweighs every price comparison — on a shared account you cannot change the password, cannot see who else is signed in, and lose everything the day the owner stops paying.

How much does it cost, really?

Self-subscribing costs the sticker price plus two things people forget: tax, which depends on the billing address on the card, and the currency spread plus any cross-border fee your issuer charges. Check the number on OpenAI’s own billing page at the moment you pay rather than trusting any figure quoted on a site like this one — including ours.

Through us the sticker price is the official one — we do not mark it up. It is charged in CNY at a fixed published rate, and the order page shows the exact amount before you pay. Nothing is added afterwards.

Do you need my password?

No — and we want to be precise rather than reassuring, because the honest answer is not simply "less than a password". What the upstream top-up needs is a session credential exported from your browser. It carries your logged-in state, which means it can read your conversations and reach account settings without going through two-factor. Treating that as harmless because it is "not a password" would be wrong.

What we do with it: forward it once to place the request, never write it to the database, never put it in a log. What you can do afterwards: open settings and log out of all devices. That invalidates the credential you handed over, immediately, without needing us.

What happens if payment or activation fails?

Two failures are worth separating. If the charge went through on your card but nothing happened on the account, that is between you and the issuer — do not immediately pay again, because a duplicate charge is much harder to unwind than a delayed one.

If the order was placed with us and the activation did not complete, the refund is automatic and you do not have to ask. That rule is written out in the refund policy, in a table, with the timing for each case.

The subscription disappeared. What do I check?

Check in this order: whether you are signed into the same account (multiple Google or Microsoft identities are the most common cause by a wide margin), then whether the billing page shows an active period, then whether the last charge actually cleared.

Only after those three is it worth contacting anyone. Most of the reports we see resolve at step one.

What does buying it here actually get me?

You skip the card problem and pay in CNY. The subscription still sits on your own account, renewal and cancellation stay with you, and we do not hold anything afterwards.

What it does not get you: an account, a discount on OpenAI’s side, or any influence over OpenAI’s own rules. This is a setup service and we are not affiliated with OpenAI.

Where this leaves you

If the card is the part that is blocking you, that is the part we sell — see the ChatGPT plan for the price and what it needs from you. If it is not blocking you, subscribing yourself is cheaper and we would rather say so.

Last read through on 2026-09-05. Prices and plan names on the vendors’ own pages change; this guide points at where to look rather than repeating figures that go stale.