Meta Launches $7.99-a-Month AI Subscription Plan, Half the Price of Rivals

[Financial News] Meta has entered the paid AI services market with the launch of an AI subscription model priced at $7.99 a month, or about 12,000 won.
As leading AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic have set subscription prices at around $20 a month, attention is focused on whether Meta's $7.99 plan, billed as a "half-price" option, will trigger a price war in the AI market.
The move also drew speculation that Meta's business model, which has long focused on platform advertising through Facebook and Instagram, could shift after Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg hinted at a push into the cloud business at a shareholders' meeting.
Major foreign media outlets, including CNBC, reported on the 28th local time that Meta had launched its first AI subscription model and would begin services in Singapore, Guatemala and Bolivia in June.
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Meta's AI subscription service comes in two tiers: "Meta AI" at $7.99 a month and "Meta AI Premium" at $19.99 a month, or about 29,900 won. "Meta AI" is aimed at users who frequently use image and video generation as well as deep reasoning features. "Meta AI Premium" offers enhanced reasoning capabilities and more image and video generation functions across Meta apps. The existing free version will remain available.
Global AI companies have recently split their pricing strategies into two broad approaches. OpenAI and Anthropic are maintaining general chat-based subscription plans at around $20 a month, while charging usage-based fees for advanced AI services such as coding and agent-style tools. The strategy is designed to improve profitability by placing more weight on metered services.
Google, a relatively late entrant in the AI market, recently unveiled the lightweight Gemini 3.5 Flash model at Google I/O 2026, optimized for long-duration agent tasks. It highlighted output speeds four times faster than competitors and costs cut by half or even two-thirds. Meta's half-price subscription service is also seen as a price-led competitive strategy.
Meanwhile, at Meta's shareholders' meeting on the 27th local time, Zuckerberg said, "We have recently been receiving inquiries from outside companies about building Meta's API services or selling computing resources," and added, "If we enter a phase of overbuilding data centers and end up with spare capacity, renting out computing resources could become one option." It was the first time Meta had publicly mentioned the possibility of entering the cloud business.
Meta is considered a hyperscaler alongside Amazon.com, Inc., Microsoft and Google, as it has secured massive computing resources. However, it is the only one among them that has not commercialized infrastructure services such as cloud offerings.
For that reason, the market is closely watching whether Meta will enter the cloud services business as demand for computing infrastructure surges amid the spread of AI.
 
cafe9@fnnews.com Lee Gu-soon Reporter