- Report claims China's AI consumption is now over 100 trillion tokens per day, up from 100 billion in justtwo years
- Enterprise customers are increasingly paying per usage, not per seat
- General consumers will likely keep their fixed, monthly pricing
AI token consumption in China has increased "more than 1,000-fold" in around two years, with National Bureau of Statistics data claiming daily token consumption rose from 100 billion at the start of 2024 to 100 trillion by the end of 2025.
By March 2026, China was consuming around 140 trillion tokens per day, which SCMP illustrates as 100,000 tokens per person per day if every single Chinese citizen, including children, pensioners and non-workers, were to use AI.
"Today, the token economy is emerging," Yin Hao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said in a recent Beijing conference, the South China Morning Post reported.
AI consumption-based pricing could replace per-seat pricing
With users consuming more tokens than ever before, AI providers are now under pressure to cover the growing costs. Industry experts like Hao now believe that token-based pricing could soon replace traditional subscription models.
This could see subscribers paying a fee based on how much AI they actually use, rather than paying a fixed monthly charge per user.
AI providers globally are also increasingly recognizing growing token consumption and are adapting their pricing strategies to match, including OpenAI and Anthropic. Others, like Zendesk, are charging per meaningful outcome rather than per seat or per token.
However, for now, these pricing shifts are primarily affecting enterprise customers consuming huge amounts of tokens. General consumers logging into their preferred chatbot, like ChatGPT or Gemini, are unlikely to be affected as compute becomes cheaper.
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