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Public story · 2026-09-11 · high
OpenAI cut Plus message limits for Astra and gave no date for reopening sign-ups, per Thibault Sottiaux.
Why now: OpenAI confirmed the freeze on September 10.
OpenAI stopped accepting new $200 Pro subscriptions on September 10, citing demand for Astra, per TechCrunch's report.
Plus users now get 5 to 45 Astra messages per five-hour window. GPT-5.6 Sol allowed 10 to 100 in the same window, roughly double what Astra gives now.
Thibault Sottiaux tied the pause to Astra demand and didn't say when sign-ups would reopen.
A 733-upvote thread on r/singularity claims Astra's output got worse overnight. Some posters there think OpenAI swapped in a quantized version to handle the load, though nobody has verified that.
Anyone building against Astra through the API should pin the model version. A provider under this kind of capacity pressure is where routing changes happen between requests. Evals run before September 10 may not reflect the model version being called now, so rerun them.
Sottiaux's statement doesn't include a timeline for lifting the freeze. TechCrunch's report doesn't have one either.
Each link below shares sources, entities, or timing with this story.
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