- One report claims that AI consumption in China now exceeds 100 trillion tokens per day, up from 100 billion in just two years.
- Business customers increasingly pay per use, not per seat
- General consumers are likely to keep their monthly fixed prices
China’s AI token consumption has increased “more than 1,000 times” in about two years, with data from the National Bureau of Statistics claiming that daily token consumption increased from 100 billion in early 2024 to 100 trillion in late 2025.
In March 2026, China was consuming around 140 trillion tokens per day, which SCMP It is illustrated as 100,000 tokens per person per day if every Chinese citizen, including children, pensioners and non-workers, used AI.
“Today, the token economy is emerging,” Yin Hao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said at a recent conference in Beijing, the South China Morning Post reported.
AI consumption-based pricing could replace per-seat pricing
With users consuming more tokens than ever, AI providers are now under pressure to cover the rising costs. Industry experts like Hao now believe that token-based pricing could soon replace traditional subscription models.
This could see subscribers pay a fee based on how much AI they actually use, rather than paying a fixed monthly charge per user.
Global AI vendors are also increasingly recognizing the growing consumption of tokens and are adapting their pricing strategies to match it, including OpenAI and Anthropic. Others, like Zendesk, charge per significant result rather than per seat or per token.
For now, however, these price changes are primarily affecting enterprise customers who consume large amounts of tokens. General consumers who log into their preferred chatbot, such as ChatGPT or Gemini, are unlikely to be affected as computing becomes cheaper.
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