OpenAI adds $0 Codex-only seats with usage-based pricing for ChatGPT Business

• OpenAI added Codex-only seats for ChatGPT Business and Enterprise, with no fixed seat fee and billing based on token usage instead of per-user licensing OpenAI launch tweet official announcement.
• Those Codex-only seats also come with no rate limits, while standard ChatGPT Business seats still include Codex with usage limits OpenAI thread linking the post official announcement.
• OpenAI also cut the annual ChatGPT Business price from $25 to $20 per seat, positioning the fixed-seat plan as the broader ChatGPT access tier and the new metered option as the coding-only tier Commentary summarizing the pricing change official announcement.
• For a limited time, eligible ChatGPT Business workspaces get $100 in credits per new Codex-only seat, up to $500 total OpenAI launch tweet official announcement.
• OpenAI says Codex usage inside Business and Enterprise is up 6x since January, with more than 2 million weekly Codex users overall and more than 9 million paying business users on ChatGPT OpenAI GTM lead amplifies the launch official announcement.

You can read the official launch post, the new Codex rate card, and the Business billing docs. OpenAI also published separate promo terms, which spell out how the seat credits are triggered.

The main change is structural: teams no longer need to buy a full ChatGPT seat just to put Codex in front of an engineer. In the launch post, OpenAI says Business and Enterprise workspaces can add Codex-only seats with full Codex access and no fixed per-seat charge.

That creates a clearer split between two seat types in the Business billing docs:

• Standard ChatGPT seats: fixed per-user pricing, ChatGPT access, baseline Codex access.
• Codex seats: no seat fee, usage-based billing, Codex access only.

OpenAI is turning Codex into a metered product for teams. The announcement says Codex-only seats have no rate limits, and spend is tied directly to token consumption.

The new Codex rate card describes the billing model in API-style terms: input tokens, cached input tokens, and output tokens, priced as credits per million tokens. That is a sharper budgeting model than the older bundled-seat approach, because it maps usage to workloads instead of flattening everything into license count.

The launch did not only add a metered lane. OpenAI also dropped annual ChatGPT Business pricing from $25 to $20 per seat in the same announcement.

That matters because OpenAI is now offering two different procurement stories at once:

• Broad ChatGPT access through standard Business seats.
• Coding-agent expansion through Codex-only metered seats.

OpenAI's own positioning is blunt in the launch copy: standard Business seats are for teams that need broad ChatGPT access, while Codex-only seats are the easier way to start pilots and expand from a few critical workflows.

The promo is small but specific. According to the promo terms, eligible ChatGPT Business workspaces can earn $100 in credits for each newly added and activated Codex seat, capped at $500.

The same launch post also doubles as an adoption update. OpenAI says more than 9 million paying business users use ChatGPT for work, more than 2 million builders use Codex every week, and Codex usage inside Business and Enterprise has grown 6x since January. It also uses the announcement to push the Codex app for macOS and Windows plus newer features such as Plugins and Automations, with Notion, Ramp, Braintrust, and Wasmer named as early team users.