While ChatGPT may have ushered in the generative AI era we now live in, it’s far from alone these days. There is intense competition in this space from multiple companies, including Google, Anthropic, and Microsoft—which have a large financial stake in OpenAI. To compete, it seems that OpenAI is trying to make its paid subscription plan more attractive to users, as the company has cut the price of ChatGPT Pro by half.
ChatGPT Pro now starts at $100
Reported by TechCrunchOpenAI’s new pricing model now offers a Pro plan at $100 per month, down from $200 per month. It now offers users a choice between: a free plan, Which comes with ads; $8 per month (still with ads); Plus plan with additional models and special features for $20 per month; And, now, the Pro plan, with the highest usage limit of all the company’s models and features, at $100 per month. OpenAI no longer lists the $200 plan, but confirmed to TechCrunch that the option is still available.
If you use ChatGPT to answer your everyday questions, you can avoid the thought of spending $100 a month on a chatbot, let alone $200. But the Pro plans aren’t aimed at the everyday user; Instead, the idea is for coders who rely on AI to help them subscribe to programs. In this case, it’s through Codex, OpenAI’s coding tool. OpenAI told TechCrunch that its Pro plan now offers five times more codec access than the Plus plan, which may appeal to power users. (Hidden offers limits that are 20 times higher than the $200 Plus plan or four times higher than the $100 Pro plan.)
Power users are the ones OpenAI is also pursuing—especially those who might be enticed by Anthropic’s Cloud Code tool, which also offers a $100-per-month plan. This isn’t speculation, either: an OpenAI spokesperson directly acknowledged how they believe Codex offers more bang for the buck than Cloud Code: “The new $100 Pro tier is designed to give developers more practical coding capabilities for the money, especially during high-intensity work sessions where constraints matter most. Compared to Cloud Code, Codex shows a greater pay-per-dollar difference. During active coding use Clearly.”
The AI race continues to heat up
OpenAI still has a large portion of the generative AI user base. Back in February, The company announced It broke 900 million weekly active users with over 50 million active subscribers. Anthropic does not disclose its total users, however Some analysis That puts its users at anywhere from 18 or 30 million, while a spokesperson told TechCrunch that paid subscriptions have more than doubled this year. At the high end, it’s 30 million users against 900 million.
What do you think so far?
But Anthropic seems to be making more money than OpenAI. The former announced on Monday That its run-rate revenue had crossed $30 billion, rising from $9 billion at the end of 2025. says OpenAI It’s generating $2 billion a month, which would put it at roughly $24 billion for the year — at this point, anyway. Incidentally, I have seen a a lot Coders talk about using cloud codeAnd much less discuss using the ChatGPT codec. While there are many AI companies out there, the fact that OpenAI directly called out Anthropic for this price cut shows that they see them as a direct competitor. It will be interesting to see how other things change as the race continues to heat up. Will OpenAI make the cut further, as it did When he kills Sora And abandoned its AI video models? Only time will tell.
Disclosure: Lifehacker’s parent company, Ziff Davis, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April 2025, alleging that it infringed Ziff Davis’s copyright in training and operating its AI system.
