Anyone who keeps more than one paid ChatGPT account on the same phone or laptop may now be locked out of one of them. OpenAI has added limits on how many paid accounts can sit on one device and how many subscriptions can be bought with one payment card.
When a device is over its limit, ChatGPT shows a “Device limit reached” message and that account can no longer be used there. Link too many subscriptions to one card and new purchases are blocked.
Which plans count
OpenAI’s help page on card and device limits says the rules cover ChatGPT Go, Plus and the Pro 100, Pro 200 and Pro 500 plans. Free accounts and the Business, Enterprise and Edu workspace plans are not counted.
Signing out of one account does not automatically free the slot for another. A family sharing one card, or a shared computer, can therefore run into the cap even if every person has their own login.
The Decoder, which covered the change, reads it as a push away from stacking several cheap subscriptions to get more usage, towards buying extra credits or usage resets, which usually cost more. That is its interpretation; OpenAI describes the limits as a security measure. The company has not published the exact numbers for either cap in the text we could read.
