OpenAI Halts New ChatGPT Pro Sign-Ups Amid Astra Demand Surge

Since September 10, anyone trying to sign up for ChatGPT Pro has hit a closed door. OpenAI has stopped accepting new subscribers for its most expensive tier worldwide, with no date given for reopening. The trigger is demand for GPT-6 Astra, the model OpenAI released on September 3, which the company says consumes more compute than it can currently provision on short notice.

Key takeaways

• OpenAI has paused new ChatGPT Pro sign-ups (200 US dollars, 229 euros in Germany) since September 10, with no timeline for reopening.
• Existing Pro subscriptions continue unchanged, as do the cheaper tiers and API access.
• The cause is “unprecedented” demand for GPT-6 Astra, whose “computer use” feature burns through usage allowances significantly faster than predecessor GPT-5.6 Sol.
• OpenAI cites compute growth from 0.2 gigawatts (2023) to 1.9 gigawatts (2025) — nearly a tenfold increase in two years — and plans ten more gigawatts of Nvidia systems and six gigawatts of AMD systems for the second half of 2026.
• Head of product Thibault Sottiaux calls the move the “smallest step” needed to keep access as broad as possible.

A premium tier turns scarce

ChatGPT Pro targets power users: unlimited access to the most capable models, early access to new features, higher usage ceilings. GPT-6 Astra, released in early September, is what OpenAI president Greg Brockman called the start of the “AGI era” — a phrase that is marketing in itself, but one with a real effect: users flocked to the most expensive tier to get early access to the new model and its ability to operate a computer screen on its own. That capability, letting Astra execute clicks, keystrokes and mouse movements, consumes significantly more compute per request than plain text generation, according to OpenAI. How much individual usage limits have dropped as a result remains officially unconfirmed; reports of across-the-board cuts to existing subscriptions stay unverified until OpenAI issues an official statement.

Why the priciest tier is the one that closes

What stands out is which tier got hit: not the free plan or the cheaper one, but the premium product meant to signal reliable availability. Existing customers keep their access, the lower-cost 100-dollar “Go” plan and the API remain open — both billed per use, without a capacity promise for heavy users. OpenAI is taking the path of least resistance: slowing growth at its highest-margin but most resource-intensive tier rather than touching existing contracts. For a company that takes on higher compute costs with every new model generation, it is also an admission that demand for ever more capable AI assistants is outpacing the construction of new data centers — a problem that gets sharper amid aggressive price competition, as seen in the recent debate over falling AI spending on premium models.

A pattern larger providers can’t shake

OpenAI is not the only company being forced to publicly admit the limits of its own capacity planning. Just days earlier, a class action against Anthropic surfaced the same underlying issue: Claude Max users felt misled by unclear usage limits, arguing that marketing promises and actually available compute diverged. OpenAI’s approach looks more transparent by comparison, since an outright sign-up freeze at least honestly signals a shortfall — but the underlying problem is the same: providers sell access to a resource whose per-request cost rises with every new model generation, while consumer prices largely hold steady. Anyone who wants to stay independent of these capacity crunches can turn to locally run models through Ollama instead — on their own hardware, without a monthly subscription, though with a noticeable gap in raw capability compared to flagship models like Astra.

What comes next

OpenAI has not given a date for reopening sign-ups but points to the capacity expansions planned for the second half of 2026. Until those data centers actually come online, sign-up freezes are likely to become the rule rather than the exception whenever a new flagship model ships — a pattern AI subscribers will probably have to get used to in the years ahead. For existing users, nothing changes for now; for everyone else, the choice is to wait for open capacity or fall back to one of the cheaper, still-open tiers. In Germany, where the 229-euro tier already ranks among the pricier digital subscriptions marketed to consumers, the freeze is likely to hit business customers hardest — teams that wanted Astra for development or automation work now have to fall back on the usage-based API, where costs are harder to predict than with a flat monthly fee.