OpenAI launches $500/month Pro 500 tier with Astra Ultrafast at DevDay as the $200 Pro plan gets halved
OpenAI used DevDay to redraw its ChatGPT Pro ladder: a new $500/mo Pro 500 tier with an Ultrafast mode for Codex and Work, while the reopened $200 Pro 200 ships with half the usage it used to have. Existing subscribers keep their current limits until October 29 — and they are not happy.
OpenAI's DevDay keynote on September 29 wasn't just about models and agents — it was the company's biggest pricing move since it launched the first $200 Pro plan at the end of 2024. The ChatGPT Pro lineup is now three rungs deep: Pro 100 at $100/month, the returning Pro 200 at $200/month, and a brand-new Pro 500 at $500/month with exclusive access to a speed tier called Ultrafast.
The headline for new subscribers: Pro 200 is back on the menu, but the meal is half the size it used to be. For existing subscribers, the company is offering a one-month grandfathering window — and the internet's verdict is already in.
Pro 500: the new top rung#
Pro 500 is OpenAI's most expensive consumer plan to date and the only Pro tier that includes Astra Ultrafast, which OpenAI describes as "our premium speed tier for workloads where speed matters most." With Ultrafast enabled, Codex and the company's Work apps generate up to 300 tokens per second — reportedly about 8× faster than the next-fastest model on Codex — making long code-writing sessions and complex agent tasks dramatically snappier.
The Ultrafast option is selectable in the model picker and draws on the plan's included usage first, then on purchased credits. It's also available to API users. One detail worth flagging: buying extra credits on the cheaper Pro 100 or Pro 200 tiers does not unlock Ultrafast at launch — speed is reserved for the $500 tier. In terms of raw allowance, Pro 500 carries the highest included usage of the three plans, reported at 25× the Plus baseline.
| Plan | Price / month | Ultrafast | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pro 100 | $100 | No | Standard Pro feature set |
| Pro 200 | $200 | No | Reopened to new subscribers; reduced usage allowance |
| Pro 500 | $500 | Yes | New: highest allowance, Ultrafast included |
The $200 plan comes back — with half the quota#
Pro 200, which OpenAI had quietly stopped selling, is now open to new subscriptions again — at the same $200 price, but with a lower usage allowance than the plan used to offer. In Codex and Work, included usage drops from 20× the Plus allowance to 10×; in ChatGPT, the weekly GPT-6 Pro message cap falls from 200 to 100. OpenAI's support page frames it as a consequence of efficiency gains: the allowance is lower "to reflect our increasingly efficient models."
Existing Pro 200 subscribers get a softer landing. If your subscription was active at the eligibility cutoff — or had lapsed within the seven days before it — you keep your current allowance through October 29, 2026. After that, the subscription drops to the reduced allowance at the same $200/month price. OpenAI says affected users will receive an email with details, and the company will issue a one-time credit to help them "make the most of their new reduced allowances."
The grandfathering has a catch worth noting: keeping your current allowance doesn't upgrade you to Pro 500 or add Ultrafast. Speed stays a $500 perk.
Every Pro sub gets a Dot#
Buried in the announcement is a sweetener: every Pro subscriber — on any of the three tiers — gets a single Dot, OpenAI's name for its new personal AI agents, and conversations with your Dot don't count toward your ChatGPT usage limit. The company is partnering with 16 companies, including Notion and Cognition, so Plus and Pro customers can run OpenAI models inside those services through a new "Sign in with ChatGPT" option instead of setting up API keys.
Subscribers are not happy#
The community reaction arrived fast and ran hot. A thread on r/LocalLLaMA about the reduced $200 plan pulled over 900 upvotes and 400 comments within hours, and the discussion spread across r/OpenAI, r/ChatGPT, and r/singularity. The consensus among longtime subscribers: this is a price increase by stealth — paying the same $200 for half the quota, with the October deadline turning the grandfathering into a ticking clock.
The counter-view has some support too: the grandfathering window plus a one-time credit is gentler than an overnight cut, and Pro 500 arguably just formalizes what heavy API users were already paying. But the dominant sentiment is resentment — especially from subscribers who joined the $200 tier precisely for uncapped-feeling access to the best models. Charging $500/month for the fastest experience lands as another step toward a world where frontier-model access is priced like enterprise software.
What to watch#
- October 29. That's when grandfathering ends. If a large share of Pro 200 users downgrade or leave rather than accept the halved allowance, OpenAI's messaging will have to adapt.
- The $500 question. Anthropic and Perplexity copied the $200 tier within months of its 2024 launch. If either follows with their own $500 flagship, it confirms the pricing ladder is becoming the industry's template.
- Ultrafast exclusivity. The speed tier is currently gated to Pro 500 and API users. Whether it ever trickles down — or stays a permanent upsell — will tell you how OpenAI thinks about speed as a product.
- Dot economics. Off-meter Dot conversations are a generous perk now; if Dots become genuinely useful agents, the "doesn't count toward usage" promise will be expensive to keep.
OpenAI's own support documentation is the most reliable reference for the new terms, and its wording is deliberately precise: three plans, one speed tier, one deadline. The DevDay keynote added the sizzle; the help center page is the contract.