Apple's new Siri AI runs across the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Watch, and Vision Pro. | Image by Apple
If you own an iPhone 17 Pro Max, you finally have a Siri worth talking to, but it might not stay free. Bloomberg's lead Apple reporter Mark Gurman, in his latest Power On newsletter (subscription required to view), expects Apple to eventually charge for the smartest parts of Siri AI, the same way Google already gates its best Gemini features on the Pixel 10 Pro.
What Gurman thinks Apple will charge for
His read is that the basics stay free forever. The features that existed before Siri AI, plus the on-device personal context tools that dig through your messages and calendar, would keep running with no limits and no fee.
The cost would land on the heavy stuff. Gurman expects the conversational answers, world-knowledge queries, and generative tools to first get rate-limited and then slip behind a subscription, following the same path ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude already walked.
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Siri AI splits its work between your device and Apple's servers, and that server time is the part that costs money to run. | Image by Apple
The reason comes down to money. Siri AI's conversational features run partly on Google's Gemini models hosted on Apple's servers, and that compute is not cheap.
We covered earlier that Apple reportedly pays Google about $1 billion a year for the Gemini technology behind Siri, and that Anthropic reportedly asked for several billion before talks collapsed. Running generative answers at that scale for hundreds of millions of users is the kind of bill that tends to get passed along.
There is already a hint of where this goes. Apple currently lets iCloud+ subscribers raise their Siri rate limit, which Gurman reads as a first step toward a standalone paid tier down the line.
Over on Reddit, the r/ios crowd is already split on the idea, even though nothing is official yet. Some figure a paywall would most likely arrive bundled into an iCloud+ tier, which one poster floated as the best case, while others say charging for Siri at all would be a step too far.
iPhone users on r/ios are already debating a possible Siri paywall before Apple has said a word. | Image by masquedmarauderxyz via Reddit
What it means if you already pay for ChatGPT or Gemini
If you are already paying for ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude, none of this is new. All three run a free tier with limits and lock their most capable models behind a monthly fee, so a paid Siri tier would just be Apple matching the going rate rather than inventing a new tax.
The real question for you is whether Siri ever gets good enough to replace what you already pay for. When we went hands-on with Siri AI, it handled quick questions well but could not touch the heavy work like deep research, coding, or large PDFs, so your current subscription is safe for now.
So, should Apple charge for it?
Charging today would be a hard sell. Gurman pegs the current Siri AI at roughly where the big chatbots sat six months ago, which is fine for a quick answer but not for real work, and asking people to pay for a beta-grade assistant rarely ends well.
The logic still holds for later, though. If Apple keeps the basics free and only charges once the generative features prove they earn it, that is the same deal ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini already offer, and it would be fair. The fee only makes sense if the product catches up first, and right now it has not.
Want more straight talk on where Apple is steering Siri and your wallet? Follow me on X and Threads for hot takes and the behind-the-scenes stuff.
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Johanna Romero is a Senior News Writer at PhoneArena, covering mobile technology news across Android, iOS, wearables, and the Google ecosystem she knows best. Drawing on 15 years in IT and tech support from 2007 to 2022, she brings a user-friendly eye for the practical features and lesser-known tricks readers care about. Google named her an official #TeamPixel member in 2022, and she also reviews the latest devices on her YouTube channel, JoJo the Techie.
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