OpenAI launches $500 ChatGPT plan with UltraFast GPT-6

OpenAI used its DevDay presentation on Tuesday to unveil a new ChatGPT subscription tier that costs $500 per month. The plan, billed as Pro 500, sits $300 above the company’s previous most expensive offering and grants the broadest access OpenAI has made available to date.

Pro 500 includes access to UltraFast processing for GPT-6 Astra in ChatGPT Work and in Codex. OpenAI says the UltraFast option in Codex, its coding tool, can speed processing by up to 8x. The plan also carries the highest usage caps the company offers, a capability aimed at developers who encounter token limits.

The new monthly fee equates to $6,000 annually if paid as a single-year subscription. OpenAI framed that sum as the cost only for its services; users who also subscribe to other AI providers such as Anthropic or Cursor would face additional charges.

Open-source watchers and some users on X flagged experimental code for the $500 tier last week, a sign the offering had been circulating inside test builds before the public announcement.

Reduced access for the $200 Pro plan

OpenAI said it will reopen registration for the $200-per-month Pro plan after pausing new sign-ups on 10 September (19 Shahrivar). The pause lasted roughly three weeks. When registrations resume, the company said the $200 plan will provide less access than before.

Specifically, processing rates for the $200 plan will drop from 20 times the Plus tier to 10 times. Weekly message limits for users of GPT-6 Pro will fall from 200 messages to 100 messages. OpenAI also said current subscribers would receive a one-time credit during the transition.

Thibaut Sottiaux, engineering manager for Codex at OpenAI, wrote on X that the aggregate effect of the changes is roughly equivalent to halving the dollar cost of API consumption compared with the previous plan. He added that the company shared the changes in advance so users would know before the broader announcements.