OpenAI just announced the $200 Pro plan is back but with half the total API spend included, offset by some of their smaller (NOT Astra!) get…

OpenAI just announced the 200 Pro plan is back but with half the total API spend included, offset by some of their smaller (NOT Astra!) getting a 50% price drop. Does this impact the average user? No. Recent superusers? Yes. Why? Astra usage. We are still VERY much in a compute-constrained world, and here are the clues that point to that. When many of these start changing (in a year, in two decades, who knows), you can assume we’re moving out of a compute-constrained world. Until then, tokenomics matter. CLUES: - limits on new subscribers at higher tier subscriptions - usage limits by window or week - techies talking about the future promise of abundance (aka it’s not here yet) - model-specific limitations (like fable) - slower responses from models - default medium thinking - default automode - autorouting to smaller models - CEOs tweeting “our GPUs are melting” - free tier users not getting frontier models - labs signing big energy deals - efficiency breakthroughs like deepseek moving markets (Nvidia saw a big drop, remember?) - hundreds of billions of dollars in future compute commits from both Anthropic and OpenAI - labs literally saying they’re compute-constrained - not seeing “unlimited” allowances everywhere - hearing about GPU shortages at cloud providers Also, dropping the hammer on usage right before a ton of (likely great) press coverage - smart timing - even if the artificially inflated API price idea sounds like a strawman. Hi, Tomorrow we are re-opening the Pro 200 subscriptions to new subscribers, but together with it we are also changing how we calculate the usage for it. In effect, if you do the math, it will net out at half the dollar in API spend compared to the old Pro $200 plan. Now that it…

Source: Allie K. Miller (X) | 2026-09-29

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