The Math on OpenAI's Price Cut: Pro 200 Is Now Priced Like Plus, Double per 1X
princemarven · reddit · 2026-09-30
Using Tibo's numbers and OpenAI's pricing page, the author shows every tier now costs $20 per 1X, versus $10 for the old Pro 200 — the bulk discount is gone, and "half the API spend" really means Pro 200 is priced like Plus.
Actual tokens: Sol's price halved alongside the quota halved, so capacity is flat; Luna users come out 111%; Astra unchanged, so heavy Astra users drop to 50%. Mixed usage lands in between (25% Astra → 87.5%).
Where savings went: Inferred inference — if prices track cost, OpenAI's serving cost halved while the $200 bill held, keeping customer capacity flat and pocketing the margin. SemiAnalysis estimated a maxed Pro sub at $14k/month API value ($6,800 loss per heavy user), now $3,300 — a subsidy repair, not an efficiency pass-through.
"50% more efficient" and "50% cheaper" are different numbers: under the former, capacity is only 75%. The author still defends the move — Sol near Astra quality means 5x tokens for switchers, and dropping the 5-hour window matters for agentic work — but argues the framing should match the arithmetic.
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