The company announced the changes on Monday, making AI Plus the lowest-priced paid AI subscription offered by a provider in the US market.

Vikas Kansal, product lead for Gemini AI subscriptions, said on X that the storage upgrade would reach users over the next few days.

Google AI Plus was introduced in January as an entry-level paid plan aimed at individual users and students. The service includes access to Gemini with higher usage limits, Omni Flash video generation, Google Flow creative tools, NotebookLM and AI-powered features in Gmail.

In Nigeria, alongside AI Plus at N7,700, Google still offers higher-priced plans. Google AI Pro costs N28,500 per month and includes 5TB of storage, expanded Gemini access and the company’s Pro model.

Google AI Ultra starts at N89,000 per month, offers at least 20TB of storage and provides significantly higher usage limits, as well as early access to new features.

The current price reduction follows a series of changes to Google’s AI subscription business this year. In April, the company increased storage on its AI Pro plan to 5TB without raising prices. A month later, it launched a new AI Ultra package and reduced the cost of its top-tier subscription from $250 to $200 per month.

With competition increasing among AI providers over subscription pricing, and premium plans taking over the market, companies have now started introducing cheaper options to attract more users.

This first became visible in India, one of the world’s fastest-growing AI markets. OpenAI launched ChatGPT Go there in August 2025 at about $4.60 per month, well below the price of its standard ChatGPT Plus subscription. Google followed with its own sub-$5 AI Plus offering in India later that year.

Google’s latest decision brings that pricing strategy to the United States, where subscription costs have so far played a smaller role in competition between major AI companies.

The development could increase pressure on competitors, particularly Anthropic, which has not introduced a lower-cost subscription tier or localised pricing in key international markets.

OpenAI and Anthropic are both preparing for public listings after filing confidential IPO paperwork, and growing price competition could become an important issue for investors assessing the long-term profitability of AI businesses.

The company said the new plan sits between the existing $20 Plus subscription and the higher $200 Pro tier. It is designed for users who need more capacity during longer coding sessions.

“We’re introducing a new $100/month Pro tier. This new tier offers 5x more Codex usage than Plus and is best for longer, high-effort Codex sessions.”

With this change, OpenAI’s pricing in Nigeria now spans from a free plan with limited access and adverts, to a Go plan at about ₦7,000 per month, a ₦31,500 Plus plan without adverts, and multiple Pro options starting from about ₦144,900.

The company said the $100 plan includes all existing Pro features. These cover access to its top models, higher usage limits, and full access to tools such as instant responses and deeper reasoning systems.

The main difference across tiers is how much users can do before hitting limits.

For a limited period, OpenAI is increasing usage on the new plan. Subscribers will get up to ten times the Codex capacity of the Plus tier until 31 May. After that, limits are expected to return to standard levels.

OpenAI confirmed that the $200 monthly plan is still available, although it is no longer listed on its pricing page. That higher tier offers up to 20 times the usage of the Plus plan and is aimed at users running demanding tasks across several projects.

The company explained that no plan offers full unlimited access. Instead, each tier is controlled by usage limits, though the highest plan is built to handle continuous work across parallel tasks.

OpenAI is setting the new ChatGPT Pro plan to compete directly with similar offerings from Anthropic, which already runs a $100 subscription for its Claude Code product.

“The new $100 Pro Tier is designed to give developers more practical coding capacity for the money, especially during high-intensity work sessions where limits matter most.

“Compared with Claude Code, Codex delivers more coding capacity per dollar across paid tiers, with the difference showing up most clearly during active coding use,” an OpenAI spokesperson tells TechCrunch.

The development comes as demand for coding tools grows at a speed. OpenAI said more than three million people now use Codex every week. That figure has increased fivefold in the past three months, with usage rising by over 70% month on month.

The company is also expanding its subscription structure. The new tier fills the gap between Plus and the top-end Pro plan, giving developers another option without moving straight to the highest price point.

At the same time, OpenAI is still offering business and enterprise plans with added security, collaboration tools and compliance features for organisations.

That would place the chatbot among the largest subscription services in the world, rivalling giants like Netflix and Spotify.

Currently, about 35 million users, or roughly 5% of ChatGPT’s weekly active base, subscribe to the Plus and Pro plans at $20 and $200 per month. “By 2030, we expect 8.5% of an estimated 2.6 billion weekly users to pay for ChatGPT,” sources told The Information, noting the fast growth from fewer than 10 million paid users in early 2024.

However, OpenAI is currently facing financial challenges. The company’s revenue for the first half of 2025 reached $4.3 billion, a 16% increase over last year, but it also recorded losses of $2.5 billion, largely due to heavy research and development and the high computing costs of running ChatGPT.

By year-end, OpenAI’s annualised revenue run rate is expected to hit around $20 billion.

The company is looking to reduce dependency on subscriptions alone. OpenAI plans for roughly 20% of future revenue to come from new products, including shopping assistants within ChatGPT and ad-driven features that could introduce commission-based monetisation. 

Analysts note that while this approach is similar to the models of Google and Amazon, the company must scale through high operational costs and competition from companies like Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft.

Per reports, there are warnings that the subscription model carries risks. “Mounting losses and high compute costs mean OpenAI must diversify revenue streams beyond subscriptions,” analysts say, noting potential bubble concerns in the AI sector. 

Retaining users while expanding into commerce and advertising will be critical to sustaining growth over the next decade.

OpenAI has not publicly responded to requests for comment.