OpenAI adds $100 Pro tier

OpenAI just put a new price in the middle of its ladder: $100 a month for ChatGPT Pro, while keeping its existing $20 Plus plan and its older $200 Pro plan. The new tier was announced on April 9, 2026, and it is built around heavier use of Codex, OpenAI’s coding assistant. (cnbc.com) (help.openai.com) Codex is the part of ChatGPT that writes, reviews, and edits code, either beside you in a terminal or code editor or by taking a task and working on it in the cloud. OpenAI says the new $100 tier gives 5 times the Codex usage of Plus, while the $200 tier stays at the top with 20 times the Codex usage of Plus. (help.openai.com 1) (help.openai.com 2) OpenAI is pitching the $100 plan at people who treat coding help like a daily utility bill instead of an occasional splurge. Its help page describes Plus at $20 as lighter use, the new $100 Pro as “built for real projects,” and the $200 Pro as the highest-usage option. (help.openai.com 1) (help.openai.com 2) The timing is not random. CNBC reported that OpenAI is aiming directly at Anthropic’s Claude Code, which has become popular with developers who want an artificial intelligence assistant that can stay inside long coding sessions. (cnbc.com) Anthropic has been moving in the same direction on pricing. TechCrunch reported on April 4, 2026 that Anthropic told Claude Code subscribers they would need to pay extra for some third-party tool usage, which is another sign that coding agents are expensive enough that flat monthly plans are getting harder to sustain. (techcrunch.com) OpenAI’s own pricing pages show the same shift from simple subscriptions toward metered use. Its Codex pricing page says Plus and Pro users who hit their limits can buy additional credits, and its help center says Business, Enterprise, and Education plans are moving to flexible pricing tied to actual consumption. (developers.openai.com) (help.openai.com 1) (help.openai.com 2) That is a different business from the first wave of chatbot subscriptions, where the main promise was faster answers and access during busy hours. The new promise is closer to cloud software: pay more if you want longer runs, more parallel tasks, and fewer interruptions when the model is doing work that burns more compute. (help.openai.com) (community.openai.com) OpenAI also has a reason to fill in this middle band. CNBC reported in June 2025 that the company had reached 3 million paying business users, which means there is now a large population of workers who are too advanced for a basic consumer plan but do not need a full enterprise contract. (cnbc.com) So the $100 plan is less a flashy new product than a new rung on a price staircase. Free and $20 plans pull people in, enterprise plans serve companies, and this new tier tries to catch the solo developer, startup engineer, and heavy office user whose monthly artificial intelligence bill is starting to look more like software infrastructure than a novelty app. (cnbc.com) (help.openai.com)