OpenAI cuts Pro price

OpenAI just split one expensive step into two: instead of jumping from $20 a month to $200, ChatGPT now has a $100 Pro plan in the middle. OpenAI says the new tier is built for people doing “real projects,” especially longer coding sessions inside Codex. (help.openai.com) Codex is OpenAI’s coding tool inside ChatGPT, and it burns through usage faster than ordinary chat because it reads files, writes code, and works across bigger software tasks. OpenAI’s developer pricing page says Codex is included in ChatGPT plans, but each plan gets different built-in capacity. (developers.openai.com) The new $100 plan gets 5 times more Codex usage than the $20 Plus plan. OpenAI’s announcement also says it is meant for “longer, high-effort Codex sessions” and parallel projects where limits show up fast. (community.openai.com) The old top-end Pro plan did not disappear. OpenAI’s pricing page still lists a $200 Pro option, so the company now has a ladder that runs from Free to Plus at $20, then Pro at $100, then a higher Pro option at $200. (chatgpt.com) OpenAI is also changing how Codex usage is counted. Its Help Center says that, as of April 2, 2026, Codex pricing moved from per-message limits to usage tied to application programming interface tokens, which is closer to paying for electricity by the kilowatt than by the number of times you flip the switch. (help.openai.com) That change helps explain why a middle tier showed up now. When usage is measured more precisely, OpenAI can sell a plan that gives heavy coders a bigger bucket without handing them the near-unlimited access attached to the $200 tier. (help.openai.com, help.openai.com) OpenAI is being unusually direct about who this is for. Its plan guide says Plus is for “lighter use,” while the new $100 Pro is “built for real projects,” which is a pricing split between people who ask for help a few times a day and people who keep an assistant open like a second monitor. (help.openai.com) The competitive backdrop is coding. CNBC reported on April 9 that OpenAI launched the tier as it tries to compete more aggressively with Anthropic’s Claude Code, which has been gaining traction with developers. (cnbc.com) OpenAI also sweetened the offer at launch. In its developer community post, the company said the new $100 plan includes a temporary 10 times Codex boost through May 31, 2026, before settling into the standard higher limits. (community.openai.com) So this is not a broad consumer price cut as much as a new lane for one specific kind of user: the person who hits coding limits on $20 but cannot justify $200. OpenAI kept the premium ceiling, lowered the step-up cost, and aimed the gap squarely at developers. (help.openai.com, chatgpt.com)