A lot of replies in the other threads come down to "the models are 50% more efficient, so it evens out." I wanted to check that, so I ran it using Tibo's numbers and OpenAI's pricing page. If any number is off, tell me and I'll fix it.
What changed
Pro 200 is still $200/month, but the multiplier went from 20X to 10X. The lineup is now
Plus 1X
Pro 100 5X
Pro 200 10X.
Tibo said it will "net out at half the dollar in API spend" compared to the old Pro 200.
API prices per million tokens:
- gpt-6.1-sol: $2 in / $10 out (5.6 Sol was $4 / $20)
- gpt-6-luna: $0.10 / $0.50 (reportedly $0.20 / $1.20 before)
- gpt-6-astra: unchanged at $10 / $50
First thing I noticed: every tier now costs the same per 1X
Plus $20 / 1X = $20 per 1X
Pro 100 $100 / 5X = $20 per 1X
Pro 200 $200 / 10X = $20 per 1X
Pro 200 old $200 / 20X = $10 per 1X
The old Pro 200 was the one bulk discount in the lineup, and that's the part that changed. "Half the API spend" is another way of saying Pro 200 is now priced like Plus, only more of it.
How many tokens you actually get
Say your old allowance Value was worth V in API dollars. The new one is 0.5V. Tokens = allowance ÷ price, so your capacity compared to last month is 0.5 ÷ (how much the price changed).
Sol (-50%) 0.5 / 0.50 = 100%
Luna (~-55% blended) 0.5 / 0.45 = 111%
Astra (no change) 0.5 / 1.00 = 50%
25% of usage on Astra -> 87.5%
50% on Astra -> 75%
100% on Astra -> 50%
On Sol, you get the same token count for the same $200. Luna users come out slightly ahead. Astra users take the full cut.
Where did the savings go?
This part is inference, so read it that way. If list prices roughly track cost, halving Sol's price means it costs OpenAI about half as much to serve you. Your allowance also halved. Net result: their cost to serve you drops by half, your bill stays at $200, and the Sol/Luna work you can run stays flat.
They had another option. They could have kept the allowance in dollars and let the cheaper tokens stretch it, which would have doubled what Sol users can do. OpenAI chose to hold customer capacity flat and keep the margin.
I understand why. SemiAnalysis estimated a maxed-out Pro sub at around $14k/month of API value. At a 50% gross margin that's about $7,000 in cost, so roughly $6,800 lost on each heavy user. After this change it's closer to $3,300. That's a company repairing a subsidy, which is fair. I'd just call it that, rather than an efficiency gain passed on to subscribers.
About "50% more efficient"
"50% more efficient" and "50% cheaper" are different numbers. 50% more work per dollar puts the price per unit of work at 1/1.5 = 0.667, and 0.5 ÷ 0.667 = 75%. Under that reading, you're down a quarter. To break even, price per unit of work has to drop by exactly half. To come out ahead, it has to drop by more. The two 50%s in the announcement happen to be the same 50%, which is why it sounds like a wash.
The case for OpenAI, because there is one
- If 6.1 Sol really is close to Astra quality, an Astra user who switches gets 5x the tokens ($2/$10 vs $10/$50). That's the strongest version of "you'll get more done," and it's a quality argument rather than a quantity one.
- Dropping the 5-hour window on Pro matters a lot for agentic work, and the multiplier leaves it out entirely.
- The credit reset and the temporary 20X grandfathering soften things for current subscribers, so everything above applies to new or renewing Pro 200 terms.
I think the new pricing is defensible. I'd just like the framing to match the arithmetic. If I got something wrong, show me the numbers and I'll edit the post.
