Astra put OpenAI back in the fight with Anthropic. Then it changed the deal.
AI-generated editorial illustration of Claude and OpenAI competing.
On September 10, OpenAI closed the door on people trying to buy its $200 Pro subscription. A week earlier, it had launched Astra. Now demand was putting enough strain on its systems that product leader Tibo Sottiaux announced a pause in new subscriptions. Existing subscribers could keep using the service while OpenAI added capacity. For a company trying to gain ground against Claude among coding developers, that was an encouraging problem. People wanted what OpenAI was selling.
By early October, some of those customers had a different request: keep selling them the deal they already had. In a reply to Sottiaux’s recovery campaign, one user asked to retain the old plan instead of receiving more resets. Somewhere between Astra’s arrival and DevDay, the conversation had shifted from the model’s capabilities to the terms of access.
Claude’s position made this an offensive OpenAI had good reason to pursue. In coding, the rival had built a substantial lead: Menlo Ventures’ 2025 enterprise research estimated Anthropic at 54% of coding model spending against OpenAI’s 21%. An August ZDNET survey found roughly three quarters of 138 respondents using Claude Code, compared with just over a third using Codex. For developers already getting work done with Claude, an OpenAI launch had to offer a compelling reason to reconsider. Winning them over meant changing a working habit, and Astra gave OpenAI an opening to do that.
Generous access helped turn that opening into a credible comeback, and the timing favored OpenAI. Anthropic’s four-month promotion had raised Claude Code’s weekly limits by 50% from May 13 through September 13. From September 14, a permanent 25% increase over the original baseline replaced it, leaving users with about 17% less weekly allowance than during the promotion. Astra launched on September 3, and eligible subscribers received additional resets during the launch week. The early offers compensated for launch delays, but they also gave users more room to discover the model’s value as Claude’s summer generosity was winding down. In a Claude-community discussion, some described switching to Astra or making it their main coding tool while retaining Claude; some cited the resets. A capable model could attract attention, but sufficient allowance let customers build it into their work. The amount of access became part of the appeal—and part of the expectation OpenAI would later disturb.
The temptation was to turn that renewed interest into a much bigger sale. OpenAI’s business was already accelerating before Astra: its overall revenue run rate grew more than 20% in July, while enterprise growth reached 32%. By September’s end, CNBC reported approximately $50 billion in annualized revenue, with Q3 run-rate growth of 77% overall and 107% for enterprise. Anthropic’s reported run rate had exceeded $65 billion by July. CFO Sarah Friar’s September account of OpenAI’s business described customers spending more through subscriptions and usage-based offerings as AI took on more work. That ambition explains the attraction of persistent agents: OpenAI wanted a larger role in customers’ working lives, with more opportunities to earn revenue.
DevDay was where that broader ambition began to collide with the bargain that had helped bring developers back. At the September 29 event, OpenAI introduced Dots alongside Sol 6.1, Astra Ultrafast and a $500 subscription. Dots promised persistent Astra-powered agents with cloud computers and connected apps. Alongside the expanded bundle, OpenAI announced that Pro 200’s allowance would fall from 20 times Plus’s to 10 times, while the price stayed at $200 a month. Sottiaux had explained the economics before the keynote: the revised plan would provide “half the dollar in API spend,” although more efficient models could still accomplish more work. TokenUsage’s subscription-value comparison shows Astra’s token allowance on the $200 plan halved. For coding subscribers, Dots therefore had to help justify losing part of the benefit they already valued. Adding an agent would only make that trade attractive if the agent proved useful.
Slow performance made the trade look worse and brought the disagreement to a head. Early Dots users described simple tasks taking minutes, while Sol’s rollout left coding users waiting too. Sottiaux acknowledged that Sol’s first two days had been slow, attributing the problem to a large load spike. Customers frustrated by those waits were being asked to accept less included coding access while testing a new agent’s usefulness. Developer discussions included cancellations and plans to return to Claude, and one user reported moving several subscriptions and an API budget to Anthropic. These accounts show individual reactions, but the complaint is easy to understand. OpenAI had made the subscription harder to defend precisely when it needed returning users to make it a habit.
The recovery campaign reads like an acknowledgment that the coding experience had to come first again. Sottiaux apologized and announced another reset, acknowledged demands for simplicity, and promised 28 days of improvements or full resets. On October 5, he announced approximately 50% faster default subscription speeds for Astra and Sol. On October 8, OpenAI rolled out Sol 6.1 Ultrafast, extending the premium speed offering already introduced for Astra at DevDay. The public effort was now focused on improving the tools subscribers used for daily work. That addressed the performance complaints while preserving the announced allowance reduction. Faster models could make the smaller allowance more useful, but OpenAI still had to persuade customers that the revised deal deserved their payment.
Dots’ continuing speed complaints exposed the unfinished part of that persuasion. Two days after the default coding-speed announcement, OpenAI recorded delayed Dots responses, failed turns and reduced proactivity. That incident was marked resolved, yet an October 8 user still described long silences and iteration slower than Codex or Work. October 9 updates addressed delegation, browsing and usability, showing OpenAI was still working on the agent. It does reveal the difficulty of the pitch: the agent meant to broaden the subscription’s value still needed repair while OpenAI worked to restore confidence in coding. Astra had given OpenAI a way to challenge Claude. Keeping that opening requires making the subscription dependable enough that developers can plan tomorrow’s work around it.
Disclosure: I run tokenusage.dev, which is cited in this article. This story was researched and drafted with AI assistance.
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