OpenAI has significantly complicated the work of Russian sellers of gray market access to ChatGPT. According to the Telegram channel Baza, in recent weeks, prices for ChatGPT Plus and Team subscriptions from resellers have increased several times, and the mass resale of accounts has almost stopped.
Officially, ChatGPT is unavailable in Russia, so many users purchased premium access through intermediaries — often significantly cheaper than the official price. The gray market relied on reselling spots in team subscriptions, API keys, and ready-made accounts, which sellers distributed to clients via automated Telegram bots.
According to AI implementation expert Roman Adamenko, OpenAI has changed the rules and algorithms for checking shared account usage. The system has begun to more carefully analyze logins from different devices, suspicious sessions, corporate domains, payment cards, and geolocation. After this, some accounts started to be blocked, and the usual resale schemes became much less stable.
One of the sellers in the market also admitted that "the game is over." Previously, the scheme could bring significant profit to intermediaries: a ChatGPT Team subscription was purchased for several spots, and then each spot was resold separately. Similar mechanics were used with API access, where sellers split one topped-up account into several keys.
The mass nature of the gray market was ensured by automatic account registration, virtual numbers, foreign payment cards, and bots for access distribution. According to Baza, some sellers' turnovers could reach millions of rubles, even if the business was run by one or two people.
After the new OpenAI restrictions, such a model has become much riskier: accounts are blocked more often, access is harder to scale, and sellers are forced to raise prices or completely cease sales.
