OpenAI cuts to the chase: the €200 ChatGPT subscription is back... and will offer half as much

Three weeks ago, OpenAI closed registrations for ChatGPT Pro, its $200-per-month plan, which was overwhelmed by demand. They reopen this Tuesday, the day of DevDay, the company’s annual conference, but with an entirely revamped usage calculation method.Thibault Sottiaux, the head of Codex and ChatGPT, puts it plainly: “if you do the math, it will come to half the API dollar spend compared with the old $200 Pro plan.”

Hi,

Tomorrow we are re-opening the Pro $200 subscriptions to new subscribers, but together with it we are also changing how we calculate the usage for it. In effect, if you do the math, it will net out at half the dollar in API spend compared to the old Pro $200 plan.

Now that…

— Tibo (@thsottiaux) September 29, 2026

Half the value, without the five-hour limit

Concretely, the plan retains its price and weekly quota, but each subscription dollar buys half as much consumption, measured in API spend equivalents. One drawback disappears for good: the company commits to “not reintroducing the five-hour limit,” which constrained intensive sessions, and lets everyone spread their weekly quota however they see fit.

Additional subscription features that “will not draw on usage” are also due to be unveiled at DevDay, with no further details at this stage. The fate of current subscribers has not been explicitly settled, the message focusing on reopening the plan to newcomers. September’s suspension was officially attributed to a capacity issue, with demand exceeding what the servers could handle.

A deliberate calculation, a community that does it again

To justify the move, the person concerned argues that actual value will continue to rise, as models become more efficient and API price cuts are passed on to the subscription. GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, launched this week at 50% of the price of the preceding models (GPT-5.6), serve as a showcase for the argument. The company also says it refuses to artificially inflate its API rates to make its subscription plans appear more valuable, the stated long-term goal being pay-as-you-go pricing cheap enough to make the debate moot.

The post, viewed 8.8 million times within a few hours, mostly met with resistance to the price. “You basically halve the usage on the $200 Pro plan and then explain to us in three paragraphs why that would be good news,” one developer responds, while another puts it more bluntly: “you’ve just ripped us off.” Some predict that “a $500 plan will end up being the old $200 plan.”

One exchange encapsulates the current competitive equation: when a user suggests “beating Opus 5.5 in overall value per dollar” rather than publishing lengthy justifications, the person in charge replies with one word: “agreed.” Other commentators duly announce their return to rival Anthropic.

$200 per month therefore buys half as much computing power as a month ago, without the five-hour cap that drives Claude users crazy, and without promises of still-mysterious “bonuses.” Tonight’s announcements will reveal whether the package rebalances the scales, or whether the Pro subscription becomes primarily a stepping stone to pay-as-you-go.

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