Key Notes
- OpenAI will reopen its $200 ChatGPT Pro plan to new subscribers on September 30 with a new usage calculation that nets out to half the API spending value of the old plan.
- Because GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna API prices were cut 50 percent this week while flagship GPT-6 Astra pricing was not, users who mainly run Sol or Luna should see little change while heavy Astra users face a genuine halving of usable capacity.
- The reopening follows a roughly three-week pause triggered by demand surging after Astra's September 3 launch, and lands the same week Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 5.5 at pricing identical to GPT-6 Sol.
OpenAI will reopen its 200 dollar a month ChatGPT Pro plan to new subscribers on September 30, but is changing how usage is calculated in a way that roughly halves the plan’s value in API spending terms for many users, a shift that drew sharp criticism from subscribers even before it takes effect.
Thibault Sottiaux, who goes by Tibo and leads Codex and ChatGPT Work at OpenAI, announced the change in a post on X roughly ten hours before OpenAI’s DevDay keynote in San Francisco.
What Is Actually Changing
According to Sottiaux’s post, the new Pro plan will net out at half the dollar value in API spend compared with the old 200 dollar Pro plan, once the math is worked through. The price stays at 200 dollars a month, but the underlying usage allowance, measured against what the same tokens would cost through OpenAI’s API, is being cut in half.
The actual effect on subscribers depends heavily on which model they use most. GPT-6 Sol’s API price fell from 4 dollars per million input tokens and 20 dollars per million output tokens to 2 dollars and 10 dollars, while GPT-6 Luna dropped from 0.20 dollars and 1.20 dollars to 0.10 dollars and 0.50 dollars, both 50 percent cuts introduced this week.
Because the Pro allowance is calculated against those same API prices, users who mostly run Sol or Luna should see roughly the same amount of usable work as before. Users of the flagship GPT-6 Astra are not so lucky: Astra’s API pricing was not cut, at 10 dollars and 50 dollars per million tokens, so heavy Astra users face a genuine halving of usable capacity.
Four Reasons for Change
Sottiaux gave several arguments for why he believes subscribers will still get more done under the new system. He said OpenAI is committing to drop the five hour usage window restriction for Pro, letting subscribers draw down their weekly allowance at their own pace, unlike Plus subscribers, who had that window reinstated in late August.
He also said the volume and quality of work subscribers can accomplish per dollar will keep rising as model efficiency improves and API prices continue to fall, and that OpenAI does not want to create an incentive to inflate list prices only to offer discounts later, preferring to keep cutting prices directly. He added that new, usage free features would be added to the subscription at DevDay, without specifying what they are.
Tied to an Astra Driven Capacity Crunch
The reopening follows a roughly three week pause that began around September 10, shortly after GPT-6 Astra launched on September 3 and demand for the model surged past what OpenAI had provisioned for.
SemiAnalysis had previously estimated that a maxed out 200 dollar Pro subscription could be worth as much as 14,000 dollars a month in API terms, a subsidy for the heaviest users that appears to have been unsustainable at the pace Astra usage grew.
OpenAI also quietly removed the explicit 5x and 20x usage multiplier labels from its pricing page in the run up to this announcement, and that a 500 dollar Pro Max tier has appeared in the company’s code repository without being formally announced.
Unanswered Questions
Sottiaux’s post did not say whether the new usage calculation applies only to new subscribers or also to people who already hold a 200 dollar Pro plan, and OpenAI had not updated its help center to reflect the change as of Tuesday morning.
The company’s Help Center page still described the 200 dollar Pro tier as offering 20 times the usage of the Plus plan, a figure that would no longer be accurate under the new accounting if the underlying Plus allowance stays the same, since halving the Pro budget in API terms would put it closer to 10 times Plus.
The move lands the same week Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 5.5 at pricing identical to GPT-6 Sol, intensifying a value for money contest between the two companies that is now playing out as much through usage accounting and quota rules as through headline model benchmarks.
Whether the changes OpenAI unveils at DevDay are enough to offset subscriber frustration over the smaller effective Pro allowance remains to be seen.
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