Dear OpenAI team,

I’m a ChatGPT user and independent developer from Russia. I actively use AI to develop my own applications and would like to use OpenAI technologies much more extensively.

The main problem is not willingness to pay — it is the difficulty of officially accessing and paying for OpenAI services from Russia. I often have to limit my use of OpenAI tools and available tokens simply because there is no straightforward way to purchase the resources I need.

I am not asking for free access. I would be happy to officially pay for ChatGPT subscriptions, API usage, and additional resources.

I believe there are many developers, engineers, entrepreneurs, researchers, and other professionals in Russia in the same situation. They want to use OpenAI products, build things with them, and pay for them legitimately.

I understand that OpenAI must comply with legal and regulatory restrictions. Still, I hope the company can eventually find a lawful way to provide official access and payment options for Russian users.

I would genuinely like to be not just a ChatGPT user, but a paying OpenAI customer who can build products with your technology.

Thank you for considering this.

If you’re planning to post this on the OpenAI Community, the message is respectful and clearly explains the problem. However, it’s too long for a forum post. I’d shorten it and focus on the request and your practical use case.

Thank you for the feedback. I agree — I’ll make the Community version shorter and focus on the practical use case

Welcome to the Forum @cyrusis

The issue you present is very valid one.

OpenAI is a Company that is based in the United States. As such it has to comply with the law by set by the US government. This includes regulatory aspects of the law. Because of this OpenAI, not by the lack of will, but because it has to abide by this, and can’t decide or act differently in order to enable it’s services in Russia.

This also applies to other territories for X, Y and Z reason.

Would be ideal to have open borders for everyone on everything, reality is sadly not that.

As for your previous non-edited post, it is fine to post that, it was explaining thoroughly your point of view and how this affects/enables factors from your point of view.

Let’s hope at some point things normalize around the world and some mutual cooperation can start happening again.