Is the AI subscription bubble starting to crack? GPT-5.5 just dropped, prices keep rising, and the “all-you-can-eat” era looks more fake by the month

GPT-5.5 just launched, and the pricing is hard to defend. OpenAI’s API pricing now puts GPT-5.5 at $5 / 1M input tokens and $30 / 1M output tokens, while GPT-5.4 is $2.50 / $15. So yes: GPT-5.5 is literally 2x the price of GPT-5.4. But the inflation did not start there: GPT-5.4 was already expensive than GPT-5.2, which OpenAI priced at $1.75 / 1M input and $14 / 1M output. And on output, GPT-5.5 is also 20% expensive than Claude Opus 4.7, which Anthropic keeps at $25 / 1M output tokens. This is not just one overpriced launch. It is part of a broader pattern.