OpenAI's new $100 ChatGPT Pro tier rivals Claude Max on price and gives developers five times the Codex access beyond Plus plan limits.
Codex reached three million weekly users on April 8, a fivefold jump in roughly three months. The next day, OpenAI launched a $100 per month ChatGPT Pro plan that slots between its existing $20 Plus and $200 Pro tiers, priced to match Anthropic's Claude Max exactly.
The new tier offers five times the Codex usage of Plus, pitched as relief for users who routinely exhaust their allocation during long coding sessions. A promotional window through May 31, 2026 doubles that ratio to ten times Plus usage; after that date, the standard multiplier applies. OpenAI also rebalanced the Plus plan's Codex quota in parallel, according to The Next Web, orienting it toward consistent daily use rather than occasional intensive bursts.
The tier structure
ChatGPT's pricing ladder now has six distinct rungs: a free ad-supported tier, the $8 Go plan, $20 Plus, the new $100 Pro, the existing $200 Pro, a $25 per user per month Business plan, and custom-priced Enterprise. Both Pro tiers unlock identical model access: the exclusive GPT-5.4 Pro, unlimited GPT-5.4 Instant and GPT-5.4 Thinking, and everything else currently on the $200 plan. Usage volume is the only lever separating them.
The $200 plan delivers 20 times the Codex usage of Plus, or four times the new $100 tier's ceiling. Positioning both Pro tiers as equally capable, differentiated only by consumption volume, makes the $100 option feel like a complete product rather than a deliberately limited intermediate step. Whether that framing sticks depends on how Codex-intensive a given developer's workflow actually is.
Reading the play
OpenAI's price match with Claude Max is not subtle. Both plans sit at $100 per month, and OpenAI is leading with a developer-legible growth metric: three million weekly Codex users is the kind of number that registers with engineers weighing platform choices. Neither company has published retention data, so the weekly active figure speaks to reach, not necessarily to durability.
Across the industry, the competitive picture looks crowded. Google restructured its AI subscription lineup at I/O 2025, rebranding Google One AI Premium as Google AI Pro at $19.99 per month while adding a pricier Ultra tier, as 9to5Google detailed this week. Meta shipped Muse Spark in the same period, its first major model release in over a year and the debut product from Meta Superintelligence Labs, and watched its stock rise nearly 10% over five trading days to close at $629.86, per AOL. The market continues to treat AI product announcements as direct valuation events regardless of how crowded the field becomes.
For developers choosing between the two $100 options, the math through May 31 favors OpenAI's tier on Codex volume alone. After June 1, users needing sustained agentic coding work either upgrade to the $200 plan or evaluate Claude Max on its own terms. That inflection point is exactly where OpenAI is betting the promotional period builds enough habit to make the choice feel settled.
What happens in June will say more about this launch than the April announcement. If Codex's weekly active count holds after promotional credits expire, the new tier establishes a market segment that barely existed three months ago. If it plateaus, The Next Web's framing of this as a direct Claude Max challenge will prove the more durable headline.
FAQ
What does the new $100 ChatGPT Pro plan include?
Subscribers receive five times the Codex usage of the Plus plan, along with the full model suite from the $200 Pro tier: GPT-5.4 Pro, unlimited GPT-5.4 Instant, and GPT-5.4 Thinking. A launch promotion through May 31, 2026 doubles the Codex allocation to ten times Plus before reverting to the standard rate.
How does the new plan compare to Anthropic's Claude Max?
Both cost $100 per month. The practical comparison hinges on Codex usage limits against Claude's coding capabilities, model preference, and workflow fit. Anthropic has not published equivalent weekly active user figures for its coding tools, making a direct performance comparison difficult from public data alone.
What is Codex and why does OpenAI keep citing its growth?
Codex is OpenAI's AI coding agent. The company is using its weekly active user count as the primary demand signal justifying the new tier. Three million weekly users is a credible figure to anchor a pricing argument, even though OpenAI has not disclosed retention rates.
Does the ten-times Codex promotion extend beyond May 31?
No. OpenAI confirmed the doubled allocation expires at end of May 2026. After that, $100 Pro subscribers receive the standard five times the Plus plan's Codex usage.