OpenAI pauses new Pro subscription sign-ups amid surging Astra demand

OpenAI has temporarily stopped accepting new subscribers to its priciest offering, the $200-per-month Pro plan, after a surge in demand for its newest and most capable AI model, Astra, began straining the company's systems.

The decision was announced on X by Thibault (Tibo) Sottiaux, OpenAI's product leader overseeing core products including Codex and ChatGPT. He explained that the Pro tier places the greatest load on the company's infrastructure, making it the logical place to pause new sign-ups first. According to Sottiaux, this represents the smallest possible step the company could take while still keeping access as broad as possible for everyone else.

Other offerings, including API access and the lower-priced Go and Plus subscription tiers, remain open to new users for now, he added.

A warning that came days earlier

OpenAI had flagged the possibility of such a move earlier in the week. On Wednesday, Sottiaux described demand for Astra as truly unprecedented, saying the company was pulling every available lever to keep up but had never witnessed anything quite like it, even after previous periods of steep growth. He said the priority would always be maintaining strong service for existing users, and warned that pausing new Pro sign-ups temporarily was a real possibility if the trend continued.

OpenAI has not disclosed how long the Pro sign-up pause will last, nor has it shared figures on daily sign-up volumes that would help quantify the scale of demand. However, the fact that Codex usage limits were raised just last month suggests the current strain is a relatively recent development.

Astra launched on September 3 and has been rolling out across OpenAI's Pro, Plus, Enterprise, and Business plans, as well as within the company's broader AI offerings. The model is billed as a major advance in reasoning, coding, and computer-use capabilities — areas where competition among AI developers is especially fierce. OpenAI has described Astra as marking the start of what it calls the "AGI era," language that has only fueled further demand.