OpenAI adds $100/month ChatGPT tier with Codex access

On April 9, 2026, OpenAI announced a new $100-per-month subscription tier for ChatGPT. The new plan sits between the existing $20 Plus plan and the $200 Pro plan, which had been the only paid options for subscribers since the Pro tier launched. Heavy users had long requested a middle tier: the Plus plan imposes rate limits that slow down intensive workflows, while the $200 Pro plan is difficult to justify as an individual expense for most PMs.

The plan includes access to Codex, OpenAI’s coding-focused model designed for agentic programming tasks.

Why it matters for product managers

PMs who use ChatGPT regularly for research, documentation, or workflow prototyping have been caught between two unsatisfying options. The Plus plan’s limits create friction during longer working sessions, while the Pro plan’s price makes it hard to justify without a clear budget allocation. The $100 tier addresses this directly.

Codex access is relevant for PMs working on AI-powered products who want to review generated code, understand what AI agents are doing in a workflow, or prototype simple automations without deep engineering involvement. The degree to which individual PMs will use Codex often enough to make the higher price worthwhile depends on how much their work intersects with code and agent output.

The pricing structure also offers a usable example for product managers building subscription products: OpenAI is creating a graduated pricing model rather than relying on a binary free-to-paid conversion, which shifts the question from “will users pay at all?” to “how much will different segments pay and for what?”