OpenAI Is Adding a $100-a-Month ChatGPT Subscription Because of Vibe Coding
Vibe coders who hit their mark ChatGPT OpenAI’s $20-per-month Plus plan’s too-quick usage caps no longer have to choose between waiting for a reset or splurging on a $200-per-month upgrade. The company announced Thursday that it will introduce a new Pro plan, at $100 per month, with higher limits in the increasingly popular coding app Codex.
AI coding tools have exploded in popularity over the last few months, with Anthropic’s Claude Code generating viral headlines in late 2025 and the OpenAI Codex seeing a usage boom so far this year. OpenAI said Codex usage increased by more than 70% month-over-month.
The problem is that having the AI plan and write code for an application or tool uses many more tokens – the basic unit of AI generation – than just asking it to chat.
Learn more: OpenAI plans to combine its AI tools into a desktop ‘superapp’
OpenAI said in its announcement that the goal of the new, cheaper Pro plan is to create a middle ground for those who want more time to code and create without paying 10 times the price of the Plus package.
The new tier includes Codex usage limits five times higher than the Plus plan and access to all other features of the existing $200 per month Pro plan, including the ChatGPT Pro model. It also covers unlimited access to Instant and Thinking models.
The $200 per month Pro plan includes usage limits 20 times higher than the Plus plan.
Anthropic offers similar pricing for its Claude AI subscriptions. Claude Max 5x offers five times the capacity of the $20 per month plan for $100 per month, and Claude Max 20x offers 20 times the capacity for $200 per month.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI last year, alleging that it violated Ziff Davis’ copyrights in the training and operation of its AI systems.)
