OpenAI API usage tiers drop to three: Grow's top rate limits now unlock at $500 in total payments

#What changed

OpenAI folded its five paid API usage tiers into three: Build, Launch, and Grow. Tibo (@thsottiaux) posted it as Day 2.2 of the Codex 28-day program and called it a smaller change that removes friction for people building on the API. OpenAI Developers said the new top tier, Grow, opens after $500 in total API payments, half of the $1,000 the old top tier required.

OpenAI's rate-limits guide now lists the qualification thresholds as $5 in total credit purchases for Build, $100 for Launch, and $500 for Grow, with monthly usage limits of $500, $5,000, and $200,000. Tiers upgrade automatically as an organization's total purchases cross each threshold.

#Who is affected

Developers and teams paying for the OpenAI API, since tiers and rate limits are set per organization and per project. The biggest change is for orgs that had spent between $500 and $1,000 and were stuck below the old top tier.

#What to do now

• Check your tier and per-model limits in the API dashboard under Settings > Organization > Limits. The guide says the Upgrade tier option sits in the Usage Tiers section.
• Plan around the new ceilings. The guide lists Grow at 15,000 requests per minute and 40M tokens per minute for Astra, Sol, and Terra, and 30,000 RPM and 180M TPM for Luna. Launch is 10,000 RPM and 4M TPM for Astra, Sol, and Terra.
• Higher limits don't remove ramp limits. Past about 1M input tokens per minute, the guide says to grow traffic by no more than 50% every 15 minutes, and to treat a 429 slow_down error by following Retry-After and backing off.
• Set a spend alert or a hard spend limit before you scale, because Grow's monthly usage limit is $200,000.

#What is not confirmed

• We didn't check a live account, so we haven't seen whether organizations already past $500 were moved to Grow today. Your dashboard is the source of truth for your actual limits.
• Nothing in the post or the guide says ChatGPT plan or Codex subscription usage changes. This is about API billing tiers only.
• Some replies to Tibo argued Day 2.2 is too small to count as a program day. That's opinion, not a change to what shipped.