PANews reported on May 4th that Doubao's App Store page has displayed a notice regarding a paid version service, indicating plans to launch a paid version with added value services on top of the free service. The notice shows three subscription tiers: Standard version ¥68 per month (¥688 per year), Enhanced version ¥200 per month (¥2048 per year), and Professional version ¥500 per month (¥5088 per year).

Doubao officially responded that free services will continue to be offered, while paid features will primarily target complex tasks and high-productivity scenarios, such as PPT generation, data analysis, and film production. Sources close to Doubao revealed that as model capabilities are upgraded, complex and high-value tasks require more computing power and inference time, hence the introduction of paid services to meet this demand.

Doubao, a core business model under ByteDance, had long operated on a free model. Data from Volcano Engine shows that as of March this year, the daily token usage of the Doubao model had exceeded 120 trillion, doubling in the past three months. The introduction of this paid model may signal the end of the "free era" for this business model.