Doubao Responds to "Charging" Rumors: Daily Features Like Search and Q&A Will Remain Free, Ensuring User Experience Is Not Affected
Taylor Wilson
ByteDance's AI chatbot Doubao said Wednesday that search, writing, image generation, and voice/video chat remain free; a planned Pro tier is still in testing and will include a free usage quota. The statement follows a 6.1-million-user drop in May — triggered by the first appearance of a paid subscription plan on its App Store page.
What is Doubao actually charging for?
Doubao plans a Pro tier covering software development, data analysis, professional design, workflow automation, financial analysis, and scientific research.
Core daily features — search, writing, image generation, voice and video chat — stay free.
This means → Doubao is adopting a "free base + paid pro" split. Casual users see no change.
Why did users suddenly leave?
Data from global AI tracker Aicpb.com shows Doubao lost 6.1 million monthly active users in May, a 1.81% decline — the sharpest since launch.
Aicpb.com founder Li Bangzhu tied the drop directly to Doubao's early-May update of its iOS App Store page, which revealed a paid subscription plan for the first time.
In plain terms = users didn't even see pricing details — the mere signal of a paywall was enough to drive churn.
How did the "paywall" rumor spread?
Doubao's statement flagged a wave of coordinated posts from same-IP marketing accounts spreading identical false claims that the app would degrade free features to push subscriptions.
Doubao called the claim "entirely untrue."
This means → Doubao views the user loss as partly driven by organized disinformation, not just market misreading.
Is China's free-AI era over?
Li Bangzhu called the decline a "worrying signal," noting that in China's cutthroat AI market, user scale "decides everything."
He argued that "the era of free AI in China is far from over" and that monetizing now "may be premature."
This reflects a deeper industry reality: Chinese AI products are still in a land-grab phase — the first to charge risks being the first to fall behind.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.