Last month, Thibault Sottiaux (known to everyone as @Tibo), who is in charge of ChatGPT and Codex at OpenAI, announced that the usage quotas for OpenAI’s Pro 100/Pro 200 plans would be cut in half on October 30, and the most outrageous part was that the price would remain unchanged. At the time, Tibo also said that because model capabilities had improved, even if the usage quota was halved, the experience would remain the same or even better. At that moment, it almost set off the anger of ChatGPT subscribers across the entire internet; the general reaction from the crowd at the time was comments like “cancel my subscription” and “switch to Claude,” making it clear that people were not buying this explanation. Later Tibo alsoindicate“For the 28 days after DevDay, a new feature will be released every day; otherwise, that week’s quota will be reset” — an attempt to quell the anger (which ended up resetting within just a few days—a total farce). On the last day of the deadline (today), Tibo’s post begins with:Day 25The first sentence reads, “We are doubling the usage quotas for all Pro 100, Pro 200, and Pro 500 plans and Business Premium, effective immediately.” This is also OpenAI’s third plan adjustment within a month, and this change goes in completely the opposite direction from the previous one.
OpenAI announced that it is canceling the originally planned halving of Pro membership quotas.
Changed it three times in one month.
The whole thing started on September 10. Because demand for GPT-6 Astra exceeded existing compute capacity, OpenAI paused the Pro 200 plan from accepting new subscriptions and upgrades. Half a month later, at the DevDay conference on September 29, OpenAI launched the $500-per-month Pro 500 plan, with an “Ultrafast” speed mode; the Codex and Work apps can generate up to 300 tokens per second, which the company calls 8 times the standard rate. On the same day, Pro 200 reopened for subscriptions, but what it included had changed.
In Codex and Work, the included usage for Pro 200 subscribers drops from 20x that of Plus users to 10x; in ChatGPT, the weekly message limit for GPT-6 Pro drops from 200 to 100. The price remains US$200 per month (about NT$6,520), and the new limits take effect on October 30. Existing subscribers can keep their old allowance until October 29 and will receive a one-time usage credit worth US$2,500 (about NT$81,500), which expires at the end of the year.
On September 29, Sottiaux published a long post explaining the reasoning and listing four points. He said he would not compromise elsewhere, including by not reintroducing the 5-hour limit; he promised that as model efficiency improves, subscribers would be able to get more work done for the same money; he did not want the company to have an incentive to artificially raise API prices to create the illusion that subscriptions are a good deal; and he previewed that the next day they would add a feature that “does not consume usage.”
Hi, Tomorrow we are re-opening the Pro $200 subscriptions to new subscribers, but together with it we are also changing how we calculate the usage for it. In effect, if you do the math, it will net out at half the dollar in API spend compared to the old Pro $200 plan. Now that it’s said, let me explain why this is happening and why you will still get more work done than if you were on the Pro $200 subscription one month ago. (a) We didn’t want to compromise in other ways and are committing to not reintroducing the 5h limit, so that you can fully use the weekly usage when you want. (b) On the subscription, we guarantee that over time you always get more work done and with an increasing level of quality. This means that you will continue to get more value per dollar spent as a result of models getting more efficient and us passing down the improvements in the form of API price reductions. (c) We don’t want to put an incentive on ourselves to artificially inflate the API list prices to make it look like you are getting a lot (and workaround it through discounts, etc). Instead we want to continue to both rapidly reduce prices and increase capabilities of models on the API. This week we introduced GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna at 50% of their previous price. Over time, we see prices go low enough that it makes sense for most to buy usage as needed without there being a significant gap between what you get in a subscription and what you get in the API for a dollar spent. (d) Tomorrow, we are adding more things to the subscription that won’t draw on the usage, I won’t reveal what that is yet. I wanted to be transparent before all the big announcements tomorrow. Lots of new exciting things are coming to the subscriptions that will make it super compelling, but I wanted to make sure to share this change ahead of time so you can all understand it before we shower you with good news. Codexingly, Tibo
— Tibo (@thsottiaux) September 29, 2026
What followed was the twist that netizens remembered. At 8:58 a.m. Pacific Time on October 28, a netizen reposted his earlier statement and guessed that it would be good news the next day; he replied with only two English words meaning “I hope so.” The next morning, OpenAI officially announced a complete reversal, and on October 30 he added one more line: “Exactly.”
Official documents are written more precisely than posts.
ChatGPT on October 29 ChangelogThere is only one item, titled “Increased Work and Codex usage for Pro and Business Premium plans.” The body says, “Pro 100 and Pro 500 plans now include twice their original Work and Codex allowances,” and “We have canceled the Pro 200 reduction announced in the September 29 email. Users who already have higher Work and Codex allowances will keep their original allowances; starting October 29, Pro 200 subscribers who were originally on the lower allowance can receive twice their original allowance, bringing them up to the same level.”
The official Pro plan information page directly answered subscribers’ most pressing question: “The quota reduction announced in the September 29 email has been canceled. If you originally had higher Work and Codex quotas, you will keep them. If you originally had lower quotas, they have been doubled to the same level. Your subscription price remains $200 per month.” The page also lists three plans: Pro 100 at $100 per month (about NT$3,260), Pro 200 at $200 per month, and Pro 500 at $500 per month (about NT$16,300); only Pro 500 includes Ultrafast.
The same page also states that “Plus usage has not changed,” and adds a reminder: “The amount of work you can complete still depends on the model, task, and settings; a larger quota does not guarantee that you can complete twice as much work.” The Premium seat for the Business plan costs $125 per seat per month, or $100 per month with annual billing; the official documentation only says “higher usage” and does not specify a multiplier.
Three easily misread points
First, the post said “everything doubled,” while the official document said “only the lower quotas doubled.” For existing high-quota Pro 200 subscribers, these are different things; under the latter, there is effectively no increase. The Reddit r/codex community compiled these figures into a table that has been circulating: originally Pro 100 was 5x Plus and Pro 200 was 20x; after the revision, they became 5x, 10x, and a newly added 25x; after the October 29 announcement, they became 10x, 20x, and 50x. When someone followed up asking Sottiaux whether the $500 plan was the 50x one, he replied, “Yes.” This set of multipliers was reverse-engineered by the community from official statements; OpenAI has still not disclosed the actual quota for any tier.
Second, what is doubled is the quota shared by Work and Codex, not the number of chat messages.Official descriptionIt is clearly stated that the weekly GPT-6 Pro message limits for Pro 100 and Pro 500 remain unchanged, while for Pro 200, “the lower weekly limit is leveled up to the higher one.” The weekly message limit is calculated separately from the Work and Codex quotas.
Third, after doubling, what you can actually do will be less than double. Official data shows that under the same model, Fast mode consumes quota at 2.5 times the rate of Standard mode, and Ultrafast for GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol is 8 times. If you use Fast mode entirely, double the quota is roughly equal to 80% of the original usable workload; if you use Ultrafast entirely, only a quarter remains.
After crunching the numbers, the community concluded that the $100 plan wins.
The backlash did change the decision. Andrew Ambrosino of OpenAI’s product team wrote on X that usage limits had been “restored to double,” and said, “your feedback worked.” He said the team had “started an intensive sprint focused on improving the app’s simplicity and performance,” ending with “Now, send us your complaints.” Sottiaux reposted the post and said, “Send your mild feedback to this person.”
hi all, two things: 1. usage limits are back to being double – your feedback worked 2. we today kicked off an intense sprint to dramatically improve the app simplicity and performance. i will oversee this. more to come. now, send me your complaints
— Andrew Ambrosino (@ajambrosino) October 29, 2026
But after the community ran the numbers, the reviews were not unanimously positive. Some calculated that each Pro plan costs $10 per 1x Plus usage, while Plus costs $20, meaning Plus users pay twice the unit price of Pro users. Other netizens pointed out the shift in plan positioning: the $200 tier used to sell on “twice the price, four times the usage,” but now it has become “twice the price, twice the usage.” The conclusion was that “the $100 tier is the sweet spot, while the $200 tier has lost its main selling point.”
However, Plus users were completely excluded from this change. Someone asked Sottiaux, “What about Plus users? Are we not worthy of love?” Another reply said, “Plus users should cancel their subscriptions and switch to Claude Pro.”
Things that haven’t been clearly explained yet
Three things still remain unclear. The actual quota figures for each tier are still not public; OpenAI only describes them in relative multiples, and users cannot independently verify how much work “doubling” corresponds to. The specific multiplier for the Business Premium doubling has not been announced; the changelog only says “increased usage,” and the multiplier appears in Sottiaux’s post. OpenAI also does not guarantee that users’ accumulated quota will be reset; the official documentation says, “Support cannot reset the usage limits for ChatGPT or Codex.”
There is one more, more distant variable. French media outlet 01net found in code strings on the ChatGPT payment page that in December there may be a design in which ChatGPT and Codex share the same quota cap. It has neither been deployed nor confirmed, and if it comes to pass, some of the benefits of the doubling would be offset. The timing of this adjustment also invites speculation that it may be because Anthropic’s listing is imminent and OpenAI cannot be allowed to have too much negative news.
Source: KOCPC Chinese