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OpenAI wants $500 a month for ChatGPT now, and the $200 plan is paying for it

Get ready to shell out $6,000 a year for a new ChatGPT plan.

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OpenAI GPT Astra website open on laptop
Rachit Agarwal / Digital Trends

Paying over $100 sounds like a lot already. Yet, ChatGPT is making its $200 plan not just look, but also feel cheap now. During DevDay 2026, OpenAI introduced Pro 500, a new ChatGPT subscription costing, as the name helpfully suggests, $500 per month. It becomes the company’s highest-usage individual tier and includes exclusive access to Ultrafast, a new speed option for GPT-6 Astra inside ChatGPT Work and Codex.

$200 isn’t worth as much anymore

OpenAI’s existing $200 Pro tier currently includes substantially higher Work and Codex usage than Plus. The allowance is being cut from 20 times the Plus allowance to 10 times. GPT-6 Pro usage in ChatGPT is also set to drop from 200 messages per week to 100. Existing $200 subscribers will temporarily keep their current allowances before the new limits take effect, and OpenAI says they’ll receive a one-time credit to help ease the transition.

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As of right now, the $200 plan’s listing still shows the 200-message GPT-6 Pro allowance, reflecting the limits available before the reduction lands. To recall, the company launched ChatGPT Pro at $200 in late 2024 as the option for researchers, engineers, and other people who needed its most demanding models regularly. It then added a $100 Pro option earlier this year. Now $200 sits in the middle of a rising subscription ladder.

So what does $500 actually get you?

This is Ultrafast.

Our premium speed tier, Ultrafast offers up to 8x faster token generation (300 tokens per second) in Codex and up to 6x in the API. pic.twitter.com/ekyzT1vFan

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) September 29, 2026

ChatGPT is basically selling you speed. With Ultrafast enabled, GPT-6 Astra can generate as many as 300 tokens per second in Work and Codex. The company is selling it as a premium speed tier for workloads where latency matters most, and OpenAI’s official listing confirms that self-serve Plus, $100 Pro, and $200 Pro subscribers don’t get access to Ultrafast at launch.

OpenAI also announced GPT-6.1 Sol (while 6.1 Astra got pulled), which it says approaches GPT-6 Astra’s performance in areas such as coding and computer use while costing one-fifth as much. It arrives first in Codex and Work for paid users, with ChatGPT access coming later.

Vikhyaat Vivek
Vikhyaat Vivek is a tech journalist and reviewer with seven years of experience covering consumer hardware, with a focus on…
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