OpenAI Adds $500 Pro Tier; Codex’s Pro Max Mapping Is Still Unconfirmed

Last checked October 1, 2026, 9:03 a.m. Pacific. This is a living article; changes are logged below.

OpenAI now documents three ChatGPT Pro plans: Pro 100 at $100 a month, Pro 200 at $200, and a new Pro 500 at $500. Pro 500 includes Astra Ultrafast and the highest included usage of the three. Pro 200’s planned reduction is canceled. These are published commercial terms. OpenAI’s Pro Help page

Separately, OpenAI’s public Codex repository recognizes a plan identifier called promax. Stable Codex CLI tags now include it, and a later merged change displays that identifier as Pro Max in parts of the terminal interface. OpenAI’s Pro Help page calls the $500 offer Pro 500; it does not say whether that offer maps to promax. The names suggest a connection, but the public sources do not establish one. Original Codex change, later display-name change

The lead came from a September 24 post by TokenGremlin. I checked its claims against OpenAI’s merged pull request #47971 and the changed source files. Here is what they show.

The three names are in OpenAI’s code

These were the labels in Codex’s original authentication change. A later merged change changed the terminal status and analytics labels to prolite → Pro Standard, pro → Pro Extra, and promax → Pro Max. The checked 0.159.3 stable tag still has the earlier terminal labels. The naming is evolving across code surfaces and releases.

There is a trap in reading those names as a price list. The strings are software identifiers, and neither merged change assigns a price or usage allowance to promax. OpenAI has not published a mapping from these identifiers to Pro 100, Pro 200 or Pro 500.

How far does the support go?

The new identifier runs through several practical parts of Codex:

OpenAI added tests for plan parsing, account responses and rate-limit responses in the same pull request. The files show that OpenAI intended Codex to understand this identifier across more than one screen. They do not prove that an account can buy Pro Max today or that every production service has switched it on.

The change also adds Pro Max to a check for experimental context behavior. The surrounding function requires the right authentication mode, a supported model, enabled features and compatible provider settings. When those checks pass, it turns on a history-notes extension. There is no new Pro Max context-window size in that code. Read the full eligibility function

That is the limit of what the context code establishes. “Pro Max gets a bigger context window” would be a leap from an eligibility check to a benefit OpenAI has not documented.

What OpenAI now sells

OpenAI’s current Pro Help page and Codex pricing documentation list three monthly plans:

Compare the allowance and reset times shown in your account before choosing a tier. A larger allowance does not guarantee a corresponding increase in completed work.

The $500 plan is a real purchase option. What remains unconfirmed is whether the Codex promax identifier belongs to it. Neither the official plan description nor the checked code changes make that connection. OpenAI also has not published a distinct context-window benefit for promax; the experimental eligibility code discussed above is not a plan specification.

Code merge versus release versus plan launch

The Pro Max pull request was merged on September 24 at 5:20 p.m. Pacific (September 25 at 00:20 UTC). That means the implementation is in the public repository’s main branch.

The authentication file in the Codex CLI 0.157.1 stable tag lacks the promax parser entry. The 0.158.0 stable tag and newer 0.159.3 stable tag include it. This establishes that the identifier is in released stable CLI source, beyond the earlier prerelease. It does not by itself verify the plan type returned for a real account or map it to a subscription at checkout.

OpenAI’s current Help page advertises Pro 500, while its Codex pricing documentation lists the $100, $200 and $500 options. We have not tested an account or checkout flow. The missing evidence is an official statement or account response tying one of those offers to the promax identifier.

For now, the $500 offer and the promax code path are both real. Their relationship remains an open question.

Updates

• October 1, 2026, 9:03 a.m. Pacific: Final scheduled check of OpenAI’s Pro Help page, Codex pricing, ChatGPT pricing, Codex releases and the original TokenGremlin post. The newer 0.159.3 stable tag still includes promax. OpenAI’s public plan terms remain Pro 100, Pro 200 and Pro 500, with no official mapping from promax to one of those offers.
• September 30, 2026, 9:06 a.m. Pacific: OpenAI now documents Pro 500 at $500/month with Astra Ultrafast and has reopened new Pro 200 subscriptions with revised usage terms. The Codex pricing page also lists $100, $200 and $500 Pro plans. Codex 0.158.0 and 0.159.2 stable tags include promax. A separate merged change revises terminal labels to Pro Standard, Pro Extra and Pro Max. OpenAI has not publicly tied promax to a priced plan.
• September 28–29, 2026: Daily checks were paused; no claims are backdated to those dates.
• September 27, 2026, 10:39 a.m. Pacific: Rechecked OpenAI’s Pro Help page, ChatGPT pricing, Codex pricing, Codex releases and the original TokenGremlin post. The newer 0.159.0-alpha.9 prerelease tag still includes promax; 0.157.1 remains the latest stable release. No separate Pro Max price, allowance or purchase option was documented.
• September 26, 2026, 9:02 a.m. Pacific: Rechecked OpenAI’s pricing and Pro Help pages, the Codex repository and releases, and the original TokenGremlin post. The new 0.157.1 stable tag still lacks promax; the current 0.159.0-alpha.4 prerelease tag includes it. No separate Pro Max price, allowance or purchase option is documented.
• September 25, 2026, 2:06 a.m. Pacific: The Codex CLI 0.158.0-alpha.13 source tag now contains promax and the Pro, Pro (More) and Pro (Max) labels. Official plan pages still do not identify a separate Pro Max price, allowance or purchase option.
• September 24, 2026, 8:25 p.m. Pacific: Rechecked OpenAI’s merged code, pricing documentation, Pro Help Center guidance and public pricing page. Confirmed the three display labels and the existing $200 Pro sign-up pause. No separate Pro Max price, allowance or purchase option was verified.