OpenAI has called off the Pro 200 usage cut it announced in September and raised the Work and Codex allowance on its other Pro plans. The change is in the ChatGPT release notes for 29 October and the updated Pro tiers article. Tibo, who works on Codex and ChatGPT at OpenAI, announced it on X the same day as “doubling all usage limits for all Pro 100/200/500 tiers and Business Premium”. The Help Center wording is more precise, and for Pro 200 it tells a different story.
What changed, plan by plan
| Plan | Before 29 October | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Pro 100 ($100) | Previous allowance | Twice the previous Work and Codex allowance |
| Pro 200 ($200), higher allowance | Kept until 29 October, then due to drop | Unchanged; the reduction is canceled |
| Pro 200 ($200), lower allowance | The reduced level from 29 September | Doubled, which brings it up to the higher level |
| Pro 500 ($500) | Previous allowance | Twice the previous Work and Codex allowance |
The September plan, which we covered in our Pro 500 explainer, gave new Pro 200 subscribers a lower allowance and moved grandfathered accounts down to it after 29 October. OpenAI now says “the reduction announced in our September 29 email is canceled.” If you had the higher allowance you keep it, and if you had the lower one “it has doubled to match.” All Pro 200 subscriptions now get the same Work and Codex allowance, and resubscribing does not change that.
So for Pro 200 the “doubling” is a restoration. The plan is back where it was before September, and the cut that was due today will not happen. Pro 100 and Pro 500 are the plans that actually doubled.
The fine print
- Chat limits are separate. Pro 100 and Pro 500 keep their current weekly GPT-6 Pro message limits in Chat. On Pro 200, the lower weekly limit now matches the higher one.
- Plus does not change. The Help Center says Plus usage is unchanged.
- No Ultrafast on Pro 200. Ultrafast stays a Pro 500 feature.
- A bigger allowance is not twice the output. OpenAI says “a larger allowance does not guarantee twice as many completed tasks”, because usage depends on the model, context, reasoning, tools and speed mode. Fast mode still burns the allowance at 2.5 times the Standard rate, and Ultrafast at 8 times.
- Business Premium is included in the release note’s increase, but OpenAI’s notes give no multiple for it. Tibo’s post says doubling.
- No action needed. Existing subscribers get the new allowance automatically, without waiting for renewal.
Tibo’s post also says OpenAI will keep offering extended limits for dots, its always-on agents, and that dot usage stays separate from default usage.
The Anthropic comparison
This comes a day after OpenAI started giving Pro and Business subscribers monthly API credits worth up to $500. Anthropic has had a similar benefit since early October. Its API credits docs list $100 a month on Max 5x, $200 on Max 20x and up to $500 pooled on Team, with a 7 October date in Anthropic’s Agent SDK help article. In both cases the credits fund the developer API, not the coding tool: Anthropic’s do not cover Claude Code, and OpenAI’s do not cover Codex through API keys. Unused credits expire each cycle on both.
Why this matters
If you pay $200 for Pro mainly for Codex, your allowance did not shrink today and you do not need to switch plans or resubscribe to keep it. If you were weighing Pro 100 against Pro 200 for coding, the gap has narrowed, since only Pro 100 doubled, so check your actual Codex usage before upgrading. Treat the bigger allowance as headroom, not as a promise of twice the work: OpenAI itself says Fast and Ultrafast modes and long contexts eat it faster.
The Campfire
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