ByteDance, the parent company of Douyin and TikTok, plans to introduce a paid subscription service for its AI assistant, Doubao. The standard version will carry a monthly fee of 68 yuan for continuous subscriptions. Morgan Stanley stated that ByteDance's intention to charge some users of its AI chatbot Doubao represents a significant signal, indicating that China's AI industry is progressing toward commercial sustainability. This move also serves as a crucial step in justifying continued investment in the AI sector. Morgan Stanley pointed out that ByteDance's action demonstrates the rising costs in China associated with acquiring new users and serving existing customers through free chatbot services. Taking the initial step of charging a segment of users will help establish a longer-term monetization roadmap. Morgan Stanley anticipates that Doubao's pricing plan will primarily target professional users rather than the app's current broad user base of over 300 million. Currently, AI applications such as Alibaba's Qwen, Tencent's Yuanbao, and Baidu's ERNIE Bot remain free. In comparison, Doubao's pricing appears relatively aggressive, being slightly higher than that of its global peers. Nomura believes that ByteDance's launch of a subscription service for Doubao is a positive development for the competitive landscape of AI chatbots. As Doubao's user base and usage time experience rapid growth, the free model may impose increasingly heavy cost pressures, prompting ByteDance to introduce the subscription plan. Doubao maintains an absolute leading position in the Chinese consumer AI chatbot market. As of March 2026, its daily active users reached 133 million, far surpassing its closest competitors, including Alibaba's Qwen. According to QuestMobile data, Qwen has 29 million daily active users. Unlike their U.S. counterparts, Chinese AI chatbots have so far not adopted a pricing model, instead offering unlimited service for free. Nomura further stated that Doubao becoming the first mainstream Chinese AI chatbot to introduce a paid subscription service holds considerable significance for the overall market. Nomura suggests that while it remains uncertain whether competitors like Alibaba, DeepSeek, and Tencent will follow suit with their own pricing, it is expected that the entire market will eventually transition to a subscription model.