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.

The message, shared internally and seen by CNBC, said the company is also getting ready to release “an updated Chat model” this week. 

ChatGPT now has more than 800 million people using it every week and competition is getting tougher. 

Google’s Gemini app passed 750 million monthly users at the end of last year, while Anthropic has gained ground, especially among software developers.

The pressure is being felt most in coding tools. In his note to staff, Altman said OpenAI’s own coding product, Codex, had grown by about 50% in just one week. 

Codex goes head-to-head with Anthropic’s Claude Code, which has seen fast uptake over the past year.

OpenAI released a new version of Codex, called GPT-5.3-Codex, last week. Altman described the recent momentum as “insane” and added: “This was a great week.”

The company’s push comes after a period of concern about slowing growth. In December, OpenAI shifted staff and resources to improve ChatGPT as competitors closed in, both in growth and other areas.

Since then, the focus has been on keeping users engaged while expanding paid and business services.

OpenAI is also moving ahead with plans to show adverts inside ChatGPT for some users in the United States. The company has said the ads will be clearly marked, appear at the bottom of responses and will not affect what the chatbot says.

Behind the scenes, Altman and finance chief Sarah Friar have been briefing investors on OpenAI’s performance as the company seeks to complete a large funding round. 

CNBC has reported that discussions involve several major technology firms and could be finalised in stages. The figures and structure are still under discussion and may change.

For now, the message to ChatGPT staff was that growth in usage is here again, new products are rolling out, and OpenAI believes it has regained momentum in a crowded market.

Coding has become the most commercially valuable use of advanced models. Whoever controls the developer workflow stands to win enterprise contracts. Right now, OpenAI is focusing on that aspect.

For months, developers have been shifting towards tools that can handle long, messy jobs without constant supervision. These systems can break work into parts, run tasks at the same time and keep going for hours or days. 

OpenAI’s earlier Codex releases worked, but they were awkward. Many users went elsewhere.

The new app is meant to change that. It gives developers a single desktop space to oversee several coding agents at once, switch between projects without losing context and review changes before they touch the main codebase. 

Each agent works in isolation, which reduces the risk of conflicts. The company is also pushing Codex beyond writing lines of code.

The app can now be used to gather information, run workflows, generate documents and even deploy software, all from the same interface. 

Developers can define specific “skills” that tell Codex how to interact with tools they already use, from design software to cloud hosting platforms. Once set up, those skills can be reused across teams.

This approach shows how modern development actually works. Software has gone beyond typing code. It involves design, testing, deployment, bug tracking and documentation. OpenAI is trying to sit at the centre of that entire process.

There is also a commercial angle. OpenAI says Codex will, for a limited time, be included for users on its free and low-cost plans, while usage limits are being raised for paid customers.

This could pull more developers into its ecosystem and slow the focus on competitors.

Anthropic’s Claude Code has built a strong following and, by the company’s own account, reached an annualised revenue run rate of $1 billion within six months of launch.

That kind of figure gets attention and OpenAI’s response has been to tighten its tooling and lean on the strength of its latest coding model.

Speaking to reporters, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman argued that the underlying technology now needs a better wrapper. “If you really want to do sophisticated work on something complex, 5.2 is the strongest model by far,” he said.

“However, it’s been harder to use, so taking that level of model capability and putting it in a more flexible interface, we think is going to matter quite a bit.”

Tests that measure how well systems handle command-line tasks or fix real software bugs show little separation between the leading tools. Usually, developers care less about marginal scores and more about whether a tool fits their workflow and saves time.

That is where OpenAI is aiming. The Codex app allows background automations to run on a schedule, flagging results for review later. Users can also choose how the agent communicates, from blunt and task-focused to more conversational.

These may sound like small details, but they determine whether people stick with a tool day after day.

Altman noted the advantage as speed. “You can use this from a clean sheet of paper, brand new, to make a really quite sophisticated piece of software in a few hours,” he said. “As fast as I can type in new ideas, that is the limit of what can get built.”

Not everyone believes these tools are ready to replace human developers, and OpenAI does not claim they are. What they do is remove drudge work and compress timelines. In a tight labour market, that alone is valuable.

For now, the OpenAI Codex desktop app is only available on macOS, with a Windows version promised later. The company says usage has already surged since the release of its latest coding model, with more than a million developers using Codex in the past month.

The same products come with zero added sugar in Germany, and the UK, among other leading countries.

The report, which was carried out by Public Eye, a Swiss-based NGO, and supported in Nigeria by the Corporate Accountability and Development Foundation (CADEF), shows that the majority of Nestlé Cerelac products sold in African markets contain added sugar.

The report stated that Nigeria is the leading African market for the Company as Nestlé earns $55 million in annual sales from Nigeria, and Nestle Cerelac is the most popular baby cereal brand in the country.

From the research findings, out of the eight different Cerelac baby cereals on sale in Nigeria, five of the products come with added sugar; the remaining three Cerelac products with no added sugar were imported products from Europe and not intended by Nestlé for the Nigerian market.

The laboratory analysis found an average of five grams of added sugar per serving, more than a sugar cube. The highest amount 6.1 grams of added sugar per serving was found in the Cerelac maize variant, intended for babies from six months onwards.

The amount of sugar added by Nestlé to its Cerelac products sold in Nigeria is under the thresholds set by the national legislation, which is based on the standard set by CODEX, that allows up to 20% sugar in infant cereals.

Reacting to the findings of the research, Professor Chiso Ndukwe-Okafor, the executive director of CADEF, in a media parley held at the Lagos State Consumer Protection Agency (LASCOPA) in Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria, condemned the deliberate act, saying the African babies are being fed with sugary baby foods which Europe would never accept.

“This is not a mistake; this is intentional. Nestlé knows that added sugar is unnecessary for babies, and they formulate sugar-free products for Europe. So why are African babies given one to two cubes of sugar per serving? This is a dangerous double standard,” Prof. Ndukwe-Okafor stated.

Speaking further, she enumerated the various health effects of early exposure of African babies to sugary products, as she says that it promotes obesity, dental decay, diabetes, and lifelong exposure to sweetened foods.

“Consumers are clear. We want zero added sugar in baby foods. There is absolutely no justification for added sugar when natural sugars already exist in the ingredients,”  she further added.

Also speaking at the event, Laurent Gaberell, Public Eye’s Food System researcher, said that Lab research has exposed hidden sugar levels as they are not declared on the products’ labels, adding that,

“What is alarming is that Nestlé does not declare added sugar on labels. Consumers cannot know. Only laboratory testing reveals the truth.”

He further called on the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC)  and the Standard Organization of Nigeria (SON), among other regulators, to strive for food systems reforms in Nigeria, stating that:

“The Codex standards used worldwide, including in Nigeria, allow up to 30% added sugar in infant cereals. That is outdated and not supported by scientific evidence. It must be revised urgently.” 

Responding to inquiries raised at the event, Dr. Ifeoma Okafor of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) said that compliance is determined by the CODEX standard and that Nigeria doesn’t accept lower nutritional infant products.

“Compliance is determined by CODEX. Differences in formulation across regions do not automatically mean violation. Nigeria does not accept lower nutritional quality because we are a developing country,” she revealed

Dr. Okafor further added that NAFDAC carries out laboratory analysis tests before registering products and that they are continuously ensuring quality control, compliance, and monitoring.

Udo Dan-Ufomadu, a regulatory officer at NAFDAC, hinted that from January 2026, the Agency will enforce mandatory labeling of added sugars on all pre-packaged foods and products in order to ensure quality adherence by the various food brands.

“The regulation was gazetted in 2022, and enforcement begins in January. Companies are aware. We will also introduce front-of-pack labeling so consumers can easily identify high sugar, salt, and fat,” Dan-Ufomadu stated.

Meanwhile, Nestlé Nigeria has refuted the research findings and said that the infant products sold in Nigeria do not contain higher levels of sugar, thereby branding the report as misleading and and scientifically inaccurate.

“We disagree with the Public Eye report. Our infant cereal products sold in Africa do not contain higher levels of added sugars. It is misleading and scientifically inaccurate to refer to the sugars coming from cereals and naturally present in fruits as refined sugars added to the products,” .