OpenAI has temporarily paused new sign-ups and upgrades for its $200-per-month ChatGPT Pro plan after demand for its newest model, Astra, strained the company’s systems.
Thibault Sottiaux, OpenAI’s head of product, said on X that the Pro plan puts the most strain on the AI lab’s systems. He said the company wanted to take 'the smallest step that allows us to continue giving the broadest access possible' and added that OpenAI is 'working on adding more capacity.' Existing Pro accounts are unaffected.
Sottiaux had warned a day earlier that demand for Astra was 'unprecedented' and said the company 'might have to pause new Pro subscriptions for a bit' if that demand continued. He wrote that OpenAI was 'pulling all the levers possible to sustain the demand' and had 'not seen anything like it until now' despite going through 'very steep growth before.'
Astra was launched on September 3 and has been rolling out across OpenAI plans, including Pro, Plus, Enterprise, and Business accounts. OpenAI has described the model as a major leap in areas like AI reasoning, coding, and computer use. Greg Brockman also called it the start of the 'AGI era.'
The model’s design helps explain the pressure. Its marquee feature, called 'computer use,' lets it interact with a desktop like a human would, including filling out forms and navigating web pages at 'superhuman speed,' Brockman told reporters. OpenAI also said Astra can burn through user allowances faster than its previous flagship model GPT 5.6 Sol.
This is not the first time OpenAI has paused paid sign-ups because of capacity limits. In November 2023, the company temporarily halted sign-ups to its $20-per-month ChatGPT Plus plan after its first developer conference triggered a surge in demand. Sam Altman wrote on X at the time that 'the surge in usage post devday has exceeded our capacity.'
OpenAI has expanded its compute base since then. The company said available compute rose from 0.2 gigawatts in 2023 to about 1.9 GW in 2025, a 9.5-fold increase over two years. It has also broadened its hardware base beyond Microsoft Azure, adding CoreWeave and launching Stargate, a $500 billion, four-year AI infrastructure buildout.
OpenAI has lined up additional capacity beginning in the second half of 2026, including plans for at least 10 GW of Nvidia systems, a 6-GW Advanced Micro Devices agreement for GPUs, and a Broadcom partnership to deploy 10 GW of custom AI accelerators.
The numbers come first. OpenAI is asking customers for $200 a month at the top end of its consumer offering, but the market has already exposed a harder truth: even premium software depends on scarce physical infrastructure. When demand outruns compute, the taxpayer is not the one paying the bill, but the discipline of capital still applies. Capacity has to be built, and someone has to finance it.
