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OpenAI has quietly put a sharper blade on its pricing strategy. The company is now offering a $100-a-month ChatGPT Pro plan, a move that lands squarely in Anthropic’s lane and gives heavy users a cheaper way into more powerful AI tools.
Sam Altman confirmed the change on X, calling it a response to demand for Codex, OpenAI’s coding assistant. The message was simple enough: people wanted a lower-priced Pro option, and OpenAI delivered.
The new lineup is easier to read at a glance. There’s a free tier with ads, an $8 Go plan with ads, the $20 Plus plan without ads, and now the $100 Pro tier. The old $200 Pro option no longer appears on ChatGPT’s pricing page, although OpenAI told TechCrunch it is still available for those who need the extra firepower.
For developers, the real story is in the limits. OpenAI says both the $20 Plus plan and the new $100 Pro plan are built with coding in mind, but the cheaper Pro tier gives users far more breathing room, including Codex usage caps that are five times higher than Plus. In plain terms, it is aimed at people who spend long hours building, testing, and refining code.
This is not a subtle market play. OpenAI is clearly going after Anthropic, which already sells a $100-a-month Claude plan. The company is also leaning hard on the idea that Codex offers more coding capacity for the money when usage spikes. That pitch matters. Developers do not just want a smart chatbot. They want one that keeps up when the workload gets ugly.
There is still a catch, of course. The $100 plan is not unlimited. OpenAI says it is temporarily boosting Codex limits on this tier until May 31, after which those allowances will drop back down. For power users who want even more headroom, the $200 Pro plan remains the top-end option, with limits set at 20 times the Plus plan.
OpenAI seems to be making a calculated bet: price the middle tier aggressively, pull in serious users, and make the jump to higher plans feel more natural. It is a familiar playbook. But in the fast-moving AI subscription race, the company is betting that a better price point and stronger coding capacity will be enough to keep ChatGPT at the front of the pack.
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