Sri Lanka AI Subscription Price Calculator — ChatGPT, Claude & Gemini in LKR

The advertised price of an AI subscription is a US-dollar sticker. When a Sri Lankan cardholder pays it, two charges land on top before the amount reaches your rupee statement, and this calculator applies both in the order your bank and the tax law apply them.

1. The 18% digital-services VAT. Under the VAT (Amendment) Act, 2025, effective October 1, 2025, Sri Lanka charges 18% VAT on services supplied by non-residents through an electronic platform to consumers in the country. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and similar providers collect this, so the dollars actually billed to your card are:

usdCharged = stickerUSD × (1 + 0.18)

2. The bank card forex markup. Your bank converts a foreign card transaction at its own card rate, which is set a margin above the Central Bank of Sri Lanka indicative rate — typically 1.5–3%. The effective rate applied is:

cardRate = indicativeRate × (1 + markup% / 100)

The total charged to your card each month is therefore the VAT-inclusive dollar amount converted at your bank's card rate:

monthlyLKR = usdCharged × cardRate

To make the total transparent, the tool also splits it into three parts that each use the base (indicative) rate, so they add up exactly to the same figure: the sticker (stickerUSD × indicativeRate), the VAT (stickerUSD × 0.18 × indicativeRate), and the bank markup (usdCharged × (cardRate − indicativeRate)). Because both routes must agree to the rupee, the breakdown doubles as a built-in cross-check — the same reconciliation an accountant would run. The default rate of 305 and markup of 2.5% are editable, so you can match your own bank's schedule and the day's CBSL rate. The annual figure is the monthly total multiplied by 12; provider annual-billing discounts are not modelled in this version.

• IRD — VAT on non-resident electronic/digital services (18%, from 1 Oct 2025)
• Central Bank of Sri Lanka — daily indicative exchange rates
• OpenAI — ChatGPT pricing
• Anthropic — Claude pricing
• Google — AI plans (Gemini Advanced)

Prices, the 18% VAT rate and the default exchange rate were last cross-checked against these sources on 2026-07-06. Providers change pricing frequently — confirm the current sticker on the official page and set the rate to today's value before relying on a figure.