OpenAI prepares new $500/month Pro Max plan for ChatGPT

OpenAI appears to be preparing a new ChatGPT Pro Max subscription priced at $500 per month. The plan has surfaced in unreleased ChatGPT subscription references, where its description differs from the existing Pro tier mainly through access to the “Fastest Work and Codex.” Higher usage limits may also be part of the package, although that is not confirmed yet.

The wording suggests Pro Max could target developers, researchers, and professional users running long agentic workloads rather than regular ChatGPT users. Work is designed for longer tasks, while Codex can operate on coding jobs that continue for hours or even days, making inference speed much more valuable in these scenarios.

Context also points to Cerebras infrastructure. OpenAI already uses Cerebras for its latency-focused inference path, including GPT-5.6 Sol Ultrafast. This makes it plausible that the “Fastest” tier could rely on additional Cerebras capacity, though OpenAI has not confirmed a direct connection between Cerebras and Pro Max.

The timing is also notable. OpenAI DevDay takes place on September 29, and the company is expected to discuss APIs, developer tooling, new subscription tiers for OpenAI Platform and new products. OpenAI recently paused new purchases of its $200 Pro tier because of system load, while continuing to expand access to faster inference infrastructure.

If released in its current form, Pro Max would sit far above most individual AI subscriptions, including $200 plans from Anthropic and Cursor and Google’s roughly $250 AI Ultra tier. The main question is whether OpenAI plans to justify the $500 price primarily through speed, larger usage allowances, longer-running Work sessions, or a combination of all three.