ByteDance has rolled out paid subscriptions for Doubao, China's largest AI chatbot with over 300 million monthly active users since launching in 2023, making it the first major domestic AI chatbot to introduce such a service while rivals including DeepSeek, Alibaba's Qwen and Tencent's Yuanbao remain free. ByteDance announced in a social media post that "Doubao's professional version will offer higher usage quotas," enabling paid users to perform tasks like organizing local files, developing websites, and generating PowerPoint slides, while free users retain basic search functions but face limits in video and image generation. Li Chengdong, founder of Beijing-based tech consultancy Dolphin, told AFP the move reflects ByteDance's "need to balance cost and scale," noting that "Doubao's average daily token usage has increased more than a thousandfold compared with its launch, and computing power costs rise exponentially with user scale." Analysts say the Chinese market is dominated by free models due to stiff domestic competition, with iiMedia founder Zhang Yi stating, "The competition among domestic AI players is heated and users have yet to get used to paying for services." ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo said at a tech gathering on Tuesday, "Over the past few years, we have been concentrating on narrowing the scope of our business and focusing on our AI venture."