OpenAI cuts ChatGPT Pro price

OpenAI’s $200-a-month ChatGPT Pro plan now has a cheaper sibling: a new $100 Pro tier that sits between the $20 Plus plan and the old top-end Pro option. OpenAI announced the change on April 9, 2026, and says the new plan is aimed at people doing longer coding sessions with Codex. (community.openai.com / help.openai.com) The old ladder was simple but steep: free at the bottom, Plus at $20, then a jump straight to Pro at $200. The new ladder adds a middle rung, which is usually how software companies catch people who want more power but not a bill that feels like a utility payment. (help.openai.com / openai.com) The trigger for the change is Codex, which is OpenAI’s coding product inside ChatGPT and related tools. OpenAI says the $100 tier gives 5 times the Codex usage of Plus, while the $200 tier keeps 20 times the Plus limits for people running heavier parallel work. (help.openai.com / openai.com) OpenAI’s own pricing page shows how central coding has become to the subscription pitch. The page says Codex is included across Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Education, and Enterprise plans, which turns coding access into the thread that ties the whole product ladder together. (developers.openai.com) That pricing page also shows a temporary sweetener: Pro users can choose 5 times or 20 times higher rate limits than Plus, and OpenAI says a Codex usage boost runs through May 31, 2026. Temporary boosts are a classic way to get people to try a pricier tier before the normal limits snap back. (developers.openai.com) The company changed the meter too. OpenAI’s help center says that, as of April 2, 2026, Codex pricing moved from per-message billing to API token usage for Plus, Pro, Business, and new Enterprise plans, which makes the product behave more like cloud computing and less like a chat app with a message cap. (help.openai.com) The team side got cheaper at almost the same time. OpenAI says ChatGPT Business seat prices were reduced by $5 per month on April 2, 2026, and a separate company post says Business and Enterprise teams can now start Codex with pay-as-you-go pricing instead of fixed monthly costs. (help.openai.com / openai.com) Put those two moves together and the pattern is clear: cheaper entry for one person, cheaper trial for a team, and the expensive tier still waiting at the top for the people who need nonstop usage. OpenAI’s help pages now describe the $100 plan as “built for real projects” and the $200 plan as “for heavy lifting,” which is a neat way of separating serious users from all-day power users without removing the premium option. (help.openai.com) OpenAI is also not making this move in a vacuum. Multiple reports tied the new $100 price directly to Anthropic’s Claude Code plan, which already had a $100 monthly option and gave OpenAI a price gap that looked awkward once coding agents became the main battleground. (lifehacker.com / techcrunch.com / venturebeat.com) A year ago, when OpenAI first introduced Codex inside ChatGPT, it rolled out first to Pro, Business, and Enterprise users, with Plus support coming later. This week’s pricing rewrite finishes that shift: ChatGPT is no longer just a chatbot with add-ons, and the paid plans are now being arranged around how much coding work you want the system to do before you hit the wall. (openai.com / developers.openai.com)