Details confirmed: $200 Pro weekly limits cut 50% to 100 messages, $500 Pro 500 tier introduced with 25x usage and Ultrafast access, affected users receive $2,500 API credits.
Following·Day 2·first covered 30 Sep 2026·2 sources
OpenAI Halves $200 Pro Plan Limits, Adds $500 Tier
The gist
Paying subscribers on the $200 plan get substantially less usage for the same price. The pricing shift reflects, according to one source, a compute shortage underlying the AI industry's agentic ambitions.
The full picture
OpenAI cut weekly usage limits on its $200/month Pro plan by 50%, dropping chat users to 100 Pro messages per week, while permanently removing the five-hour usage limit. A new $500/month Pro 500 tier was introduced with 25x base usage limits and Ultrafast access. Affected subscribers received a one-time gift of $2,500 in API credits expiring at year-end. One source attributes the restructuring to a severe compute bottleneck, noting that always-on agentic tools are extremely costly to run and that rising token prices contradict the notion that AI is becoming more efficient.
How it developed
OpenAI's $200 Pro plan token reduction and new $500 tier reported, framed as evidence of compute shortage.
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