OpenAI is letting its paying customers play recruiter. Plus and Pro subscribers can now invite up to three friends to try Codex, the company’s AI coding agent, over a two-week trial window.
It’s a classic referral play, the kind Silicon Valley has been running since Dropbox made it an art form. But this one lands at an interesting moment: Codex is quietly becoming a tool that touches far more than traditional software development, with recent integrations pushing it squarely into cryptocurrency infrastructure.
The referral mechanics and pricing tiers
The trial expansion targets OpenAI’s two paid tiers. ChatGPT Plus runs $20 per month, while the Pro plan costs $100 per month. Both sets of subscribers now have the ability to hand out three invites for a limited-duration free trial of Codex.
The Pro tier itself is relatively fresh. OpenAI launched the $100 per month plan on April 9, 2026, sweetening the deal with a promotional offer of 10x Codex usage that ran through May 31, 2026. That promotional window has now closed, which makes the timing of this referral push feel deliberate. Nothing like a taste of the premium experience to convert free users into paying ones.
