OpenAI DevDay 2026

We wanted to leave OpenAI's developer event excited about what we could build. Instead, we're wondering whether an AI subscription should compete with a Tesla Model 3 payment in the monthly budget.

OpenAI introduced its answer to Grok Bot, a decision-making API that competes with TypeSafe's Jev, and Sol 6.1 just a week after Sol 6. But the announcement that's hardest to ignore is the bill.

A much bigger bill for a slightly bigger allowance

The comparison is painful: the old US$200 plan's reported 20× allowance against the new US$500 plan's reported 25×. If those multipliers use the same baseline, that's 25% more usage for 150% more money. The price per unit of allowance doubles. Previous Pro 20× tier · New Pro 25× tier

In Canada, the new top tier costs CA$680. That's CA$430 more every month, a 172% price increase for just 25% more usage.

Pro 500 adds Astra UltraFast, at 8× the included usage cost of standard Astra. At that rate, it's hard to see the appeal outside OpenAI's own offices. UltraFast usage rates

Anthropic increased five-hour subscription limits with Opus 5.5, and its Max 20× plan still costs US$200 a month. Claude 5.5 agents have been performing phenomenally. With OpenAI making its subscriptions harder to justify, we expect more developers to move to Anthropic. We just hope Anthropic doesn't pull the same stunt once everyone gets comfortable. Claude 5.5 · Max pricing

OpenAI joins the bot race

Dots is OpenAI's answer to Grok Bot: an assistant that remembers things, uses your apps and keeps working on its own cloud computer after you leave. That could be useful. But Grok Bot already offers that basic idea, so Dots needs to give people a reason to choose it. Grok Bot · Dots documentation

Space gives you shared documents to work on with your assistant. OpenAI clearly wants more of your working day to happen inside ChatGPT. Fine, but where does that leave developers hoping to build the next great app? Giving OpenAI's assistant more things to do isn't the same as giving developers a business to build. Space

Trying Dots from Canada brought up a message saying it wasn't available in the region yet. Canada isn't named among the exclusions on OpenAI's help page. So there's a gap between what the documentation says and what the product actually lets you do. Availability

What developers can actually build

Sol 6 launched on September 22. Sol 6.1 followed on September 29, seven days later. OpenAI says the new model handles complex coding at a lower cost than Astra. That's expected: Sol was already cheaper than Astra. The question is how much better it is than the Sol released a week ago. Release dates and pricing

Codex Cloud lets developers configure the environment their agent works in, and the Agents API adds computer use. That can save setup work. It also means building more of your workflow around OpenAI. If you switch between Claude Code and Codex when one hits a limit, you need tools that can come with you. Cloud announcement

Plugins let developers put things like a project board or an editor inside ChatGPT. That's promising. Then you get to the rules: existing paying customers can connect, but you can't sell digital subscriptions or promote upgrades through the plugin. You can bring your business into ChatGPT. Building a business there is a different question. Extensions · Commerce rules

Subscription sharing is the part we'd actually like to see opened up. People already pay for AI. Let them use that allowance in someone else's app, and developers have a reason to build better ways to use it. For now, commercial developers have to apply for partner access. Open that door to everyone and we'd have something to get excited about. Partner access

Decisions is worth getting excited about too. Think “hot dog or not,” but for choices inside software: is this message a refund request, a bug report or spam? The model returns a choice the app can use. That's the territory TypeSafe's Jev is built for. OpenAI also announced image inputs for Decisions; Jev is text-only. Decisions announcement · Jev

Jev charges $0.042 per million input tokens, with free output. We haven't verified Decisions pricing yet. We want to compare them properly. Plenty of apps need a quick, reliable answer to a small question without paying for a whole conversation. Jev pricing

OpenAI wants developers to build more around its products. Meanwhile, the people already paying to use them are getting a worse deal. That's a strange way to end a developer event.

A much bigger bill for a slightly bigger allowance

OpenAI joins the bot race

What developers can actually build

Sources