OpenAI Targets Coders

OpenAI just put a $100 monthly price tag on coding inside ChatGPT, which tells you where the fight is moving: away from casual chat and toward people who spend hours having artificial intelligence write, fix, and test software. The new plan gives 5 times the Codex usage of the $20 Plus plan, and OpenAI says it is built for “longer, high-effort” coding sessions. (cnbc.com, community.openai.com) That price also lands directly on top of Anthropic’s coding push. CNBC reported that OpenAI’s new tier is meant to compete with Claude Code, which has become popular with developers who want an artificial intelligence tool that can work through bigger programming jobs instead of just answering one prompt at a time. (cnbc.com) Codex is OpenAI’s coding agent inside ChatGPT. Instead of only suggesting one line of code like old autocomplete tools, a coding agent can read a codebase, write files, revise bugs, and keep going across a longer task the way a junior engineer would handle a ticket. (venturebeat.com, openai.com) The important detail is not just the sticker price but the meter. OpenAI kept Plus at $20, kept a heavier $200 Pro option, and inserted this $100 tier in the middle, which is a classic software move for separating light users from people who burn through a lot of computing power. (techcrunch.com, 9to5mac.com) OpenAI is making that bet because coding has become one of the few artificial intelligence jobs where users will reliably pay real money every month. VentureBeat reported that the new tier is aimed at developers and “vibe coders,” meaning people who build software through plain-English instructions and then let the model do large parts of the implementation. (venturebeat.com) Behind that product launch is a business shift inside OpenAI itself. OpenAI said this week that enterprise customers now make up more than 40% of its revenue, and the company expects enterprise to reach parity with consumer revenue by the end of 2026. (openai.com, decrypt.co) Enterprise buyers do not usually want a flat “chat with a bot” subscription. Denise Dresser, OpenAI’s chief revenue officer, told Decrypt that companies are moving toward “agentic workflows,” which means teams of artificial intelligence agents handling repeatable work steps like coding, research, and internal operations. (decrypt.co) That changes how pricing works. If a company is using artificial intelligence the way it uses cloud servers, then a higher-priced tier with bigger limits looks less like a premium toy and more like a bundled compute plan for employees who generate expensive workloads all day. (decrypt.co, openai.com) OpenAI also revealed that Codex has reached 3 million weekly active users. A tool at that scale stops being a side feature and starts becoming a product line, which helps explain why the company is now slicing access by usage bands instead of leaving coding inside one generic ChatGPT subscription. (openai.com) So the story here is not simply that one subscription got more expensive. OpenAI is turning coding into a separate economic lane inside ChatGPT, using a $100 middle tier to capture developers who need more than hobby access but do not want the full $200 heavy-duty plan. (community.openai.com, techcrunch.com) If that works, the next battle between OpenAI and Anthropic will not be over who has the cleverer chatbot. It will be over who can become the default paid coworker for software teams, one monthly seat and one metered coding session at a time. (cnbc.com, decrypt.co)