Should You Upgrade to ChatGPT Plus in 2025?

Discover why creators say it’s worth every dollar.

Hey there! It’s Aaron.

When AI tools level up, the question isn’t “Should I upgrade?”
It’s: “What’s the cost of staying limited?”

Source: Popular Science - Andrew Paul

This week, we’re talking about power moves—from ChatGPT Plus supercharging your workflow to publishers finally putting AI scrapers in their place.

📌TL;DR

  • ChatGPT Plus: Unlock bigger memory, file uploads, and advanced tools to streamline your creative flow—worth the upgrade?

  • Cloudflare Blocks: AI scrapers face new roadblocks as publishers gain power to charge for content training.

  • Google Gemini: 30+ AI tools are entering classrooms—changing how students learn and teachers create.

  • More AI news…

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes.

CATCH OF THE DAY

Should You Pay Up for ChatGPT Plus?

If you’re still clinging to the free version of ChatGPT like a toddler with their blankie, I get it. Paying $20/month for an AI feels… unnecessary.

But here’s the thing: if ChatGPT has wormed its way into your daily creative flow, you might already be paying—with your time, energy, and sanity.

The Free Plan Is Good… Until It’s Not

At first, it’s like a bottomless mimosa brunch. Then suddenly, you’re hitting limits you didn’t even know existed:

  • Your conversations start forgetting earlier context.

  • You can’t analyze big chunks of data or upload files.

  • Image generation? Nope.

  • Advanced tools like voice mode or custom GPTs? Sorry, friend.

The free plan gives you 16k tokens to play with (roughly 40–50 pages of text). The Plus plan? A mind-bending 128k tokens and access to GPT-4.

It’s like going from a bicycle to a Tesla—with autopilot.

Why This Matters for Creators

🖋 Deeper Workflows: If you’re building courses, newsletters, or faceless YouTube content, GPT-4’s better memory and reasoning will save you from copy-paste purgatory.

🎨 Multimodal Tools: Want to generate images for your Instagram or analyze PDFs for research? Plus unlocks features that make AI feel less like a chatbot and more like a creative partner.

Time Is Your Real Currency: Every workaround on the free plan costs you focus. And in 2025, focus is rarer than a TikTok trend that lasts more than a week.

My Take

I’ve been using ChatGPT’s paid plan for over a year now, and honestly? It’s become a quiet partner in my creative stack—helping me brainstorm project ideas, organize newsletter content, and keep track of my side hustles without drowning in sticky notes and Google Docs.

The ability to work with larger chunks of data and not lose context halfway through a thought? Absolute game changer. Free ChatGPT is great for casual use, but for anyone juggling multiple projects, the upgrade pays for itself in mental clarity.

If you use ChatGPT once a week for random recipes or snarky replies to WhatsApp groups, stick with free.

But if it’s already part of your creative stack, the upgrade isn’t about spending $20—it’s about buying back hours you didn’t know you were losing.

The question isn’t “Should I upgrade?”
It’s “What’s the cost of staying limited?”

In a world where AI is the lever, are you still lifting with your bare hands?

See you in the next one,

BYTE-SIZED BUZZ

Here’s a quick roundup of what’s making waves in the AI world this week.

📡 Cloudflare Blocks AI Scrapers by Default
Cloudflare will now block AI web crawlers for new domains and let publishers charge AI companies through a “Pay Per Crawl” program. Backers include big players like AP and Fortune, setting a new standard for content control.

The Big Deal: This could give creators more say (and maybe cash) in how their work trains future AI models.

🧠 Baidu Open-Sources ERNIE 4.5 to Challenge GPTs
Baidu dropped 10 versions of its ERNIE 4.5 family, including a 424B parameter model that outperforms DeepSeek on key benchmarks. All models are open-sourced under Apache 2.0 on Hugging Face.

The Big Deal: China’s AI giants aren’t just catching up—they’re building models creators worldwide can now tinker with for free.

🎒 Google’s Gemini Goes Back to School
Google unveiled 30+ AI tools for educators and students, from lesson planning bots to AI reading buddies and video creation with Google Vids. All are rolling out in Google Workspace for Education.

The Big Deal: Classrooms are becoming AI playgrounds—and creators could take notes on how to embed Gemini-like helpers into their own workflows.

📰 ChatGPT Referrals to News Sites Soar 25x
A SimilarWeb report shows referrals from ChatGPT to publishers like Reuters and NYT skyrocketed from 1M to 25M in a year—even as overall site visits dropped.

The Big Deal: AI summaries might save some traffic, but they’re also training readers to stay on Chatbots instead of clicking through.

🎸 Spotify’s AI Band Hoax Goes Viral
The Velvet Sundown racked up 600k monthly listeners on Spotify—then admitted their music was AI-generated using Suno. No interviews, no shows, just a very effective “art hoax.”

The Big Deal: If AI bands can fool listeners, it’s time to question how much of the content we consume is human—or if it even matters anymore.

WEEKLY CREATOR LOADOUT 🐾

  • 🎨 FreePik AI
    Unlimited AI image generation for Premium+ users—perfect for social posts and marketing materials.

  • 👗 Doppl
    Turn a single photo into AI-generated try-on videos for product demos or content marketing.

  • 🤝 Coachvox
    Clone your voice and style to create an AI version of yourself for coaching or client workflows.

  • 🎤 Murf.ai
    Quickly generate high-quality AI voiceovers for your courses, podcasts, and social content.

  • 📱 MindStudio
    Build and sell AI apps without writing a line of code—ideal for side hustlers.

  • 📚 StudyPal
    Use AI to create and sell flashcards or study guides—perfect for educators monetizing content.

  • 🧠 NotebookLM
    Gemini-powered tool now in Google Classroom to help educators streamline lesson planning.

THE GUIDEBOOK

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