OpenAI Wants Business Customers to Pay $125 a Month for More ChatGPT Access

Key points

• OpenAI launched ChatGPT Business Premium seats on Monday, priced at $125 per month (or $100 per month billed annually).
• Premium seats offer five times the usage limits of standard Business seats, which cost $25 per month.
• Customers who join the waitlist can receive up to $100 in service credits per Premium seat added, for a maximum of five seats.
• Only the first 10,000 customers to sign up for the waitlist qualify for those credits.
• Rival AI models from Chinese developers, many available free to download, are putting pressure on OpenAI's pricing strategy.

OpenAI already sells a Business plan for teams. Standard seats cost $25 a month, or $20 a month billed annually. The new Business Premium seats sit above that at $125 a month (or $100 annually), built for employees who keep hitting usage caps.

What does the extra money actually buy?

Premium seats give you five times the request limits of a standard Business seat and drop the five-hour daily cap on advanced features. A standard Business seat allows 3,000 requests per week on GPT-5.5 Thinking (OpenAI's deliberate reasoning model) and 15 requests per month on GPT-5.5 Pro, its most capable option. Premium seats multiply both ceilings by five.

Heavy users will still eventually burn through those limits. When they do, they fall back on ChatGPT credits, OpenAI's pay-as-you-go system that draws down a prepaid bundle as you use advanced features beyond your plan.

As a launch promotion, OpenAI is offering $100 in workspace service credits per Premium seat added, capped at five seats per account. Only the first 10,000 customers on the waitlist qualify. This is the kind of pricing architecture we first flagged in our coverage of Apple's paid AI tier plans on 30 July: platform owners are layering premium tiers on top of base plans and betting power users will pay.

Is this a good deal for small businesses?

Honestly, it depends on whether your team genuinely maxes out the standard plan. Occasional ChatGPT users don't need it. A marketing team running dozens of AI drafts daily might.

There's a real competitive caveat here too. Chinese developers are releasing open-weight models, AI software whose code is published freely for anyone to download and run. Several now match paid services like ChatGPT on common tasks, as first reported by The Register AI. A business with the technical know-how to run one on its own servers pays for hardware but nothing for the software.

Running your own AI server isn't realistic for most small businesses today. But $125 per seat per month is a serious commitment, and the pressure from free alternatives makes scrutiny worthwhile. OpenAI told The Register AI the tier launched because customers were asking for higher limits for deeper work, and the company expects the price to be acceptable for those users. That may be true for large organisations already on the Business plan. For smaller shops, the maths is tighter.

What should you do before signing up?

Check your team's actual usage first. OpenAI's admin dashboard shows how many requests each user makes. Nobody hitting the standard limits? Don't upgrade.

If a few power users are genuinely blocked, you can add Premium seats only for them. OpenAI lets you mix standard and Premium seats in the same account.

Audit your ChatGPT usage data before spending anything. The dashboard answer is free; the upgrade isn't.