OpenAI’s $100 ChatGPT Pro

OpenAI just filled in a weird hole in its pricing: until April 9, 2026, ChatGPT jumped from $20 a month for Plus straight to a still-available $200 Pro tier, and now there is a new $100 Pro option in the middle. (techcrunch.com) (cnbc.com) The new plan is built around Codex, OpenAI’s coding agent inside ChatGPT, and OpenAI says the $100 tier gives about five times the Codex usage of the $20 Plus plan. (community.openai.com) (venturebeat.com) That usage cap is the whole story, because coding agents burn through requests the way video rendering burns through laptop battery: a few small prompts are cheap, but long debugging sessions and parallel projects eat limits fast. OpenAI says the $100 tier is meant for “longer, high-effort Codex sessions.” (community.openai.com) (macrumors.com) OpenAI is also sweetening the launch with a temporary boost through May 31, 2026, giving $100 Pro subscribers up to ten times the Codex usage of Plus during the promo period. After that bonus ends, OpenAI says the higher $200 Pro tier still carries much larger limits, at about twenty times Plus. (community.openai.com) The company’s own plan description draws a clean line between the two paid tiers: Plus is for lighter use across the week, while the new $100 Pro plan is “built for real projects.” OpenAI also says Pro includes its most capable Pro model plus unlimited access to its Instant and Thinking models. (help.openai.com) This is not just a price cut. It is OpenAI admitting that one person using ChatGPT to draft emails and another using it as an all-day software teammate are not buying the same thing, even if both are “consumers.” (techcrunch.com) (help.openai.com) You can see that shift in the rest of OpenAI’s Codex pricing too. On April 2, 2026, OpenAI moved new ChatGPT Business and new Enterprise Codex pricing toward token-based billing, which means charging more like a cloud meter than a flat buffet. (help.openai.com) (openai.com) The competitive pressure is obvious. CNBC reported that Anthropic already sells Claude Code-heavy tiers at $100 and $200 a month, and OpenAI’s new middle tier lands at the same price points instead of forcing serious coders to jump straight to $200. (cnbc.com) (venturebeat.com) OpenAI now has five personal subscription levels: Free, Go, Plus, and two Pro levels, according to CNBC, while TechCrunch notes that Free and Go now include ads and Plus remains ad-free. That lineup looks less like a single app subscription and more like the pricing ladder for a software platform trying to catch everyone from casual users to full-time developers. (cnbc.com) (techcrunch.com) The practical bet is simple: if coding agents become part of daily work, people will stop paying for “access” and start paying for throughput. OpenAI’s new $100 plan is the price tag for that middle ground — too heavy for Plus, not heavy enough for the $200 tier. (community.openai.com) (techcrunch.com)