The company has not said when new Pro subscriptions will reopen or disclosed how many people were attempting to sign up before the pause.
The move follows an earlier warning from Sottiaux that demand for Astra was putting unusually heavy pressure on OpenAI’s capacity. “Demand for Astra is really unprecedented,” he wrote. “We’re pulling all the levers possible to sustain the demand, but I’ve not seen anything like it until now and we went through very steep growth before.”
He added that maintaining service quality for existing users would take priority and said OpenAI might have to halt new Pro subscriptions if demand continued.
Astra launched on September 3 and has been rolling out across several OpenAI products and plans. The model is positioned around improvements in reasoning, coding and computer use, and OpenAI has described its release as the beginning of the “AGI era.”
The Pro plan appears to be the immediate pressure point because it places the greatest burden on OpenAI’s infrastructure. Existing subscribers can continue using the service, while Plus, Go and API access remain available. Enterprise and Business plans also remain open.
The capacity squeeze comes shortly after OpenAI increased usage limits for Codex users last month, indicating that the current strain emerged more recently.
OpenAI has not disclosed Astra’s compute requirements or explained how much additional capacity it needs before Pro subscriptions can resume.
For now, the company is choosing to restrict its highest-priced consumer subscription rather than reduce access across a broader group of users, giving existing customers priority while it works through the demand surge.
This analysis is based on reporting from TechCrunch.
Image courtesy of Android Headlines.
This article was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy and quality.
