OpenAI launches $100 Pro

OpenAI just filled in the awkward gap in its consumer pricing: until April 9, 2026, ChatGPT jumped from $20 a month for Plus straight to $200 a month for Pro, and the new plan lands right in the middle at $100. The pitch is not “more chat” in the abstract. OpenAI says the $100 plan is for people doing longer coding sessions with Codex, its software-writing assistant, and it gives 5 times more Codex usage than the $20 Plus plan. The $200 plan is not going away. OpenAI’s help page says both Pro plans keep the same core features, but the $100 tier has 5 times the Plus limits while the $200 tier has 20 times the Plus limits. OpenAI is also sweetening the launch. Its Pro-plan documentation says the $100 tier has 10 times Codex usage versus Plus for a limited time, even though the standard positioning is 5 times higher limits than Plus. This pricing move follows a surge in coding-assistant demand. TechCrunch reported that OpenAI said more than 3 million people are using Codex every week globally, up 5 times in three months, while CNBC reported Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman said the company would reset usage limits every additional million users until Codex reaches 10 million users. OpenAI is also changing how Codex gets billed behind the scenes. Its April 2, 2026 rate-card update says new ChatGPT Business customers and new ChatGPT Enterprise customers are moving from per-message pricing to token-based pricing, which charges separately for input, cached input, and output. A token is a small chunk of text, so token billing works more like paying for electricity by the kilowatt-hour than paying a flat fee per question. On OpenAI’s current rate card, 1 million output tokens on GPT-5.4 cost 375 credits, while 1 million input tokens cost 62.50 credits and cached input costs 6.250 credits. That split matters because the expensive part is often the model’s answer, not the prompt you send in. OpenAI’s rate card also says Fast mode uses 2 times as many credits, which means teams can trade speed for a higher bill. The consumer side and the team side are not on the same billing system yet. OpenAI says existing Plus and Pro customers should keep using the legacy Codex rate card for now, while Business and new Enterprise customers use the newer token-based system. There is one more wrinkle for anyone planning workflows inside the main ChatGPT app. OpenAI’s release notes describe Codex as one of the experiences shown in ChatGPT’s interface, but the company’s help materials separate ChatGPT plan limits from Codex rate-card billing, so buyers need to check whether they are paying with plan-based usage or token-based credits before they assume a task is covered. The competitive target is not subtle. TechCrunch and CNBC both say OpenAI is aiming at Anthropic, which already sells a $100 tier for heavier Claude Code usage, so this is OpenAI matching a rival’s price point while trying to make Codex feel cheaper per serious coding session.