By Hamza Faisal
OpenAI has quietly added new limits on how many paid ChatGPT accounts can be tied to a single payment card or used on a single device, closing off a popular workaround for squeezing extra usage out of cheap flat-rate subscriptions. The change surfaced in a new Help Center article, "Understanding card and device limits in ChatGPT," first reported by The Decoder on November 1, with further coverage following on November 2.
There was no launch blog post or press release — the limits simply appeared in support documentation, and users are discovering them through two blunt error messages.
Two separate checks: one at checkout, one on the device
The card limit bites when you try to buy. If too many subscriptions are associated with the same payment card or device, ChatGPT may refuse the purchase with the message: "Too many subscriptions associated with this card or device. We can't complete this purchase." OpenAI is explicit that this is not a bank decline — the payment did not fail; the purchase was blocked. A shared card can trip the limit even when each person uses their own device.
The device limit bites when you try to use an account. ChatGPT "limits how many paid accounts you can use on one device," the help article says. Hit the ceiling and you see "Device limit reached," and that paid account can no longer be used on that device. The warning can appear at sign-in, or you can be signed out after a later check, even if the account worked at first. Logging out does not free up a slot, and buying extra credits or resetting usage does not clear the block.
Who counts — and who does not
The limits cover five paid plans: ChatGPT Go, Plus, Pro 100, Pro 200 and Pro 500. Free accounts do not count, and neither do the Business, Enterprise and Edu workspace plans. What OpenAI has not published is the actual number behind either cap — no count for how many accounts one device may hold, or how many subscriptions one card may carry, and no start date is stated.
The people most likely to feel the change are those who juggled several low-priced subscriptions to multiply their usage. The Decoder's reading is blunt: the policy "will likely hit users who've been switching between multiple paid accounts on one device to squeeze more usage out of cheap flat-rate subscriptions." Running two or three Plus accounts on one laptop to get more ChatGPT and Codex usage is exactly the pattern the new checks are built to stop.
The bigger squeeze on cheap usage
OpenAI frames the limits as part of ChatGPT's "privacy and security protections" and offers no further explanation. The commercial reading, however, is hard to miss: instead of another subscription, blocked users are pointed to extra credits or usage resets — options generally more expensive than one more flat-rate plan. The move fits a wider tightening. On October 29, OpenAI doubled Work and Codex limits for Pro tiers, and from December, Plus, Pro and Business users will draw ChatGPT and Codex from a single shared token-based allowance. On October 31, the company also made switching between accounts easier on mobile — while the new caps quietly limited how far that switching can go.
For now, the advice is unglamorous: if you see "Device limit reached," logging out will not free the slot, and credits will not lift the block. Users with several paid accounts on one device must choose which one lives there — or pay per-use for more.
