> we guarantee that over time you always get more work done and with an increasing level of quality

or your money back?

Codex $200 usage was already lower than $200 of Claude for around 2 months now. Half of that means that subscription is not really worth it unless you max things out all the time. But if you're going to go with API rates, there are better priced options out there than whatever OpenAI provides.

This is a risky strategy for OpenAI, and time will tell how will this work. But my hunch is that this is a catastrophic blunder.

I was listening to Dario's podcast where he was talking about how the entire game is in predicting extremely well how much compute you buy in advance, and if you miscalculate, it's pretty much over.

Looks like OpenAI miscalculated.

People are up in arms about this change but I think the knee-jerk reaction here is missing the bigger picture. API pricing is probably going down as a move to be more competitive in the enterprise space.

The ppl paying the actual bills have all been exploring crappier models to reduce costs and I think that has been strongly communicated to OpenAI.

"it will net out at half the dollar in API spend compared to the old Pro $200 plan"

So effectively 50% less usage.

Looks like OpenAI is finally compute constrained (and they're already back to the market to raise money, presumably to for more compute).

I'm not sure if compute alone is enough of a moat enough but so far that's how they have survived Anthropic's capture of the enterprise/professional market. Along with shitposting on X and playing Anthropic's unforced errors on developer relations.

But I suspect OpenAI will have to make some hard decisions about de-prioritizing their consumer products, which is most of their current valuation?

I wish they would give the notice one month in advance. Last week my $200 was renewed, and if tomorrow my usage cuts in half (if I understood correctly) it feels as I got partially ripped.

So after a very tepid response to Sol / Luna 6 - right when opus 5.5 is almost universally praised - OpenAI decided to cut in half their only subscription plan that was still decent value?

Things sure change quickly. 2 months ago you had nigh infinite usage and Sol 5.6 was a significant step forward. Now they're behind in both models and usage, and Astra 6.1 is too dangerous to release or some such (or possibly got embarrassed by opus). What are they even going to show off on today's devday, is a clone of grokbot really that interesting?

It's very obvious that they need compute for whatever they are announcing tomorrow and that thing will most likely have free usage. So they are cutting usage on the biggest users of compute to allow them to be able to serve whatever they are announcing tomorrow to the masses.

The thing is probably a Muse, and Grok Bot competitor.

They're halving the $200 sub so it essentially becomes 10x from 20x

OpenAI were initially competing with Anthropic in $ value of tokens, and then number of tokens, and then the 5h limit removal meant you could buy multiple plans for huge continuous usage. This gravy train was never sustainable from a margin perspective and must have cost them billions.

It’s now going to be interesting how anthropic react - 5h limit and retain 15-20x $ value, or go the same was as OpenAI.

This doesn't bode well, 500$ is the new 200$? Wild that they're doing this after Sonnet/Opus 5.5 releases.

I wonder how legal it is to change usage during a running subscription.

In all fairness though, OpenAIs $200 plan was actually 20x compared to Plus, whereas Anthropic pulled this shady wording where it's only your session limit that is 20x while your weekly is only 10x.

But yeah, weird timing after a meh release and their competitor killing it right now.

The assumption of the math is that you are not using Astra (which is hilarious). If you are not using Astra there is no point currently when Claude Opus 5.5 exists.

So, they’re finally trying to end the subscription subsidies. Presumably ahead of Q4 so that their financials will look better going into next year for the IPO.

Codex GPT-6 models are so congested and slow at the moment it is difficult to get through the current 20x plan anyway.

> Over time, we see prices go low enough that it makes sense for most to buy usage as needed

Well, this is upsetting. I was already maxing out two $200 subscriptions days before the weekly limit. I wonder how bad it'll be after this change.

Do note, it does not say 20x.