OpenAI targets heavy coders

OpenAI has added a $100-a-month ChatGPT Pro plan for people who spend long stretches coding with Codex, its software-writing tool. (help.openai.com) The new tier launched on April 9, 2026 and sits between ChatGPT Plus at $20 a month and the existing $200 Pro plan. OpenAI’s help pages say the $100 option includes the same core Pro features, but with lower usage than the $200 tier. (help.openai.com) OpenAI says the $100 plan gives users five times the Codex allowance of Plus, and a temporary promotion raises that to 10 times through May 31. The $200 Pro plan now carries 20 times the Codex usage of Plus and remains OpenAI’s highest-usage consumer tier. (help.openai.com) Codex is OpenAI’s coding agent inside ChatGPT and across its developer products, where it can generate code, edit files, and help with programming tasks. OpenAI updated Codex billing on April 2, 2026 to align usage with token-based pricing rather than per-message pricing for several ChatGPT plans. (help.openai.com 1) (help.openai.com 2) The pricing change lands as OpenAI pushes coding harder as a paid workflow, not just a chatbot feature. The company said in a community post that the new tier is “best for longer, high-effort Codex sessions,” a description aimed squarely at developers who hit limits on the $20 plan. (community.openai.com) OpenAI’s own release notes frame Plus as “best for steady, day-to-day use,” while the new $100 tier adds unlimited access to GPT-5.4, access to GPT-5.4 Pro, and higher Codex limits. That creates a clearer ladder from casual use to heavy coding use to the $200 plan for the highest-volume customers. (help.openai.com) The move also puts OpenAI closer to Anthropic on price. TechCrunch and The Next Web both reported that OpenAI is using the $100 tier to answer Anthropic’s long-running $100 Claude Max offering for power users of coding tools. (techcrunch.com) (thenextweb.com) Demand is already large enough that OpenAI is talking publicly about usage pressure. CNBC reported that Chief Executive Sam Altman said Codex had 3 million weekly users and that OpenAI would keep resetting usage limits every million users until the product reaches 10 million users. (cnbc.com) The result is a simpler pitch: $20 for regular ChatGPT use, $100 for heavier coding sessions, and $200 for the biggest Codex workloads. OpenAI is no longer treating coding assistance as an extra feature on the side; it is pricing it like a product line. (help.openai.com 1) (help.openai.com 2)