Thread

GPT 6.1 Sol: Near-Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price

1066 points · 953 comments · crorella

Aboutplants · 1790703271 · focus · HN ↗
“OpenAI's new Pro 500 plan offers OpenAI's highest usage allowance and comes with access to its new "Ultrafast" feature — it also costs $500 per month.
At the same time, OpenAI is also making its existing $200 Pro plan less appealing. In Codex and Work, $200 Pro subscribers will see their included usage decrease from 20x of what the company offers to Plus users, down to 10x of that same allowance. In ChatGPT, meanwhile, GPT-6 Pro message caps will decrease from 200 to 100 per week.”
<a href="https://www.engadget.com/2272106/openai-adds-dollar500-pro-subscription-nerfs-its-existing-dollar200-tier/" rel="nofollow">https://www.engadget.com/2272106/openai-adds-dollar500-pro-s...
Yikes
1. moregrist · 1790704089 · focus · HN ↗
  This is pretty typical product positioning. You want to sell to both high-end and low-end users, so you offer products at a few price points. Then it turns out that that middle is a much better fit for most users. So you start making the middle a worse fit to push most of those users into the higher tiers.
  Long term, this only works if you have a non-commodity, and if the higher tier is actually more profitable. We'll eventually learn whether both are true. For OpenAI right now, it's probably enough to just increase revenue, even if the higher tier is even less profitable.
  1. 5555watch · 1790704975 · focus · HN ↗
    The 200$ plan was appealing because you got 4x usage for 2x the price.
    Now, as it's linear, it makes much more sense to downgrade to 100$ OAI and pick up a 100$ Claude sub. (without doing the numbers) the usage should remain the same, total paid the same, but having access to best of both worlds. It should be a win for the user, and a loss for OAI.
    With this in mind, it sounds like a fumble by OAI.
    RussianCow · 1790727065 · focus · HN ↗
    > it sounds like a fumble by OAI.
    The vast majority of their revenue comes from large businesses buying for their teams, which are almost certainly not going to juggle lower tiers of different subscriptions to save a few bucks.
    nananana9 · 1790748504 · focus · HN ↗
    If we're heading to a world where AI spending for companies will be close to salary spending - which is questionable, but is the only way future in which OAI/Anthropic survive - you will most certainly have people whose full-time job it is to juggle providers and figure out how to save a few percent this month.

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