How many of you are using the hell out of the free version of ChatGPT right now? Hands up, anyone? That’s what I thought. I see a lot of hands out there.

Then you’ll recognize the frustration of having that message pop up all too frequently saying that you’ve exceeded your usage limits and are being downgraded to a slower, dumber ChatGPT model until a particular time, at which your meager allowance will reset.

There’s a way to fix that, and it unfortunately involves paying for ChatGPT Plus. But there’s a way to juice an unpublicized offer from OpenAI (ChatGPT’s creator) to drastically lower the cost.

kind of a trick

To take advantage of this trick, you have to pay the $20 per month fee up front for ChatGPT Plus. Sorry, folks. But you can be either a new user or an existing customer. It doesn’t matter. Once you’re a paying member, go into your settings menu, and then navigate to Manage My Subscriptions.

Now hit Cancel Plan. It doesn’t matter whether you actually want to cancel it. After all, you just may have signed up for it a minute ago, right? You just want ChatGPT to think you’re intent on canceling.

Like a desperate date stammering out a “Please don’t go” as you make your way for the exit, it’ll offer you 50% off your next three months if you just hang around a little while longer instead of quitting.

And savvy deal-maker that you are, you’ll hit accept. Now you’ve paid $20 for the first month and are committed to $10 for each of the next three months. In the end, you’ve gotten four months of ChatGPT Plus for $50 instead of the $80 it’d normally cost.

Forking over the cash for ChatGPT Plus gets you “general access to ChatGPT, even during peak times, faster response times, and priority access to new features and improvements,” as OpenAI puts it.

It is drastically better, with the greater usage limits and access to more powerful models. If you’ve been hesitant to try it out, this is your opportunity to take it for an extended test drive at a lower price than it’d normally be.