OpenAI has introduced a new $100-per-month ChatGPT Pro subscription tier, splitting its premium offering into two price points as the company moves to capture developers who have grown beyond the $20 Plus plan but aren’t ready to commit to the $200 top-tier subscription. The timing is no coincidence: OpenAI’s Codex coding tool has surged past three million weekly active users — a fivefold increase in just three months — with usage growing roughly 70 percent month over month.
What the New Tier Includes
The $100 Pro plan offers five times the usage limits of ChatGPT Plus, access to exclusive Pro models, and unlimited use of OpenAI’s Instant and Thinking model variants. As a promotional incentive through May 31, subscribers receive ten times Plus-level Codex usage rather than the standard five times — a deliberate move to capture developers riding the current wave of AI-assisted coding.
The existing $200 Pro tier remains available, offering 20 times Plus limits and the ability to run demanding workflows across parallel projects. OpenAI’s subscription lineup now spans five consumer tiers: Free, Go at $8, Plus at $20, and Pro at $100 and $200 — a segmentation designed to extract more revenue from heavy enterprise and developer usage while keeping casual users on accessible lower-cost plans.
A Competitive Play Against Anthropic
The new $100 tier places OpenAI in direct competition with Anthropic’s Claude Max 5x plan, which also costs $100 per month and offers five times the usage of Anthropic’s $20 Pro subscription. The coding arms race between the two companies has intensified, with Anthropic’s Claude Code tool reportedly exceeding $2.5 billion in run-rate revenue as of February and gaining strong traction among enterprise engineering teams.
Monetizing the Developer Surge
The mid-tier plan addresses long-standing demand from the developer community, which had vocally requested an intermediate option between $20 and $200. Community forums had flagged the gap as a barrier for professional developers who needed more than Plus but couldn’t justify the full Pro price. OpenAI’s decision to fill that gap — precisely at the moment Codex usage is exploding — reflects a sharp read of where developer spending is heading and what it will take to capture it.
