OpenAI's ChatGPT Pro Max leaks at $500/mo — even the inference chips cost less than the subscription

OpenAI is testing a new ChatGPT subscription tier called Pro Max priced at $500 per month, according to code references and screenshots circulating this week, putting the new plan at 25 times the $20 ChatGPT Plus tier and more than double the $200 Pro plan OpenAI launched in December 2024. Independent researcher Tibor Blaho was among the first to flag the changes in hidden logs on September 24, 2026, with leak tracker TestingCatalog following up with a separate confirmation before a user posted a screenshot showing the $500 price point on the same day. The AI leaks account Chetaslua later shared what it described as the tier appearing inside ChatGPT's own interface, writing, "A new ChatGPT Pro Max plan has been spotted in development," and initially floating a guess as high as $2,000 per month before the actual figure surfaced. A Reddit thread on r/ChatGPT independently surfaced the same $500 price tag, and code strings referencing a "chatgptpromax" identifier matched what the leakers described.

The $500 tier does not include more chats. According to Chetaslua's video walkthrough, the only listed change between Pro and Pro Max is faster performance on two of OpenAI's agent products: Work, the multi-step research and writing assistant, and Codex, OpenAI's long-running autonomous software-coding and debugging tool. Other reported perks include maximum memory allocation and 100GB of file storage, based on screenshots reviewed by outlets tracking the leak.

The pricing structure has raised questions inside the leaks community about the underlying economics. Reporting indicates the Pro Max tier is rumored to lean on Cerebras as its inference provider, a chipmaker that builds "wafer-scale" processors roughly the size of a dinner plate designed to move data faster than Nvidia's smaller chips. Inference refers to the moment an AI model generates an answer, as opposed to training it. Cerebras has publicly pitched its hardware as 21 times faster than Nvidia's B200 chips at one-third the cost, a discrepancy Chetaslua flagged as difficult to reconcile with a $300 premium over the existing Pro plan.

OpenAI has not publicly confirmed the tier, pricing, or feature list. The company's DevDay conference is scheduled for September 29, and TestingCatalog predicted "likely hear more about it already very soon." It also remains unconfirmed whether the interface screenshots circulating online are genuine leaks or renders, though the content matches the code references cited by Blaho and others.