ChatGPT Plans Explained: Go vs. Plus vs. Pro 5x/20x — How to Choose and What to Avoid

Users in China who want reliable access to ChatGPT often run into three recurring hurdles: account registration, plan selection, and phone number verification. A tutorial video on Bilibili walks through the entire process from registration to upgrading, while also flagging the risks of using third-party top-up services. This article builds on that video to break down the real differences between each plan and help you avoid the most common pitfalls.

Note: For anything involving account security or payments, always use official channels when possible. Third-party top-up services carry non-trivial risks — we'll cover those in detail below.

Key Setup Steps Before You Register

The tutorial repeatedly emphasizes one thing above all else: a stable network environment. The most common mistake new users make is frequently switching between VPN nodes in different regions. This can trigger account risk controls (referred to in the video as "red flagging"). The safer approach is to pick one region, stick with it, and avoid jumping between locations.

You'll need an email address to register. Gmail works, but domestic Chinese providers like 163 and QQ Mail are also supported. The video also demonstrates using a temporary or third-party email service — simply visit the provider's website, create an account, and use that address to sign up for ChatGPT.

The registration process itself is straightforward: enter your email on the ChatGPT website, request a verification code, copy and paste the code back into the site, fill in a display name and age (something around 20 works fine), and your account is ready. The whole thing usually takes just a few minutes.

Account risk controls — the "red flagging" mentioned in the video — are OpenAI's mechanism for detecting suspicious activity based on signals like IP address, device fingerprint, and behavioral patterns. Frequently switching regional nodes sends a signal that the same account is logging in from multiple geographic locations in a short time, which the system flags as suspicious. Depending on severity, this can trigger additional verification steps or even result in account restrictions. The logic for staying on one consistent node is similar to notifying your bank before using your card abroad — maintaining consistent behavior reduces the chance of tripping any risk thresholds. For users in China, the recommendation is to register, use, and pay for your subscription all within the same network environment. Avoid mixing regions, such as registering in one location and paying from another.

Go, Plus, and Pro: Which Plan Is Right for You?

After registration, the upgrade page presents three paid tiers: Go, Plus, and Pro. Each serves a distinctly different type of user.

Go: Entry-Level Access

The Go plan only unlocks a subset of the base models, with limited access to the latest ones. If you're just curious and want to try ChatGPT occasionally without a serious use case, Go lets you test the waters — but it's not suited for users with actual work or productivity needs.

Plus: Best Value for Most Users

The video author describes Plus as the best value of the three tiers, for three reasons: it unlocks all of ChatGPT's available models, it includes a dedicated quota for Codex, and it bypasses most phone number verification requirements. For the majority of everyday users, Plus provides more than enough usage. The one limitation: if you're hammering the latest top-tier models at high intensity, you'll start hitting quota limits more frequently.

Pro: For Power Users

The Pro plan comes in two versions — 5x and 20x — both of which multiply the Plus quota by their respective factor.

Pro 5x gives you five times the Plus usage quota, five times the Codex quota, and lets you skip Codex phone verification entirely. If you're using ChatGPT heavily every day and constantly running into limits, Pro 5x is the more reliable choice. Pro 20x is aimed at users who need turbo/speed modes or run high-value single tasks that demand maximum throughput.

To summarize: Go for light exploration, Plus for everyday primary use, Pro 5x for professional high-frequency use, and Pro 20x for extreme demand scenarios.

The Codex Phone Verification Problem

Many users get stuck at the Codex login step. When you sign into Codex with your ChatGPT account for the first time, it asks for phone verification using a non-Chinese number — typically a US or other international number to receive the SMS code. This is a significant barrier for users in China.

The workaround the video suggests is using a service that provides international phone numbers capable of receiving verification codes. According to the video, these "long-lived" numbers remain valid for 20 to 35 days and can be reused across multiple account verifications. That said, Plus and above plans already bypass most verification requirements, and Pro skips Codex verification entirely — so choosing the right plan can eliminate the verification headache at the source.

Codex is OpenAI's code generation and execution platform, separate from the standard ChatGPT chat interface and built specifically for developer workflows. It can autonomously run code in a sandboxed environment, debug errors, interact with the file system, and handle end-to-end tasks from a plain-language description to a working program. Because of this, it's subject to stricter quota management and identity verification than standard chat. While it shares the same account system as ChatGPT, logging into Codex for the first time triggers a separate phone verification step — essentially an additional safeguard OpenAI uses to prevent abuse of compute resources. This also explains why Plus and higher plans can "skip" verification: paying subscribers have already completed a higher level of identity binding, making them lower risk in OpenAI's assessment.

The Risks of Third-Party Top-Up Services

The video dedicates an entire section to the risks of third-party top-up services — and it's worth highlighting. "Top-up" services involve handing over your account to a third party to complete the payment on your behalf. The video demonstrates using a platform called "链动小铺" on Alibaba's ecosystem, which the author describes as relatively reputable and backed by Alibaba's dispute resolution system. The platform also claims to use temporary identity information and not retain records.

But the core issue remains: any operation that requires you to hand your login credentials to a third party carries real risks — including account theft, account bans, and payment disputes. The video does show that after a successful top-up, you can verify the charge on your account's billing page to confirm it came through official channels with the correct date — a useful verification step, but not a complete safeguard.

The practical advice here is: if at all possible, subscribe directly through the official ChatGPT website using an international payment method. If you must use a third-party service, carefully evaluate the platform's reputation, avoid using it with accounts you care about keeping long-term, and always save your transaction records.

Final Thoughts

The value of this tutorial lies in connecting the full journey — registration, plan selection, verification, and payment — into a clear end-to-end flow that's genuinely helpful for newcomers. But it's worth being clear-eyed about the distinction: choosing a plan is a rational product decision, while workarounds like third-party top-ups, temporary identities, and overseas phone number services are fundamentally ways of working around official restrictions — and they come with corresponding risks.

For most users, the practical conclusion is simple: figure out your usage intensity first. Plus covers the vast majority of everyday needs; step up to Pro only if you're genuinely hitting limits. And account security should always come before saving a few dollars.