OpenAI Halves Its $200 Pro Plan's Usage and Drops the 5-Hour Window

What Happened

OpenAI is reopening its $200-per-month Pro subscription to new subscribers, with a smaller allowance. According to Tibo Sottiaux, an OpenAI employee on the Codex team who pre-announced the change to subscribers: "If you do the math, it will net out at half the dollar in API spend compared to the old Pro $200 plan." The plan had reportedly been closed to new sign-ups since around September 10.

At the same time, OpenAI is committing to never bring back the five-hour usage window: subscribers can use their weekly allowance on their own schedule. Sottiaux said that for heavy users of coding agents like Codex, who work in long, intense sessions, that flexibility could matter as much as the raw size of the allowance.

Key Facts

1. Allowance halved: The new Pro offers roughly half the API-equivalent usage of the old plan, at the same $200/month price. (Source: officechai, reporting Tibo Sottiaux's pre-announcement)
2. Five-hour window gone: The five-hour usage window is gone for good and will not return; the weekly allowance can be used at the subscriber's own pace.
3. Cheaper models: GPT-6 Sol and Luna are priced at half their predecessors: Sol costs $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, down from $4 and $20.
4. Official stance: OpenAI says it does not want an incentive to inflate API list prices just to make subscriptions look generous; the long-term goal is for a subscription dollar to buy roughly what an API dollar buys.
5. More features coming: Sottiaux teased more upcoming subscription features that "won't draw down usage limits," promising "good news tomorrow" — the OpenAI DevDay keynote on September 29.

Context

This week's GPT-6 Sol and Luna launched at half the price of their predecessors, so the same $200 buys more tokens on the API side. OpenAI says it does not want to inflate API list prices to make subscriptions look generous; its long-term goal is for a subscription dollar to buy roughly what an API dollar buys.

In the same week, OpenAI shelved its flagship GPT-6.1 Astra over safety concerns, then repriced subscriptions on the eve of DevDay. Sottiaux framed the pre-announcement as ahead of "a series of big announcements"; the DevDay keynote is set for 1:00 PM ET, September 29.