OpenAI announced a new Business Premium subscription tier on Monday that costs up to $125 per month and offers five times the usage limits of its standard Business plan, according to The Register. The launch arrives as Sam Altman's company faces mounting pressure from Chinese open-weight AI models that are rapidly approaching the capabilities of closed-source American services. The new tier targets business customers who say they're hitting the ceiling on existing usage caps, though it comes with a price tag that's five times higher than the standard option.
The Premium Business seats run $125 monthly when billed month-to-month, or $100 monthly if paid annually, compared to $25 and $20 respectively for standard Business tier seats. Premium subscribers get five times more usage than standard seats and aren't subject to the five-hour daily cap on advanced features that regular Business customers face. For GPT 5.5 specifically, standard Business users can make 3,000 Thinking requests weekly and 15 Pro requests monthly, while Premium subscribers get five times those limits before they need to tap into ChatGPT credits, OpenAI's pay-as-you-go system for advanced features. To sweeten the launch, the first 10,000 customers who join the Premium waitlist will receive $100 in workspace service credits for each Premium seat added, up to five seats per workspace.
OpenAI told The Register in an email that the company introduced the Premium tier because customers were requesting higher usage limits for more intensive work on the Business level. The company said it expects the price point will be acceptable to those users. The Register notes that Chinese open-weight AI models are quickly becoming just as capable as their closed-source American counterparts, raising questions about why organizations would pay hundreds of dollars monthly for seat-plus-usage fees when an open-weight model running in a colocation data center or on-premises could deliver similar results.
The timing puts OpenAI in a challenging position as frontier AI labs face criticism for rising prices while competing against increasingly capable free alternatives. Companies with heavy AI usage strategies could opt for open-weight models where the hardware carries upfront costs but the model itself is free to use, with only server operating expenses to cover. The Register points out that AI returns remain fuzzy and unclear, with many AI investments still waiting to pay off, making a $100 monthly increase for higher usage limits a substantial ask. OpenAI appears confident enough in demand to launch Premium seats anyway, betting that business users hitting usage ceilings will see the value in expanded capacity despite the steep price jump. The move tests whether enterprises are willing to pay premium rates for managed AI services or whether they'll migrate toward self-hosted alternatives as open models narrow the capability gap. For businesses already stretched thin on AI budgets, the decision between convenience and cost efficiency may soon define the next chapter of enterprise AI adoption.