OpenAI launched a $100/month ChatGPT Pro tier Thursday, slotting between the existing $20 Plus and $200 Pro plans. The new tier offers 5x more Codex usage than Plus, with temporary bursts up to 10x for heavy coding sessions. OpenAI repositioned the original $200 tier as "Team Pro" while keeping the $100 plan as the new individual "Pro" offering.
The pricing restructure responds to explosive Codex adoption — 3 million weekly users growing 5x in three months with 70% month-over-month growth. That's a clear signal that developers hit Plus usage limits but weren't willing to quintuple their spend for the $200 tier. OpenAI's pricing strategy mirrors enterprise software: create enough tiers to capture every willingness-to-pay threshold.
The middle tier fills an obvious gap, but it also reveals OpenAI's challenge with compute costs. Five times more usage for five times the price isn't exactly generous math — it suggests their margins on Plus subscriptions are thin enough that they can't afford to simply raise limits without raising prices proportionally. The focus on Codex specifically makes sense given code generation's compute intensity compared to chat.
For developers consistently hitting Plus limits, $100 beats $200, but the real question is whether this usage actually translates to $100/month of value. Most coding workflows are bursty — you might need heavy Codex usage for a few days per month. OpenAI's betting enough developers will pay for peak capacity they don't always use, which is exactly how cloud providers make their money.