ChatGPT Pro’s biggest perk just got cut in half. Meet the new AI subscription math
First, the good news: OpenAI said it was taking new signups for the Pro 200 plan again. The not-so-great news? The plan’s relative usage limits compared to the $20-a-month ChatGPT Plus plan were being greatly reduced.
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Previously, the Pro 200 plan got you 20 times more usage than Plus plan, but according to a rough chart shared by OpenAI’s Thibault Sottiaux on X, the $200-a-month Pro plan will now only offer 10 times the usage limits of Plus, a 50-percent reduction. (Existing Pro subscribers are getting a brief grace period along with usage credits to smooth things over.)
Naturally, those explanations aren’t going over too well in the ChatGPT community, with some users cancelling their subscriptions in protest.
OK, so why is this happening? Sottauix, the Head of Core Products at OpenAI, served up a few different explanations, including the debut of new DevDay functionality that demand “a lot of compute,” while noting that OpenAI passed on the chance to “compromise in other ways,” including the reintroduction of a rolling five-hour usage limit.
More importantly, Sottauix pointed out the recent 50-percent API rate cut for two of its newer and more efficient models, GPT-6 Sol (which already has a successor in GPT-6.1 Sol) and GPT-6 Luna. (API rates are essentially pay-as-you-go, versus opting for a flat subscription rate.)
“We don’t want to put an incentive on ourselves to artificially inflate the API list prices to make it look like [subscribers] are getting a lot (and workaround it through discounts, etc),” Sottauix wrote. “Instead we want to continue to both rapidly reduce prices and increase capabilities of models on the API.”
