In 2026, AI subscription fees are entering a “harvest period.” In response to the massive compute load and cost pressure brought by the next-generation flagship model GPT-6 Astra, OpenAI recently announced adjustments to the personal “Pro” subscription plan for ChatGPT, changing the original pricing tiers into three price levels, with the highest monthly fee rising to NT$16,500 (US$500), substantially raising the price ceiling and leaving individual heavy users under enormous financial strain.
Why has the ceiling price of the ChatGPT personal “Pro” subscription plan risen so sharply? What is the new subscription pricing plan? Here is an explanation:
1. Reason for the adjustment to the ChatGPT personal “Pro” subscription plan:
Open AI’s core technology GPT-6 Astra, launched in early September 2026, consumes an enormous amount of compute for inference and high-intensity workflows, causing demand from heavy users to surge, overwhelming the system, and even at one point forcing OpenAI to pause new-user subscriptions to the $200 Pro plan.
To address excessive system load and reflect real usage costs while cutting costs and stemming losses, Open AI urgently launched GPT-6.1 Sol and announced that GPT-6.1 Sol Ultrafast will be released in the coming days. Open AI officially claims that after improvements in version 6.1, Sol is rapidly narrowing the “intelligence capability” gap with Astra, and across multiple performance metrics, its performance has already nearly caught up to flagship-class Astra.
Experts, however, pointed out that although GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Astra have the same context window and maximum output limit, butAPI pricing There is still a significant price gap.GPT-6.1 Sol has lower standard usage rates and is better suited for routine tasks with clearly defined scope and high repetitiveness, while GPT-6 Astra, the latest flagship technology, is positioned to handle the most difficult complex end-to-end work, effectively reducing errors and the cost of manual intervention.
2. ChatGPT’s new three-tier personal “Pro” subscription plans—”Pro Standard,” “Pro More,” “Pro Max”:
To deliver ultimate performance and higher usage limits while accurately reflecting usage costs for heavy users across different tiers, on September 29, 2026, it was announced that the ChatGPT Pro plan would be split into 3 pricing tiers, including “Pro Standard (Pro 100),” “Pro More (Pro 200),” and “Pro Max (Pro 500),” with monthly fees of NT$3,300 (US$100), NT$6,990 (US$200), and NT$16,500 (US$500), respectively.
The new “Pro Max” exclusive selling point is Ultrafast, and the plan includes access to GPT-6 Astra “Ultrafast” compute in ChatGPT Work and Codex. It enables GPT-6 Astra to output in Codex at up to 300 tokens per second, roughly 8 times the standard speed.
The previously fully suspended “Pro More” (Pro 200) is reopening for new subscriptions, but starting October 30 its quota will be cut in half, including the included usage for Work and Codex falling from 20× Plus to 10× Plus, and GPT-6 Pro’s weekly messages dropping from 200 to 100. Although the returning “Pro More” has seen adjustments to its on-paper API quota, thanks to lower model operating costs, the company claims its actual usability remains at the same level, and more no-charge exclusive benefits will be released in the future.
However,The quantitative guarantees previously clearly stated in the Pro Standard(Pro 100) interface as “5x more usage than Plus” (5 times the usage of the Plus plan) and in the Pro More(Pro 200) interface as “20x more usage than Plus” (20 times the usage) have been removed in the new version and replaced only by the vague phrase “more quota for work and Codex.” As for the Pro Max(Pro 500) plan, the official description of its quota is also only: the fastest “work” and Codex. This also shows that after the launch of GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol, the old multiplier conversion model could no longer accommodate the new compute tiers or reflect the actual costs incurred, so Open AI took the opportunity to establish a completely new dynamic resource allocation mechanism.
ChatGPT is currently not only the market-share leader among generative AI platforms, but is also as well received for its technology as Claude (Anthropic). In response to ChatGPT’s new-generation core technology, “GPT-6 Astra”Unleashing a compute tsunami, adding a $500-per-month Pro Max plan seems to be an unavoidable move when inference infrastructure is already nearing saturation under pressure. However, the usage entitlement multipliers originally officially promised for “Pro Standard (Pro 100)” and “Pro More (Pro 200)” were abruptly withdrawn, leaving outside observers dissatisfied that OpenAI is using wordplay to build a legal firewall for future usage adjustments and to retain unilateral discretion to arbitrarily limit resources at any time based on server load. Outside observers believe it may face the kind of PR storm Anthropic once encountered.
Since individual users have limited financial resources, when usage guarantees become a dynamically fluctuating black box, if new-generation core technology cannot deliver equivalent improvements to heavy individual users, it could face the same dilemma as the current 4G-to-5G upgrade in mobile communications: not only will ARPU (average revenue per user) fail to rise, but existing user loyalty will also be shaken. Whether this is a blessing or a curse is hard to predict!
Source: KOCPC Chinese