OpenAI Reportedly Building $500-per-Month ChatGPT Pro Max Plan
Key Takeaways
- •Code references and screenshots shared by AI leakers indicate OpenAI is testing a ChatGPT 'Pro Max' tier priced at $500 per month, 25 times the cost of the $20 Plus plan and more than double the $200 Pro tier.
- •The tier's reported selling point is faster processing on OpenAI's Work and Codex agent tools rather than increased usage, with additional perks including maximum memory allocation and 100GB of file storage.
- •Leakers suggest Cerebras may serve as the tier's inference provider, raising pricing questions since the chipmaker claims its hardware runs 21 times faster than Nvidia's B200 at a third of the cost.
- •OpenAI has not publicly confirmed Pro Max, but its DevDay conference on September 29, where new pricing tiers have historically been unveiled, is days away.
- •At $500 per month, Pro Max would far exceed rival pricing, with Anthropic's top Claude Max plan ranging from $100 to $200 and Google's AI Ultra plan reduced to $100 in May.
References to a "Pro Max" subscription tier, priced at $500 a month, have turned up in ChatGPT's website code and in screenshots shared by several AI leakers this week. The plan appears to buy faster processing on OpenAI's "Work" and "Codex" agent tools rather than more usage, with some observers pointing to chipmaker Cerebras as the reason why.
OpenAI has not confirmed Pro Max. Its DevDay conference, where new pricing tiers are typically unveiled, is scheduled for September 29.
A 25x Jump From ChatGPT Plus
According to code references and screenshots that began circulating this week, OpenAI is quietly testing a new ChatGPT subscription tier called Pro Max that would cost $500 a month. That is 25 times the price of the $20 ChatGPT Plus plan, and more than double the $200 Pro tier OpenAI launched back in December 2024, itself a price that drew wide attention at launch. If it ships as described, Pro Max would be the most expensive ChatGPT plan OpenAI has offered.
Independent researcher Tibor Blaho was among the first to spot the changes, in a series of hidden logs published to X.
OpenAI is preparing a new higher-tier ChatGPT Pro plan pic.twitter.com/EqRpODLqVs
Leak tracker TestingCatalog followed with another confirmation, though the account did not yet have a price. That arrived a bit later, when a user responded with a screenshot of the logs showing a price of $500 per month.
500 usd. pic.twitter.com/jPJS6i7kEh
Chetaslua, one of the most popular accounts in the AI leaks scene, followed up with a screenshot of the tier appearing inside ChatGPT's own interface, name and all. "A new ChatGPT Pro Max plan has been spotted in development," the account, floating a guess as high as $2,000 a month before the real number surfaced. It is not confirmed whether the interface is a leak or a render, but the content matched the rumors.
🚨 ChatGPT Pro Max $500 > only line that changes on Max : "Fastest Work and Codex" but the Cerebras part doesn't make sense > Cerebras' own pitch = 21x faster at 1/3 the cost of B200 pic.twitter.com/mcVw81xvHV
OpenAI's DevDay conference lands September 29, and TestingCatalog predicted that the company would "likely hear more about it already very soon."
It is not just X users supplying the leaks, either. A Reddit thread on r/ChatGPT surfaced the same $500 price tag independently, and code strings with a "chatgptpromax" identifier match what the leakers described.
What $500 Actually Buys
So what does $500 actually buy? Not more chats, since usage allowances are not the selling point here. Based on Chetaslua's video, the only listed change between Pro and Pro Max is speed on two of OpenAI's agent products: Work, which handles multi-step research and writing tasks, and Codex, OpenAI's tool that writes and debugs software code on its own over long stretches of time. For tools that run tasks across many steps or long sessions, processing speed directly shapes how long users wait for results, which is where a "fastest" tier would make its difference felt.
Chetaslua flagged something odd about the math, though. The plan is rumored to lean on Cerebras as its inference provider. Founded in 2016, the chipmaker builds oversized "wafer-scale" processors, single chips roughly the size of a dinner plate, built to move data faster than the smaller chips Nvidia sells. Inference is the term for the actual moment an AI model generates an answer, as opposed to the earlier process of training it — the step where faster hardware would translate into shorter waits inside agent tools.
Cerebras has pitched its hardware as 21 times faster than Nvidia's B200 chips at a third of the cost, which raises the question of why a speed boost from cheaper, faster hardware would carry a $300 premium over the existing Pro plan.
Other reported perks include maximum memory allocation and 100GB of file storage, according to screenshots reviewed by outlets tracking the leak.
All Eyes on DevDay
OpenAI has not said a word about Pro Max publicly, and none of this is confirmed until the company does. But the timing lines up: DevDay, OpenAI's annual event for developers and power users, is four days away, and new pricing tiers are exactly the kind of thing OpenAI has used the stage to unveil before. The outstanding questions heading into the event: whether Pro Max is confirmed at all, whether the $500 price sticks, and whether OpenAI names its inference provider.
A $500 tier would also land far outside the pricing fight already underway among rivals. Anthropic's top Claude Max plan runs $100 to $200 a month, and Google cut its competing AI Ultra plan from $250 down to $100 a month back in May.
