Felix Laurent
From October 30, 2026, ChatGPT Pro limits drop for existing Pro 200 subscribers, from 20x to 10x the usage of ChatGPT Plus. The price stays at $200 a month. New subscribers have been on the lower allowance since the plan reopened on September 30. OpenAI is giving existing users a one-time credit grant. The loudest reaction on X is that a one-off payment does not cover a permanent cut.
What changes on October 30
Thibault Sottiaux, who leads Codex and ChatGPT Work at OpenAI, announced the new math on X on September 29. Sottiaux said the reopened Pro 200 plan would "net out at half the dollar in API spend" of the old one. A chart in the post set the new ratios. Plus sits at 1x for $20, Pro 100 at 5x, Pro 200 at 10x and a new Pro 500 at 25x.
Existing subscribers got a grace period. Anyone with an active Pro 200 subscription between September 22 and 10 a.m. Pacific on September 29 kept the old 20x allowance through October 29. On October 30 they move to 10x at the same price.
That doubles the cost of usage. Under the old plan, $200 bought 20 Plus-sized allowances, or $10 each. Under the new one, every Pro tier lands at $20 per Plus-equivalent, the same as Plus itself. AI Catchup also reports that GPT-6 Pro messages in Chat fall from 200 to 100 a week on Pro 200.
Pro plans still have no five-hour limit, so the weekly allowance is the only cap. OpenAI does not publish that weekly number in dollars or tasks. The cut is described only as a ratio, which leaves the question of why OpenAI needed it.
Why OpenAI says it had to
The answer starts with GPT-6 Astra. OpenAI launched its flagship model on September 3, and Sottiaux called the demand "really unprecedented." On September 10 the company paused new Pro 200 sign-ups, saying $200 accounts put the most strain on its systems.
On September 22, OpenAI launched GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna at half the API price of the GPT-5.6 versions. GPT-6 Sol costs $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens. GPT-6 Astra stays at $10 and $50.
Sottiaux tied the subscription cut to those prices. Allowances, Sottiaux argued, should track API list prices. OpenAI does not want to keep list prices high just to make subscriptions look generous. Sottiaux also promised that the five-hour limit would not come back, and that value per dollar would rise as models get cheaper.
The same day OpenAI added Pro 500 at $500 a month. It is the only Pro tier with Astra Ultrafast, which runs up to 8x faster in Codex at about 300 tokens per second. Credits bought on Pro 200 do not unlock Ultrafast. For heavy users, the old plan's 20x is now split between a cheaper $200 tier and a faster $500 one. What OpenAI offers the people who lose the old allowance is a credit grant.
The credit grant and the reaction
Sottiaux said on September 29 that existing subscribers would get additional credits, without naming an amount. The New Stack, as cited by AI Catchup, reports a grant of 62,500 usage credits, which OpenAI values at $2,500, expiring on December 31, 2026. OpenAI's own Help Center gives no figure.
By Codex standard rates for GPT-6 Astra, 1,250 credits buy a million output tokens. The grant covers about 50 million output tokens, or 250 million input tokens at 250 credits per million. It lasts two months. The cut has no end date.
That gap drove the reaction. On October 28, @TokenGremlin posted that limits were dropping from 20x to 10x in under three days. The post called the 62,500 credits a one-time grant that "doesn't make up for a permanent cut." By October 29 it had about 89,000 views.
Chubby (@kimmonismus), a tech analyst with 154,000 followers, quoted it and agreed. Chubby asked OpenAI to ship a competitor to Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 that is as efficient as Sol. Until then, Chubby wrote, they would stay on GPT-6 Astra in Ultra mode. The quote post drew 788 likes and 44,000 views.
Also on October 28, OpenAI announced monthly API credits for Pro and Business subscribers, $100 to $500 depending on the tier. Those credits reset every billing cycle and are not tied to the cut. Taking back usage and handing out a one-time grant is not new, though. Anthropic did the same this summer.
Anthropic made the same move in July
On July 18, 2026, Anthropic announced changes to Claude Fable 5 access, as reported by The Decoder. From July 20, the bonus usage phase on Max and Team Premium ended, cutting regular limits by 33%. Fable 5 stayed in those plans, but only at 50% of the reduced limits.
Pro and Team Standard subscribers lost Fable 5 in their plans. They got a one-time $100 usage credit and pay API prices after that. Anthropic said Fable demand had been "hard to manage and frustrating for users." The Decoder linked the decision to keep Fable in Max to competition from OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol.
The pattern matches. Both companies hit demand for their top model, cut what a subscription buys, and paid users once in credits. Anthropic gave Pro users $100. OpenAI is giving Pro 200 users credits worth $2,500 that expire on December 31.
So does the grant make up for the cut? Not by OpenAI's own math. The new plan delivers half the API value of the old one, every month, with no end date. The grant expires after two months, and OpenAI has not said what the lost 10x is worth in credits. Users keep the faster models and the lower API prices, but at $200 they now get what $100 used to buy.
