OpenAI on October 29 canceled a planned cut to its $200-a-month ChatGPT Pro 200 plan and doubled the Work and Codex allowance included in its $100 and $500 Pro plans, with prices unchanged. ChatGPT Plus, at $20 a month, is untouched: "Plus usage is unchanged," the company's help page on Pro tiers says.
The reversal came on the last day before the cut was due to take effect. In September, OpenAI had told Pro 200 subscribers that they would keep their existing allowance only through October 29 and then move to a lower one at the same price. OpenAI's own wording now shows that lower allowance was half the old one, a 50% cut.
What each plan gets now
OpenAI's release notes for October 29 say: "Pro 100 and Pro 500 plans now include twice their previous Work and Codex allowance." For Pro 200, they say the reduction "announced in our September 29 email" is canceled. Subscribers who still had the higher allowance keep it, and those already moved to the lower one "get twice their previous Work and Codex allowance, bringing them up to the same limit." New Pro 200 subscriptions also get the higher allowance, and existing subscribers receive the change without waiting for renewal, according to the help page.
The doubling covers ChatGPT Work and Codex only. Weekly GPT-6 Pro message limits in Chat stay where they were on Pro 100 and Pro 500; on Pro 200 the lower weekly limit rises to match the higher one. OpenAI also warns that "a larger allowance does not guarantee twice as many completed tasks," because usage depends on the model, the task and the speed mode.
Plan | Price | Planned | Now |
|---|---|---|---|
Plus | $20 | 1x | 1x |
Pro 100 | $100 | 5x | 10x |
Pro 200 | $200 | 10x | 20x |
Pro 500 | $500 | Not given | Doubled |
Work and Codex allowance as a multiple of Plus, per month. Source: SaasBuzz calculation from OpenAI's help page as archived on September 19 (Pro $100 at 5x Plus, Pro $200 at 20x), its October 29 release notes and its current help page. "Planned" is the allowance after the September 29 changes; the Pro 100 figures assume its allowance did not change between September and October 29, as OpenAI's September 29 notes changed only Pro 200. OpenAI has not published a multiple for Pro 500.
How the cut was announced and dropped
On September 29, alongside a new $500 Pro 500 plan with an Ultrafast mode, OpenAI's help page said new Pro 200 subscriptions would carry "a lower usage allowance than previously offered with Pro 200 to reflect our increasingly efficient models." Subscribers active at any point from September 22 through 10 a.m. PT on September 29 could keep the old allowance through October 29. Until then the same page had described Pro $200 as 20 times Plus usage and Pro $100 as five times.
Tibo, whose X profile lists Codex and ChatGPT at OpenAI, announced the reversal at 12:56 p.m. ET on October 29, and OpenAI's main account reposted it. His post also covers Business Premium and dots, OpenAI's always-on agents.
Post on X by @thsottiaux
Day 25/ We are doubling all usage limits for all Pro 100/200/500 tiers and Business Premium, effective today. We heard your kind feedback and won’t be reducing usage limits for Pro 200, so your Work and Codex usage will stay the same. We’re also going to continue offering extended limits for dots for now, and usage of your dot will still continue to be separate from your default usage. And we'll of course also keep shipping better models and other efficiency improvements that increase your effective usage over time.
The help page is narrower than the post. Tibo wrote that OpenAI is "doubling all usage limits" on all three Pro tiers, but the help page says that "on Pro 200, only the lower allowance doubled," so a subscriber who kept the old allowance gets nothing new. For Business Premium, the release notes say only that OpenAI is "increasing" Work and Codex usage, with no figure. When SaasBuzz checked at 6:13 p.m. UTC on October 30, the Business pricing page still described the Premium seat, at $100 a month billed annually or $125 monthly, as "5x more usage than standard, with no 5-hour limit."
What it means for buyers of AI seats
The planned cut would have removed the volume discount from OpenAI's top consumer plan. On OpenAI's September multiples, Pro 200 bought twice as much Work and Codex usage per dollar as Plus, and Pro 100 the same as Plus. Cut to 10x Plus, Pro 200 would have matched Plus per dollar too. With the reversal and the Pro 100 doubling, both Pro 100 and Pro 200 now buy about twice Plus's usage per dollar, on SaasBuzz's calculation and the assumption in the table.
The Business Premium seat, as listed, sells five times a Standard seat's usage for five times the price, so it carries no discount per dollar. If Tibo's doubling applies to that figure, it would buy twice a Standard seat's usage per dollar, but OpenAI had not put a number on its pricing page by the time of writing.
The episode also shows how loosely these allowances are defined. OpenAI does not publish them in fixed units, its Pro help page no longer quotes Plus multiples, and the same page says a larger allowance does not mean proportionally more finished work. Buyers comparing a ChatGPT seat with metered offers, such as Oracle's AI Units for Fusion agent work, are comparing a published meter with an allowance the vendor can resize within a month, in either direction.
