OpenAI Launches Pro 500 Plan, Cuts Pro 200 Usage in Half

OpenAI Launches Pro 500 Plan, Cuts Pro 200 Usage in Half

💸 OpenAI just launched a 500 dollar a month plan, and cut its old one in half

Right after unveiling GPT 6.1 Sol at DevDay 2026 (September 29, 2026, San Francisco, over 2,500 developers attending), OpenAI announced something that made many ChatGPT Pro subscribers unhappy: a new subscription tier priced at 500 dollars a month, alongside a 50 percent usage cut to the existing 200 dollar Pro plan.

If you only use free ChatGPT or the Plus plan (20 dollars a month), this news does not affect you directly. But it shows a trend worth watching: prices for premium AI subscriptions are climbing fast, and you should understand what you are paying for before upgrading to an expensive tier.

🆕 What the new Pro 500 plan offers

The new plan is called Pro 500, priced at 500 dollars a month, about 2.5 times the current Pro 200 plan. In exchange, subscribers get:

  • Exclusive access to Astra Ultrafast, the fastest version of OpenAI's GPT 6 Astra model. Inside Codex (OpenAI's AI coding tool), it generates up to 300 tokens per second, roughly 8 times faster than standard speed. In plain terms, a token is a small chunk of text the AI strings together into a reply, so more tokens per second means faster answers.
  • Roughly 25 times the usage of the Plus plan, the highest among the three tiers (Plus, Pro 200, Pro 500). OpenAI has not published absolute numbers, only the relative multiplier.

✂️ Pro 200 usage gets cut in half

This is the part that triggered a sharp backlash (the YouTube channel Matthew Berman even titled a video "OpenAI COOKED"). Starting October 30, 2026, the existing Pro 200 plan will see:

  • Usage in ChatGPT Work and Codex drop from 20 times the Plus allowance down to 10 times, a straight 50 percent cut.
  • The GPT 6 Pro message library shrink from 200 down to 100 messages per week.

In other words, people already paying 200 dollars a month for Pro now get less than before, and to keep the same speed and usage they had, they need to pay an extra 300 dollars a month for Pro 500. Many subscribers feel pushed into upgrading.

🤔 Why OpenAI is doing this, and what you should do

Running powerful AI models is expensive, requiring huge amounts of compute hardware, chips, electricity, and servers. When a faster model like Astra Ultrafast arrives, operating costs rise too, so AI companies tend to split it off into a premium tier instead of including it for everyone. This is not unique to OpenAI: other AI companies, including Anthropic's Claude, also keep adjusting their pricing tiers whenever a new model ships.

If you are considering paying for a premium AI plan, a few things worth doing first:

  • Check your actual usage before upgrading. Don't upgrade just out of fear of hitting a limit. Many people using ChatGPT daily for light work are perfectly fine on Plus, or even the free tier.
  • Compare with free or cheaper alternatives. Claude and Gemini both offer free tiers good enough for most everyday writing, summarizing, and learning tasks, similar to what our guide on what an AI agent is covers.
  • Watch the news before renewing. Pricing and usage limits for premium AI plans keep shifting through 2026. The plan you buy today could have its limits cut in a few months, just like Pro 200 above.

If you want to understand what AI actually is and how to pick the right tool before spending money on a premium plan, start with our guide what is AI, explained simply for beginners.

#OpenAI #ChatGPT #Pro500 #DevDay2026 #AI

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