OpenAI launches $100 ChatGPT Pro plan targeting Claude Max with enhanced Codex access

At a glance:

• OpenAI introduces a new $100 per month ChatGPT Pro plan on 9 April 2026.
• The plan offers five times more Codex usage than the Plus plan and matches Claude Max's pricing.
• A launch promotion doubles Codex usage through 31 May 2026.

OpenAI's new pricing strategy

OpenAI has launched a new $100 per month Pro plan for ChatGPT, positioning it between the existing $20 Plus plan and the $200 Pro plan. This move is a direct response to Anthropic’s Claude Max, which is also priced at $100 per month. The new plan offers five times more Codex usage than the Plus plan and provides access to the same model suite as the $200 tier. Additionally, there is a launch promotion that temporarily doubles the Codex usage advantage through 31 May 2026, giving subscribers ten times the Codex usage of the Plus plan during this period.

This pricing adjustment comes on the heels of Codex crossing three million weekly users on 8 April 2026, marking a 5x increase in user growth over the past three months. OpenAI describes this growth rate as unprecedented, with a 70% month-over-month user increase. The company has committed to resetting Codex’s usage limits for every additional million users until it reaches ten million weekly users.

The new plan's features and positioning

The new $100 Pro plan is the sixth pricing tier in ChatGPT’s current structure, which now ranges from a free account with advertising to a $25 per user per month Business plan and custom-priced Enterprise contracts. This plan is designed to cater to users who require longer, high-effort Codex sessions, a need that Plus subscribers often hit the ceiling on. The $200 Pro plan, by comparison, provides 20 times the Codex usage of the Plus plan, making it four times more Codex-intensive than the new $100 tier.

Despite the difference in usage limits, both Pro tiers offer access to the same model suite, including the exclusive GPT-5.4 Pro model, unlimited use of GPT-5.4 Instant and GPT-5.4 Thinking, and all other features available on the $200 plan. The differentiation between the two tiers is based on usage volume, not capability. OpenAI has also rebalanced the Plus plan’s Codex allocation to shift towards steadier day-to-day usage, reserving the longer burst sessions for the $100 plan.

The growing demand for Codex

On 8 April 2026, Sam Altman posted on X that OpenAI was resetting Codex’s usage limits across all plans to celebrate reaching three million weekly users. Thibault Sottiaux, who leads the Codex product, stated that this number represents a significant increase from two million users just a month prior. OpenAI attributes this growth to a shift in how developers are using AI coding tools, moving beyond line-by-line code generation to more complex, agentic, multi-task coding workflows.

OpenAI rolled out a dedicated Codex app for macOS in February 2026, designed to support these longer-running sessions and heavier compute demands. This architecture is precisely the usage pattern that the $100 plan is priced to capture. A Plus subscriber who uses Codex for extended autonomous engineering tasks would quickly hit usage limits before their billing cycle ends, making the $100 plan a logical next step rather than a jump to $200.

Competitive dynamics with Anthropic

OpenAI has openly framed the new plan as a competitive response to Anthropic’s Claude Max 5x tier, which is also priced at $100 per month. Claude Code, Anthropic’s terminal-based agentic coding product, has become the fastest-growing part of their commercial portfolio, with an estimated $2.5 billion in annualised revenue by early 2026. Anthropic has been building a developer ecosystem around Claude, launching a marketplace for Claude-powered enterprise software in March 2026 with partners including Snowflake, Harvey, and Replit.

The competitive dynamic intensified in the week before OpenAI’s announcement when Anthropic banned third-party agents from Claude Pro and Max subscriptions. This move prevented subscribers from routing their plan’s usage limits through external frameworks like OpenClaw, requiring users to pay separately under a new per-session “extra usage” system. In contrast, OpenAI’s announcement increased Codex availability at the $100 price point and doubled it temporarily to mark the launch, positioning it as a direct response to Anthropic’s developer subscriber base.

OpenAI's commercial momentum

The new tier launch coincides with a period of accelerating commercial momentum for OpenAI. The company recently completed a $122 billion raise at an $852 billion valuation, led by SoftBank, NVIDIA, and Amazon, and included $3 billion from individual retail investors. This structure has led many analysts to speculate about a potential IPO as early as the fourth quarter of 2026. OpenAI is generating $2 billion in revenue per month and has more than 50 million paid subscribers across its plans.

The $100 plan is part of a deliberate effort to fill the pricing gap between $20 and $200, which had left a large segment of heavy but not enterprise-grade users without a compelling upgrade path. The model powering the Pro tiers, GPT-5.4, launched in March 2026 and introduced native computer use directly into Codex and the API. This move signals OpenAI’s focus on the next phase of developer adoption, shifting from prompting to autonomous agents operating software, navigating file systems, and running multi-step workflows across applications for hours at a time.

Whether this pricing strategy will significantly impact Anthropic’s subscriber base will be evident in both companies’ next quarterly metrics. OpenAI’s bet on the $100 plan reflects its confidence in capturing a segment of the market currently served by Claude Max, leveraging its own technological advancements and market position to attract developers seeking enhanced AI coding capabilities.