Due to demand for Astra, OpenAI’s newest and most powerful model, the company has temporarily suspended subscriptions to its $200/month Pro plan due to the strain on its infrastructure.
The move was announced on X by Thibault (Tibo) Sottiaux, Product Lead at OpenAI. He leads core products such as Codex and ChatGPT in the AI Lab. He said the Pro plan is the most taxing on the system, so sign-ups for this service tier are currently disabled.
“We wanted to take the smallest step to continue providing the widest possible access,” Sotiaux wrote. He added that the company’s other plans, including API and lower-cost Go and Plus plans, will also remain available.
The company warned Wednesday that such a change could occur. “The demand for Astra is truly unprecedented. We are doing everything possible to maintain demand, but we have never seen anything like this before, and we have experienced very rapid growth before. Our priority is always to maintain great service for our existing users, but if this situation continues we may have to suspend new Pro subscriptions for some time.”
OpenAI does not say how long sign-ups for the Pro tier will be disabled or how many people are signing up each day to gauge the scale of demand.
As recently as last month, the company raised usage limits for Codex users, suggesting the burden is a recent phenomenon.
Launched on September 3, Astra is being rolled out across OpenAI’s plans, including AI and Pro, Plus, Enterprise, and Business accounts. This model promises a huge leap forward in highly competitive areas such as AI inference, coding, and computer use. OpenAI even touted Astra as the beginning of the “AGI era” and a generational leap, further increasing demand.
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