The gap between ChatGPT Plus at $20/month and ChatGPT Pro at $200/month has always been awkward. One gives you GPT-4o with usage caps. The other gives you unlimited access to everything, including the o1 pro reasoning model. There is nothing in between for people who need more than Plus but cannot justify $2,400 a year.
That looks like it is about to change. Evidence has surfaced showing a $100/month ChatGPT tier in OpenAI's system, suggesting a mid-range plan is imminent.
What a $100 Tier Probably Includes
OpenAI has not officially announced the plan, so specifics are still unclear. But the logic is easy to guess: higher usage limits on GPT-4o and o1, possibly access to the o1 pro model with some cap, and likely priority access during peak hours. The current Plus plan's biggest pain point is hitting rate limits during heavy use, especially with the reasoning models. A plan at 5x the price needs to meaningfully raise those ceilings.
The Pricing Squeeze
This slots OpenAI into a pricing ladder that looks a lot like SaaS industry standard: free, $20, $100, $200. For the millions of ChatGPT Plus subscribers who have been bumping against limits but balking at the jump to $200, this is the plan they have been waiting for. It also puts pressure on competitors. Claude Pro is $20/month, and Gemini Advanced is $20/month. If OpenAI can offer substantially more compute at $100, it raises the question of whether Anthropic and Google need their own mid-tier options.
No launch date has been confirmed, but given that the pricing has appeared in OpenAI's systems, an announcement could come within weeks.