Should I subscribe to ChatGPT Plus if we can get it for free on Bing?

> is it worth it to pay $20 [...]?

I always object when someone tells me "it's (only) X $ / Y $" and I know for me the relevant part that I want to say out loud is per month, as in, it's a subscription, not a one-time or prepaid amount. I've rid myself of all subscriptions to the degree feasible because whether it's 'little' or 'much' it is recurring, per month so there will likely come a point in the future where I'll just pay without really using that thing anymore or where I forget or can't pay or where I have to pay although that sum could better be spent elsewhere. This is my experience with all subscriptions. I'm even getting my cooking gas as 'prepaid' (i.e. I buy bottles) and I wish I could do the same with electricity and so on.

So I'm totally fine with getting a gift card or whatever you call those thingies in the supermarket where you can throw a lump (20€, 50€) at some provider (Google Play, whatever) and then get to eat up that amount (over the course of at least one year, hopefully). By comparison, I wouldn't sign up even for 1€/month even tho I might get the same for 'less' money—it won't be less, and when you listen to Marie Myers (HP CFO, [1]), corporate knows darn well this is so.

* [1](https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/04/hp_printer_lockin/)

I haven't used it through Bing recently, but last I tried, I found whatever custom prompt and/or tuning they're using made it much more cumbersome than chatgpt plus. It's far less willing to give you answers from training data, and instead wants to search the web for everything. Sometimes that's useful, when you want it to search a website for a particular piece of information, say. But most of the time I can more effectively search the web myself. Where I find gpt-4 most useful is when it can give me answers, or at least a starting point, directly from its "knowledge". (Which I would of course verify as necessary.)

Like I said though, I haven't used it recently. I've added a custom prompt to chatgpt to only search the web when necessary, if it can't provide a good answer otherwise; if you can now do something similar with Bing chat, and it respects it, maybe it will work fine. (Though when I did try it a while back, I found it more restricted in general; the web searching was just the most obvious thing.)

In my experience, what you get on Bing is quite different from what you get on ChatGTP.

I would prefer the free ChatGPT 3.5 over what I get on Bing because Bing counts down the responses and tends to give much shorter answers.

Here is an example for Bing Chat vs ChatGPT Plus: https://dropover.cloud/4e1dd7

If you don't plan to use it enough to worth $20 a month, you can purchase some API credits from OpenAI which don't expire and use it directly from their developer playground.

Actually, IIRC they will give you some free credit valid for some time when you create an account on their developer platform so you should be able to give it a try yourself.

Go to: https://platform.openai.com

Create a new free account, then head to the http://platform.openai.com/playground and try out ChatGPT with GPT-4(might be unavailable on free credit until you top-up some money) on their Chat interface.

I didn't use Bing much but in my experience, it's a lot harder to achieve what I want. For example, it almost always search the web for an answer which is a hit or miss for me.

If you want to use GPTs or to generate images with Dall-E then ChatGPT Plus is a no brainer I guess.

But if your focus is on GPT-4 then I highly recommend to use an API instead.

There are multiple pros of using an API Key:

- You pay for your usages. I've been using API Key exclusively and most of the time, it cost me around $5-$10 a month

- Your data is not used for training. This is important for a privacy-minded user like me. Though you can disable this in ChatGPT (but you will lose chat history)

- No message limit. Though there are rate limits to prevent abuse but generally, you do not have the message limit like the ChatGPT

- You can choose previous GPT models. In my experience, `gpt-4-0314` was the peak gpt-4 model.

Depends on the applications, you can also get these:

- Access to multiple AI services: OpenAI, Azure or OpenRouter

- Build custom AI workflows

- Voice search & text-to-speech etc.

- Deeper integrations with other apps & services

There are also a few cons:

- No GPTs support yet

- If you use Dall E a lot then ChatGPT plus is more affordable. Generating images using Dall E API can be quite expensive

Edit: Some tips when using an API Key:

- You pay for tokens used (basically how long your question & AI's answers). The price per chat message is not expensive, but usually you will need to send the whole conversation to OpenAI, which makes it expensive. Make sure to pick an app that allows you to limit the chat context.

- Don't use GPT-4 for tasks that doesn't require deeper reasoning capabilities. I find that GPT-3.5 turbo is still very good at simple tasks like: grammar fixes, improve your writing, translations ...

- Use different system prompts for different tasks: for example, I have a special prompt for coding tasks, and a different system prompt for writing tasks. It usually give a much better result.

Shameless plug: I've been building a native ChatGPT app for Mac called BoltAI[0], give it a try

[0]: https://boltai.com

Important note: Bing balanced mode (default) uses GPT 3.5

Only Precise and Creative modes use GPT-4

https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1732495030143549541

Also see:

An Opinionated Guide to Which AI to Use: ChatGPT Anniversary Edition

https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/an-opinionated-guide-to-whi...

I actually find Bing superficial and impatient compared to ChatGPT-4-Turbo, and way more inclined to give partial or incomplete answers, and jump to unsubstantiated conclusions and give more “hot takes” where chatGPT is way more circumspect. Bing is oddly more likely to hallucinate, and even give hallucinated links, which fortunately the UI strips out.

Bing really feels like a different GPT 4 — tuned for brevity and to reduce resource utilization. (Except for images. Bing wants to generate images for no reason, while chatGPT sometimes double checks to make sure you really want one, and has scaled back the number of simultaneous variants it generated from 4 to 1, although no limit that I’ve reached yet.)

Bing has a max turns per chat limit I think around 20 or 25 at the moment, at least with the purple (formerly “Creative”) GPT 4 model. ChatGPT doesn’t have conversation limits, although older text falls out of context. Bing created that limit to prevent the model from going unhinged after too many turns, which happened frequently with Bing but almost never with ChatGPT for some reason.

I’ve also hit a daily limit on Bing while not on chatGPT+ — chatGPT4 currently has a 30 turn limit within 3 hours, although I’ve rarely hit that outside of long voice chats. I do try to cram multiple questions into one go, to conserve turns though. Or I give certain tasks like summaries to chatgpt3.5 as it’s faster with no quota.

Plugins were briefly interesting. Maybe the new custom GPTs will become a must, but not yet. Oh, and the python runtime environment is epic. It can literally build its own tools to answer questions.

If I couldn’t afford $20 a month, I could maybe make do with Bing, but if I could afford it, I think chatGPT is very worth it.

You mentioned the API, which is a whole different thing than the $20/mo chatGPT subscription. It’s usage based, and designed to allow you to integrate GPT into other software and services. It has different models and different pricing tiers. I use both chatGPT and the API, though the API I use only lightly for personal use and it hasn’t consumed my first $5 deposit yet. There are also chatGPT like third party clients that take an API key and act like chatGPT and depending on your usage may cost less or more than the normal chatGPT subscription.

I currently pay because I use it a lot on my iPad and phone in addition to the web. Anyone have a recommendation on how to use api access on mobile? Then changing might be worth it

Spin up a temporary credit card using a service like Wise, pay for 1 month, and then close the card. If you're like me you'll switch it to your normal debit card within a week.

$20 a month is enough of a commitment in the developed world to sting just a bit on something you're not even sure you'll use much - but $20 once, as an exploratory measure, is a much easier proposition to justify.

Ever since (custom) GPTs got released last month, GPT-4 has become pretty much unusable around 2/3 of the time, performance-wise. Tons of network errors.

So, no, it's no longer worth it. At least not until they free up resources for paying customers by moving those useless, resource-consuming toys somewhere else.

I’d say just try it for a month and see. Only you can tell if it is worth for you. In this case being able to subscribe for a month only (compare to others which might have a much more expensive per month fee if not paid annually) is an advantage you should take.

What you said is exactly what I thought. And above is what I did and I’m glad I made that experiment (of trying ChatGPT Plus.)

By the end of that subscription month, the question I asked is if it helps me enough to save me time worth more than $20/months. In that sense unlike other comments, I don’t care if it is recurring cost, in any month that its effectiveness didn’t shave me $20 worth of time then I’ll unsubscribe it.

I pay $21 a month (after tax) for GPT Plus because Bing limits me to one prompt without followups; I can not carry on a conversation. GPT Plus lets me respond to what the AI told me.

Nigh-exact duplicate thread from 22 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38316790

The custom GPTs are convenient. Instead of digging through my collection of prompts for different tasks, I just click one of my custom GPTs that has been preinstructed.

Neither, use Bard, because both OpenAI and Microsoft have Customer Noncompete Clauses in their Terms of Use.

Is Github Copilot Chat using GPT4 or GPT3.5? I already have Copilot Chat trough Copilot subscription.

If service is hidden behind a login, it's probably not free at all. Of course, nowadays no one can guarantee that even after paying subscription your personal data won't be used in some peculiar ways.

I pay for ChatGPT to get the option to avoid the promt history and training on my promts. If there is a way to do this for free, I'd love to know about it. The article does not seem to take it into account.

Bing's responses are not at all same as GPT-4. I don't know the exact reason but they are definitely not using the same model or base instructions. GPT-4's responses are far better.

What you should do is use a local application like MindMac or similar and use GPT-4 via the API.

It's a _lot_ cheaper unless you use it really heavily. I've yet to break $10/month (+taxes)

The API is pay per use. $1 minimum spend before you can use gpt4 and they take a while to bill you.

It’s a separate thing to the $20/month chatgpt plus subscription.

Bing tends to stop the conversation when it receives harsh criticism. ChatGPT will be sorry and try to do better.

Use the API and find a client that works for you. I find I spend way less than 20 per month.

Do you need api access? If so you need to either pay Microsoft (azure) or OpenAI

now you see why openAI's had to go through the whole board Vs sam altman showdown

Yes.

Get the API and a client like MacGPT.

No. Use your own mind.