ChatGPT adds a $100-a-month tier, filling the gap between Plus and Pro

OpenAI has announced a $100-a-month plan, an intermediate option between the basic ChatGPT Plus at $20 and the professional ChatGPT Pro at $200. This is the level the company's lineup was missing, and the price gap is now closed.

Until now, ChatGPT's commercial structure rested on two extremes. $20 a month bought standard Plus with reasonable capabilities, while $200 unlocked Pro with no limits on the number of requests and priority access to the most powerful models. The tenfold price difference created an obvious problem: a large segment of advanced users, including developers, analysts, researchers and freelancers, fell into a no-man's-land. Plus was no longer enough for them, and $200 was hard to justify as a personal expense, or even as a work tool without a clear corporate need.

OpenAI presented the new plan as a direct response to requests from so-called power users. These are people who use ChatGPT daily for professional purposes but do not need the full scope of Pro capabilities, which are reserved for the most resource-intensive tasks. At $100 a month, exactly half the price of Pro, this looks like a logical price point for the segment.

OpenAI has not yet disclosed the detailed contents of the new plan. Indirect evidence, in particular the URL of the announcement, suggests the plan is tied to expanded access to Codex, OpenAI's toolset for automated work with code. Codex underlies GitHub Copilot and is used in professional developer tools. If the $100 tier really does include improved coding features, it becomes an attractive alternative for a technical audience that currently pays for several separate tools and would like to consolidate them into one subscription.

On pricing strategy, OpenAI is building a classic three-tier SaaS lineup. The $20 / $100 / $200 model matches the "basic / advanced / professional" standard that has proven itself in the B2C segment. The structure works on two fronts at once: some Plus users will move up to $100, raising revenue from the existing base, while those who have outgrown Plus get a sensible next step instead of leaving for competitors.

Competitors do not yet offer comparable granularity. Anthropic keeps Claude Pro at $20, with a jump straight to team and enterprise plans. Google Gemini Advanced costs $19.99 a month. None of the key players has created an explicit middle tier for users willing to pay more than twenty dollars. OpenAI is once again setting the pricing standard, and at the same time creating pressure: competitors will have to either respond with a similar offer or accept losing an audience with higher spending potential.

On its own, launching an intermediate plan is a small product step. But it shows that OpenAI has learned to turn user feedback into concrete decisions. A company with a multibillion-strong audience that listens to its users and reacts to obvious gaps in its product is no longer a startup. It is a mature technology business playing the long game in the consumer AI market.