The framing that changes everything
When you call something a "subscription," you're implying it's a recurring essential. Netflix is a subscription. Spotify is a subscription. Your internet bill is a subscription.
But $20/month for AI access? That's not a subscription. That's a luxury product with subscription pricing.
And I think the industry knows it.
The numbers that reveal the reality
The median household income in the United States is about $75,000/year — roughly $6,250/month.
$20/month ChatGPT Plus represents 0.32% of that income.
Now apply the same ratio globally:
| Country | Median dev income | Equivalent $20 | SimplyLouie |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🇺🇸 USA | $6,250/month | $20 (0.32%) | $2 (0.03%) |
| 🇳🇬 Nigeria | $350/month | N32,000 (9.1%) | N3,200 (0.91%) |
| 🇵🇰 Pakistan | $280/month | PKR 5,600 (8.3%) | PKR 560 (0.83%) |
| 🇧🇩 Bangladesh | $240/month | BDT 2,200 (7.5%) | BDT 220 (0.75%) |
| 🇵🇭 Philippines | $450/month | P1,120 (4.1%) | P112 (0.41%) |
| 🇰🇪 Kenya | $300/month | KSh2,600 (7.2%) | KSh260 (0.72%) |
| 🇮🇳 India | $500/month | Rs1,600 (5.3%) | Rs165 (0.55%) |
| 🇮🇩 Indonesia | $400/month | Rp320,000 (6.6%) | Rp32,000 (0.66%) |
For a Nigerian developer, ChatGPT costs the same percentage of income as $569/month would cost an American developer.
Would you pay $569/month for ChatGPT? Of course not. That's absurd.
But we expect Nigerian developers to?
"But they can just use the free tier"
This is the argument I hear most often. And it's the most revealing.
When you say "they can use the free tier," you're saying: people in developing countries deserve worse tools than developers in wealthy countries.
The free tier is slower. It's rate-limited. It doesn't get the latest models first. It's deliberately worse to nudge you toward paying.
So the argument "just use free" is really the argument "accept second-class AI."
The infrastructure double standard
No one argues that Nigerian developers should pay more for GitHub, Vercel, or DigitalOcean.
Those tools have geographical pricing. A VPS that costs $5/month in the US costs $5/month everywhere. Because compute doesn't care where you live.
But AI products — which run on the same compute — somehow justify geography-blind pricing that effectively taxes developers for being born in the wrong country.
What a utility actually looks like
A utility is priced so that the people who need it most can afford it.
Electricity is subsidized in developing countries. Clean water pricing scales with income. Essential medicines have tiered global pricing.
If AI is genuinely going to be "as transformative as electricity" (as every CEO claims), then it needs to be priced like electricity.
$2/month is what that looks like in practice.
SimplyLouie — $2/month, Claude-powered, no tricks. Same quality everywhere.
- 🇮🇳 India: Rs165/month
- 🇳🇬 Nigeria: N3,200/month
- 🇵🇭 Philippines: P112/month
- 🇰🇪 Kenya: KSh260/month
- 🇵🇰 Pakistan: PKR 560/month
- 🇧🇩 Bangladesh: BDT 220/month
- 🇮🇩 Indonesia: Rp32,000/month
- 🇧🇷 Brazil: R$10/month
The question I'll leave you with
If AI is a utility, why is it priced like a luxury?
And if it's a luxury, why do we keep pretending it's democratizing anything?
Discuss. I want to hear the counterarguments.
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