While ChatGPT may have kicked off the generative AI era we now live in, it is far from alone these days. There is steep competition from multiple companies in this space, including Google, Anthropic, and even Microsoft—which has a huge financial stake in OpenAI. To compete, it seems OpenAI is trying to make its paid subscription plans more attractive to users, as the company just cut the price of ChatGPT Pro in half.
ChatGPT Pro now starts at $100
As reported by TechCrunch, OpenAI’s new pricing model now offers a Pro plan at $100 per month, down from $200 per month. That now gives users a choice between the following: a free plan, which comes with ads; a Go plan offering more usage limits for $8 per month (still with ads); a Plus plan with extra models and exclusive features for $20 per month; and, now, the Pro plan, with the most usage limits across all of the company’s models and features, for $100 per month. OpenAI doesn’t list a $200 plan anymore, but it confirmed to TechCrunch that option is still available.
If you use ChatGPT to answer your everyday questions, you might balk at the idea of spending $100 a month on the chatbot, let alone $200. But Pro plans aren’t targeted at the everyday user; instead, the idea is for coders who rely on AI to help with programs to subscribe. In this case, that’s through Codex, OpenAI’s coding tool. OpenAI told TechCrunch that its Pro plan now offers five times more Codex access than the Plus plan, which might appeal to power users. (The hidden $200 plan offers limits that are 20 times higher than Plus, or four times higher than the $100 Pro plan.)
Power users are who OpenAI is going after, too—especially those who may be tempted by Anthropic’s Claude 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 for the money than Claude Code: “The new $100 Pro Tier is designed to give developers more practical coding capacity for the money, especially during high-intensity work sessions where limits matter most. Compared with Claude Code, Codex delivers more coding capacity per dollar across paid tiers, with the difference showing up most clearly during active coding use.”
The AI race continues to heat up
OpenAI still has the majority of the generative AI user base. Back in February, the company announced it had broken 900 million weekly active users, with more than 50 million consumer subscribers. Anthropic doesn’t disclose its total users, but some analyses put its consumers at anywhere from 18 or 30 million, while a spokesperson told TechCrunch that paid subscription have more than doubled this year. At the high end, that’s 30 millions users against 900 million.
What do you think so far?
But Anthropic appears to be making more money than OpenAI. The former announced on Monday that its run-rate revenue had exceeded $30 billion, up from $9 billion at the end of 2025. OpenAI says it is generating $2 billion per month, which would put it at roughly $24 billion for the year—at this point, anyway. Anecdotally, I have seen a lot of coders talk about using Claude Code, and far fewer discussing using ChatGPT Codex. While there are many AI companies out there, the fact that OpenAI called out Anthropic directly in this price cut shows they view them as a direct rival. It will be interesting to see how other things change as the race continues to heat up. Will OpenAI make more cuts, like it did when it killed Sora and dropped its AI video models? Only time will tell.
Disclosure: Lifehacker’s parent company, Ziff Davis, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April 2025, alleging it infringed on Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.
