New $200 ChatGPT Pro Subscriptions Get Paused as GPT-6 Astra Drives High Demand

OpenAI has paused new subscriptions to its $200-a-month Pro plan for GPT-6 Astra, citing unprecedented demand and pressure on its systems. 

Thibault Sottiaux, an OpenAI engineering lead, said in a post on X that the company was taking the “smallest step” it could to preserve access for existing users. 

Other plans and the API remain available, and existing accounts are not affected.

The decision follows a warning from Sottiaux that demand for Astra was unlike anything he had seen before, despite the company’s steep growth. 

He said OpenAI was “pulling all the levers possible to sustain the demand” and might need to pause new Pro subscriptions if demand continued.

OpenAI introduced GPT-6 Astra on September 3 as its most capable model, with improvements in computer use, browsing, software engineering, cybersecurity, science and professional work. 

Greg Brockman, the company’s president, stated the model’s release marks a welcome step into the era of artificial general intelligence, or AGI. 

The model is designed for complex reasoning, coding, computer use, research and document creation, with a context window of up to 1.05 million tokens.

Astra’s rollout has been staggered, and OpenAI initially made it available to a limited set of organisations. 

Broader access is planned for ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise users, as well as through the API, Microsoft Azure and AWS Bedrock. 

The company’s safety overview said Astra was its first model to reach the ‘Critical’ level of cybersecurity capability under its Preparedness Framework. 

This means it could find previously unknown vulnerabilities and develop ways to exploit them across well-protected systems with the right tools and access.

The subscription pause adds a capacity constraint to a rollout that has already faced access issues. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman apologised earlier this month for what he called a “messy rollout” after some paying users couldn't access Astra.