OpenAI appears to be quietly testing a new ChatGPT subscription tier called Pro Max priced at $500 per month, according to code references and screenshots that began circulating this week.
At that level, the plan would cost 25 times as much as the $20 ChatGPT Plus subscription and more than double the $200 Pro tier OpenAI launched in December 2024.
Hidden logs and screenshots kicked off the latest round of speculation
Independent researcher Tibor Blaho was among the first to spot the changes. He said in a September 24, 2026 post, 「OpenAI is preparing a new higher-tier ChatGPT Pro plan」 after finding references in hidden logs.
Leak tracker TestingCatalog then posted a separate confirmation, though without a price at first. A user later replied with a screenshot of logs showing a $500 monthly figure.
The Pro Max name also appeared in the ChatGPT interface
Chetaslua, a widely followed account in the AI leaks community, later shared a screenshot showing the tier inside ChatGPT’s own interface, including the Pro Max name. The account wrote, 「A new ChatGPT Pro Max plan has been spotted in development,」 and before the number surfaced had floated a guess as high as $2,000 a month.
It remains unclear whether that interface image was an actual leak or a render. Even so, the content shown there matched the rumors already circulating.
Timing has drawn attention ahead of DevDay
OpenAI’s DevDay conference is scheduled for September 29. TestingCatalog predicted that people would 「likely hear more about it already very soon.」
The reports were not limited to X posts. A thread on Reddit’s r/ChatGPT also surfaced the same $500 price independently, and code strings carrying the identifier 「chatgptpromax」 matched what leakers had described.
Leaked details suggest the upgrade is about speed, not chat volume
Based on a video posted by Chetaslua, the reported $500 plan does not add more chats. The only listed change between Pro and Pro Max was faster performance for two of OpenAI’s agent products.
- Work, which handles multi-step research and writing tasks.
- Codex, OpenAI’s software tool that can write and debug code on its own over extended periods.
Chetaslua also pointed to what looked like an odd pricing equation. According to the rumor, the plan may rely on Cerebras as its inference provider. Cerebras makes oversized wafer-scale processors, single chips roughly the size of a dinner plate, built to move data faster than the smaller chips sold by Nvidia.
In the report, inference refers to the stage when an AI model actually generates an answer, as distinct from the earlier training process.
Cerebras has marketed its hardware as 21 times faster than Nvidia’s B200 chips at one-third the cost. That raises the question of why a speed increase tied to cheaper, faster hardware would carry a $300 premium over the existing Pro plan.
Other reported perks include memory and storage
According to screenshots reviewed by outlets following the leak, other reported benefits include maximum memory allocation and 100GB of file storage.
OpenAI has not said anything publicly about Pro Max, and none of the leaked information is confirmed until the company comments.
A $500 plan would sit well above current rival pricing
The timing has fueled interest because DevDay is OpenAI’s annual event for developers and power users, and pricing tiers are the kind of product update the company has introduced on that stage before.
If a $500 tier does arrive, it would land well outside the pricing range now offered by rivals. Anthropic’s highest Claude Max plan runs from $100 to $200 per month, while Google cut its competing AI Ultra plan from $250 to $100 a month in May.