Chegg offers textbook rentals, homework help, and study tools for students. See current pricing, features, and how ChatGPT and AI upended its business.
Chegg's product suite centers on lowering the cost and friction of getting through a college course. Its original business, physical and digital textbook rentals, let students pay a fraction of a textbook's retail price for a semester of access. Around that core, Chegg built Chegg Study, a library of step-by-step solutions to textbook problems, and Expert-answered Q and A, where students can submit a question and get a written answer from a subject-matter expert.
Additional tools rounded out the subscription: Chegg Writing checks papers for plagiarism and grammar issues, Chegg Math Solver walks through equations step by step, and Chegg's online tutoring connects students with live tutors. Chegg Study Pack bundles most of these into a single monthly or annual subscription, which has historically been positioned as cheaper than paying for a semester of textbooks outright.
Chegg's business model depended on students being willing to pay a recurring subscription for help that, starting in late 2022, became available for free from ChatGPT and similar generative AI tools. Chegg's own leadership flagged the impact publicly in May 2023, and the company has documented a loss of more than 500,000 subscribers since ChatGPT's launch. The market reaction has been brutal: Chegg's stock has fallen roughly 99 percent from its 2021 peak, when the company was valued at more than 14 billion dollars.
The financial pressure translated directly into headcount reductions. Chegg cut about 22 percent of its staff and closed its US and Canada offices in May 2025, then eliminated a further 45 percent of its remaining workforce in October 2025, a restructuring that brought total 2025 workforce reductions to roughly 56 percent of what the company employed at the start of the year. Dan Rosensweig, who had stepped back to Executive Chairman, returned as President and CEO to lead the restructuring. Compounding the pressure, Chegg has sued Google, alleging that AI-generated summaries in search results (AI Overviews) have further reduced the organic search traffic that once drove students to Chegg's website.
Rather than sell itself, Chegg's board decided in October 2025 to remain a standalone public company after a strategic review conducted with Goldman Sachs as advisor, including proposals to take the company private. Instead, Chegg is repositioning around a business-to-business skilling strategy, building on existing units in professional language learning, workplace-readiness training, and AI-skills courses aimed at enterprise learning budgets rather than individual student subscriptions. That segment was projected to generate around 70 million dollars in revenue in 2025 with double-digit growth targeted for 2026.
In June 2026, Chegg announced it had regained compliance with the NYSE's minimum share price continued-listing standard, prompting the board to shelve a previously discussed reverse stock split. The consumer-facing textbook rental and homework-help products remain live and priced roughly as before, but Chegg's broader financial outlook, subscriber trajectory, and the ultimate success of its enterprise pivot remain open questions given how directly generative AI continues to compete with its original value proposition.
Yes. As of mid-2026, Chegg remains a standalone public company trading on the NYSE and regained compliance with the exchange's minimum share price standard in June 2026, though it has undergone major restructuring since 2023.
Chegg's stock has fallen roughly 99 percent from its 2021 peak, a decline widely attributed to competition from ChatGPT and other free generative AI tools that reduced demand for Chegg's paid homework-help subscriptions.
No. Chegg's board explored a potential sale in 2025 with Goldman Sachs as advisor, including proposals to go private, but decided in October 2025 to remain a standalone public company.
Pricing has varied by plan, with Chegg Study historically around 15.95 dollars per month, Chegg Study Pack around 19.95 dollars per month (or about 9.95 dollars per month on an annual plan), and Chegg Writing around 9.95 dollars per month.
Free generative AI tools like ChatGPT can answer many of the same homework and study questions Chegg historically charged a subscription for, which the company says has directly driven subscriber losses since late 2022.
Yes, both are product lines within the same company, alongside writing help, math solving, tutoring, and newer enterprise skills courses.
Chegg is pivoting toward a business-to-business skilling model, offering professional language learning, workplace-readiness training, and AI-skills courses aimed at enterprise learning and development budgets.
Chegg traces back to Cheggpost, launched in 2000 by Josh Carlson, Mike Seager, and Mark Fiddleke; the company was incorporated in 2005 by Aayush Phumbhra and Osman Rashid and relaunched as Chegg in December 2007.