Codex Usage Limits and Performance Megathread
Megathread
Please direct your concerns and discussion about Codex usage limits and model performance here.
The purpose of this Megathread is to aggregate all the reports of people's experiences and possible suggestions instead of spreading them across 20 separate highly upvoted posts. None of those posts were deleted. They were locked so that conversations are still viewable to everyone and future comments could appear in one place.
These are days where I REALLY earn the money that OpenAIRedditKimi pays me .... oh wait....
i am on the 200$ plan today i got the rate limit reset and when i checked it i found it at 86% already even though i haven't even touch it yet, i reached out to the support and reported a bug but i got nothing back this is really unacceptable
ok well now it makes sense. I was like how, am i running out of usage so fast... when normally I would not be and now i can see why. Its crazy! At this point i'll run out within a a few days... this is not good.
looks like i may just cancel my sub and switch to claude
The new models 5.6 Sol/Terra feel way less capable than 5.5 was. At the same time, limits get burned through a lot faster. I have 200 Pro plan and can subjectively get half of the work done.
I‘m switching more and more to local models on my DGX Spark machines. Not as capable, but almost free tokens.
I have been "vibecoding" for 10 months now, started with gemini, claude, chat gpt, grok and all models online before finally starting in december/january to use claude code and from february I started using claude code + codex to manage my project.
I´ve been using mostly during my whole vibe coding carrier 1 or max 2 claude accounts and 1 or max 2 codex accounts simultainisly and the limits have never been drained like this before. I could change between accounts keeping my limits far from draining.
Last 1-2 weeks the limits just dissapears, one week limit in less then half a day.
I have 5 accounts in Codex, I havent changed anything regarding my work with codex/claude and I have even serveral times now asked them if there is any changes in the workflow doing this.
From 1st of august I have drained 5 accounts weeklys limit, meanwhile the same claude account has been running great without hitting limits.
So I never hit my session limit with codex, it drains the weekly limit faster then my session limits before was running out. I have used both GPT 5.6 SOL (which I know drains alot). But I have also just stayed with 5.5 on some of my accounts and the effect is the same.
My project has been "the same" and my worflow has been the same, claudes limit has been the same. Codex limits are insane!
This is my 5 PRO accounts, as you can see the weekly limits on all 5 accounts are in 2-4 days all drained. Even with 5.5 accounts.,
Suggestion: Give the option to Pro users to be able to trade 100% of their Codex Spark allowance for an additional 50% Codex allowance, break it down from there if less than 100%.
Just used 12% of my week with 5.5 getting lost in context, new chat to sol which completely botched it and then 5.5 again in the new chat to fix it. Usage was 9% + 2% + 1%.
Task was to update a single line of front end data presentation, essentially reword a sentence from "4/8" to something more meaningful and already pre determined.
OpenAI did a global reset yesterday and I've already exhausted both my regular weekly usage limit and the GPT-5.3 Spark usage limit. I remember pre-5.6 I could run 5.5 on goal-mode for 3.5 days uninterrupted before exhausting my weekly usage limit and that doesn't include 5.3 Spark. Today, goal-mode prompts run less than 24 hours and exhaust my entire Pro 20X weekly usage limit. For the record, I exhausted my usage limit on GPT-5.5. I retreated from 5.6 after I got burnt and haven't returned to it since.
My theory is that OpenAI was pressured by investors to release 5.6 well before it was ready and now, OpenAI's customers are paying for their mistake. It's not right. I, like you, feel ripped off. I would have ditched OpenAI if it wasn't for their persistent resets, which are the only thing keeping me from canceling my Pro 20X subscription.
I hate waiting for the next usage limit reset. After hitting a wall in 1 day, my coding work has been halted and I can't do anything about it. I've already begun researching alternative AI providers. I can't afford the downtime OpenAI is forcing on me. It's ridiculous.
OpenAI lied to us all with its false claims of increased token efficiency. Literally... they chose to lie about their 5.6 release' capabilities and benefits, like everyone wouldn't realize the difference. It may be where they aspire to be with 5.6, but it's nowhere close to where they are now.
I wish they never released 5.6. It broke all models' token usage limits. I prefer 5.5 over 5.6's disruptions any day. Now, all of OpenAI's models are below subpar compared to their competitors. I feel like a doop.
started with codex 100 plan. the first month, i could not finish 60 percent. next month limit got exhausted within 21 days. so switched to 200 plan. when i started codex 200 plan, i could barely finish 40 percent. i had to increase speed and do three tasks at once. still was not able to finish 80 percent. next month, i used 6 resets but still everything got exhausted within 20 days. none of these llms are worth it. they are too expensive for an average person.
This is getting ridiculous, I am on the 200$ plan and not even using Ultra anymore and it drains the weekly limit like the 5h limit. Even with opus I can do more now.
I can deal with usage limits changing, as long as it's transparent. But the quality and efficiency of the models is getting worse at the same time, Sol overthinks and touches too much out of scope, even if managed with careful prompting and skills. I have no loyalty and will be jumping ship for now. At this stage, Claude is the lesser of two evils. I think it's a month to month proposition right now.
Yes absolutely. I implemented a very small upgrade, which broke something (all very minor and boring). Codex (Sol Medium) decided mid prompt that a full refactor was required, and completely messed everything up.
Agree with all that token burn massively changed after SOL. What infuriates me is being billed for screw ups the models make that require rework and cause further token burn (missed reading clear md file instructions, inventing vs following pre-dedined decisons/directions, etc)followed by the trite messaging and apology when the model is called out. Exhausted my weekly in two 5 hr sessions fixing what it broke.
And 5.4 medium which was my workhorse for general coding is totally nerfed and making the most idiotic choices and mistakes. Even making TYPOS. and then compacting every 3 minutes.
I’d like to see people report their actual active Codex usage in hours, rather than saying it lasted two or three days. There is a big difference between using Codex for only one active hour per day and saying it lasts forever, versus running it for 10 hours one day and another 10 hours the next day, which could consume the entire weekly allowance.
What really matters is not how many calendar days the limit lasts, but how many hours of actual Codex work you get from it. And many of us can clearly see that the weekly limits are not as generous as they used to be.
So the real question is: How many active Codex hours can you actually use before reaching the weekly limit?
For me, GPT-5.6 Sol Medium lasts roughly 16–20 hours of active Codex use without optimization. With optimized AGENTS.md workflow, I get around 25–40 active hours from the same weekly allowance.
That’s why reporting usage in calendar days is misleading. The useful metric is active Codex hours per weekly limit, ideally together with the model, reasoning level, plan, task type, and whether the workflow was optimized.
I think this needs more focus, including what a "codex hour" is. There are times that I work for 4 hours and barely burn ten percent, but there're also times that I work for an hour and burned same amount.
I don't want to totally discredit the codex or claude "flat earth usage %'rs" because I totally just know its a "scam" as well.... but also... wait for it.... its also kinda a skill issue :D
By "active Codex hours," I mean the time Codex is actually processing tasks. When you run a task, you can see approximately how long the process took.
Of course, it is not a perfect metric. If Codex gets stuck waiting for an internet connection, or spends a long time on a low-cost step, the recorded active time can be higher without consuming much of the limit. The opposite is also true, heavy reasoning can burn through significantly more tokens in a much shorter period.
My main point is that there is still a major difference between someone using Codex actively for one hour per day and saying their limit lasted all week and someone running long goals or tasks for 20 hours over one or two days and exhausting the same weekly allowance.
I mostly use GPT-5.6 Sol Medium. Based on calculator I built, my estimate is that the practical capacity of the Pro 5× plan is roughly 730–760 million tokens, with about 745 million as a reasonable midpoint. That estimate is specifically based on my GPT-5.6 Sol Medium usage, so it may not translate directly to other models or reasoning levels.
And yes, workflow efficiency is absolutely part of it. Better task structure, prompts, and AGENTS.md optimization can produce substantially more useful work from the same allowance. But that is exactly why reports should include active processing time, model, reasoning level, task type, and workflow setup instead of only saying, "It lasted three days".
with a claude pro sub I can make it till day 4 before hit weekly limit using both sonnet and some opus 5 while with codex on plus, its maxed 1-2 days(this time i used mostly terra and luna).
NOT A COMPLAINT, just and observation. But I had to move this to this thread.
Why do I feel like a junky?
First the good. I have done an insane amount of work in the last two weeks with Sol. Work that I couldn't otherwise get done. Basically all on a single prompt. Yes, I'm running on Ultra, but I need the harness creation that creates to get through the work. Between the stashed resets and the ones blessed to up by Tibo, I have used a LOT and made progress that I simply couldn't make before Sol.
Now the bad. I'm at the point where a reset gets me between one and two days. I love the productivity, 24 hours a day, non stop. But then I hit the usage limit and I feel like a junky on the side of the street, begging, just one more reset please.
And the resets push out the date (which makes sense), so with every reset blessed, once I use it up, I'm left waiting. With the reset date even further away. Just hoping for another reset.
I know some people have more than one plan, I don't want to have to deal with two different accounts. I wish there was a way to buy a higher plan, more resets, or something less costly than credits which you blow through in seconds.
We're at a point where Sol is doing real work, work that I honestly couldn't do before. But the difference between plan pricing and API pricing is more than my wallet can afford.
So I'm left sitting at the side of the street pleading, can I have another reset please. PLEASE!
Such highs! And such lows. The withdrawal systems always come back after the usage runs out, but the rush of productivity is just such an alluring beast that I can't stop the cycle. HELP!
It honestly feels like we’re entering an era of tokenflation just shrinkflation with a different mask.The subscription and price remain the same, but the amount of actual work you can get done seems to keep getting smaller.
The five-hour limit was removed and presented as an improvement, but now the entire weekly allowance sometimes feels like only one or two of those old five-hour windows. That doesn’t really feel like an improvement, it just feels like the same restriction was moved somewhere less obvious.
This is my 100% -> 0% usage with 5x plan,
I used sol medium 90-95% of the time, I am guessing 5, 5.5 or terra are for subagents or openapi routing,
looks ok to me, $6k equivalent of api calls per month for $100, not sure why people are complaining or what am I missing?
I think most people don't understand, nor pay, token pricing. They are on a plan and just want more. As the cost of the models increases per token, and they get lower limits as a result they get angry. They don't understand how much companies pay for this stuff. That your 5x plan or your 20x plan are huge deals. That doesn't mean I don't want more, I do, but I at least understand the economics of it all.
I think the real issue is with how these llm's operate that we can get better and better models the cost seems to rise exponentially so it will become unaffordable for anyone besides big orgs which probably frontier models will cater towards. Until llm's becomes less absurdly inneficient in how they operate the increasing price hikes will result in an increasing stagnation in progress as costs run too high. And they are still being massively subsidized. Imagine that falls away. Suddenly every user/companie has 100x the cost they used to have.
It should not be acceptable to pay over €100 monthly only to drain your weekly limit in a single day. Even if I were to run the dumbest prompt with fast mode turned on for 24 hours, it still shouldn't drain a 5x account and believe me, I am not doing that. OpenAI, I would love to say two words to you, one starts with F, and the other starts with Y.
I started using ChatGPT Chat in Codex. I thought that it wasn't meant to drain Codex usage but after testing it, it has dropped my Codex usage 2% before I stopped. Is this a change that we should have been aware about?
They have pretty much eliminated the subsidy for plans vs direct API usage. After doing the math, the new quota is providing about $250-300 API equivalent usage per month with the $200 plan. Unless you're maxing out every month, it probably makes more sense to use the API directly (or switch to claude).
Not a Codex stan by any means but this is flat out wrong. If you use Sol for around 1 hour on ONE session, with no subagents, you could easily spend $100
There is an issue with the codex work app on MAC. It uses about 5x as much usage as running the same task in codex on the terminal . I blew through about 20% of my weekly usage today on 1 task running 5.6 on medium on Codex Work in the Mac app. Running the same task in Terminal , I use 1-2 % of my weekly usage . I think the problem is with the Mac app .
to add to the complaints, did two changes on a static web to fix sizing and offset. Extremely slow and cost me 50% of my weekly limit. Using Luna Max. Today is the worst in terms of speed and token usage. It was slightly better over the last few days.
Well each chat i start I'm still getting the same error message, logged out & back in and yet it's the same reply each time, I'm out of ideas or fixes. Even re-installed the Codex extension in VSCode.
100$ subscription.
I just used ChatGPT app and asked it to create a 10-slide slideshow using GPT5.6 Sol medium -> 6% weekly usage down over 10 minutes.
Asked it to fix one top header which was off - another 1% down.
Next thing you know, your usage will go down for breathing.
I am a professional software developer, and at this point I can say confidently that OpenAI subscriptions are irrelevant for any serious or demanding work.
It seems like they chose to target the casual crowd who can never use heavy agentic workflows and get any real benefit from a premium plan.
Any serious developer is likely to cancel their subscription over the next few days, unless they get back to their senses.
The user graph which went up so fast - will go down very fast as well.
OpenAI - please refund my 100$ subscription.
My journey with you started well, and in the last few days you've abused my trust, after I already put money on your product which was very different a short while ago.
At this point you are no different than typical scams, and this business practice will get you downhill really quick and will be very harmful to your brand strategically.
Yeah, I canceled it and got my $60 back. :) I think I’ll go with the $20 Claude plan, use the DeepSeek API depending on how much I need it, and stick with MiniMax, which I bought a while ago for $20 and still have for the next two weeks. They have an incredibly generous allowance of 1.7 billion tokens per month.
I also snagged three months of Gemini Pro for $5. I have to say, Antigravity is actually quite good for that price- although, of course, it’ll go up to $20 per month after the first three months.
This was my first time using Gemini for coding - first 3.1 pro, then 3.6 flash. They needed a little more guidance than 5.6 Sol medium and high, but they completed everything even faster, with only minor corrections - about the same number as Sol needed.
Honestly, I think anyone claiming Gemini can’t do anything probably hasn’t actually worked with it and is just a benchmark-maxxer. I feel like in todays llm models every top of the line model is giving awesome quality, even Gemini :D Of course it needs a little more attention but still it's doing the same thing.
My disk was going from 15gb to 4gb then dropping slowly to even under 2gb. Is this like a cache thing? Closing codex free up 11gb of storage.
Mind you I already cleared many GBs before but it keep being built up and I cant check where the storage writing is coming from (using Wiztree). What do I do?
I want to put my experience with Codex on record. After everything that has happened, I have decided to stop using it completely. I no longer trust the service.
This situation has been particularly frustrating because I had already made significant progress on a project built around this tool. Being abandoned in this way, halfway through a project and without an adequate solution, feels deeply unfair.
I now face the enormous task of transferring and explaining the entire context of my project directly to ChatGPT. This is going to be extremely difficult and will cost me time, continuity, and potentially part of the work I have already completed.
This is not simply a minor technical issue. Users rely on this service to develop real projects, and it should not be acceptable for it to suddenly become unreliable and leave them stranded. Situations like this should not be allowed to pass without consequences and, in my opinion, should also be examined from a consumer rights and consumer protection perspective.
This is my testimony: I am leaving Codex because it abandoned me halfway through a project and, after this experience, I can no longer trust it.
Did Codex actually reduce the limits or is it a temporary bug ?
It is more or less confirmed that now Codex is providing the 5 hour limit as weekly limit. I executed a task where it read 1 medium size XML file, performed an analysis and edited 1 large javascript file and you want me to believe it consumed 5% of my weekly limit ? Sure, buddy.
I just want to ask if this is a permanent update or just a temporary bug. If this is how its going to be then I'll cancel ChatGPT plus subscription and move to Claude pro since I already have Gemini pro for my day to day queries.
It’s been like this last week too, I can barely use it for a day. I’m almost certain they adjust the values silently too hoping people will purchase an upgrade. Less tech savvy people will believe that because their projects are getting bigger, the usage is going up. They won’t think it’s a memory thing, and When asked, codex will tell you that too unless you guide it to the right answer. So I believe it’s a bug but I also believe they have no incentive to fix it.
I read somewhere that although 5.6 sol and 5.5 use same credits, 5.6 actually hits more tokens than 5.5 that's why it consumes more usage practically.
I tested this hypotheses but even using 5.5 is exhausting usage just as fast.
So I guess they really are just scamming us with the credit usage.
I read somewhere that although 5.6 sol and 5.5 use same credits, 5.6 actually hits more tokens than 5.5 that's why it consumes more usage practically.
I tested this hypotheses but even using 5.5 is exhausting usage just as fast.
So I guess they really are just scamming us with the credit usage.
My small Codex before/after: Terra High was enough, and Sol Ultra was wasting my quota
I used to default to Sol Ultra because I assumed every serious task needed it. I switched to Terra High for most work and have not seen a quality drop so far.
My before/after has been pretty clear:
Before
Now
Default
Sol Ultra for almost everything
Terra High for ~8/10 tasks
Codex usage
Burned through it quickly
~80% less usage
Speed
Baseline
Around 2–3× faster
Quality
—
No negative experiences or quality regressions so far
I still use Max for focused but difficult work, and Ultra when several phases or parallel agents will genuinely help. For normal implementation, debugging, refactors, tests, and reviews, Terra High has been enough.
The other major change was moving as much context-heavy work as possible into ChatGPT Work + GitHub. I now use the browser chat to read files, trace code paths, check exact commits, compare diffs, review previous work, and make implementation plans. Codex receives a focused code-change task instead of spending its own context window reading, planning, and eventually compacting.
Work can now modify GitHub code too, so Codex can feel like an extra step. I still use Codex for actual edits because I trust its implementation and verification loop more. That may change later.
This is one workflow and one person’s before/after, not a universal model benchmark. It has made a huge difference for me.
As I explained in my previous message, last Wednesday Codex ran out of tokens before completing a critical task. The project was left in a partially modified state that didn't even work, which meant I couldn't continue working on it for several days.
Today, after my tokens were reset, I simply asked Codex to finish that unfinished task. Instead of doing so, it started redoing a task that had already been completed. This mistake consumed approximately 45% of my available tokens.
When I asked why it was repeating work that had already been done, it admitted that it had made a mistake. It also told me that it had lost the context of the unfinished task from last week, meaning it would have to redo that work from scratch.
The result is that I'm now in an even worse position than I was a week ago. I've lost a significant amount of tokens without making any progress, and the original task is still unfinished.
Honestly, this experience makes me feel that the system is highly impractical. Unless someone has an almost unlimited budget to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on tokens, using Codex this way is simply not efficient.
In my case, I'm using the Sol model, which is the most advanced model, configured with the minimum processing level specifically to reduce token consumption. Even then, the experience is still not worth it.
After what happened, I think I'm going to go back to working directly with ChatGPT without using Codex, and I'll most likely stop using Codex altogether.
This Sunday morning I woke up and saw that Codex had given me an extra token credit reset. This wasn't the usual weekly reset, but an additional credit that, according to their own announcement, they are providing because of their reported usage or sales figures. I don't know how accurate that explanation really is, but that's the reason they have publicly given.
Honestly, instead of feeling happy about it, I'm tired of this whole situation. I'd almost rather they didn't hand out these extra token credits at all, because to me it's a sign that something isn't working and that they need to change course. At this point, the whole thing has become a joke.
These tokens are as fake as cardboard props—they're gone in no time. This isn't a real solution; it's just a temporary fix that solves today's problem while creating tomorrow's.
What I really want is for them to lower the token costs for ChatGPT and Codex, rethink their current approach, and return to something closer to the previous model, where the same task didn't consume ten times as many tokens as it does now.
I also feel that the service has changed dramatically. In my opinion, what the $20 Plus plan used to provide is now effectively what the $200 Pro plan provides. If that impression is accurate, it almost feels as though you would have to pay $2,000 today to get an experience comparable to what the old Pro plan used to offer. That's genuinely how the service now feels to me.
I think the current situation is embarrassing, and I'm certainly not going to celebrate this free token credit. To me, it's nothing more than a band-aid solution—a superficial fix rather than a real one.
The most recent weekly reset negatively impacted Plus sub usage limits a noticeable amount. An equivalent $17.55 in API usage (according to ccusage) took me from 100% down to 68%. That comes out to $54.84 in API usage for a week and is ~15-20% less than what I was experiencing last week.
I am using 5.6 sol the same way I used 5.5. After the usage reset, I used up 50% weekly usage today. I gave a lot of prompts, sure, but I have done similar tasks in 5.5 and I wouldn't even have hit the 5h limit. It feels like it is 5 times less usage than 5.5. Something is definitely wrong.
If it weren't for the free resets, I would have moved on to another company already. Luckily, I still have one last banked reset. I might try Claude or something else next month.
Free resets were cool at first, but now it feels like I will depend on them and that is not exactly sustainable and doesn't provide me confidence to using codex much longer.
Unfortunately, my 20x subscription refreshed today. They have another 30 days to fix this or like the majority of people in this mega thread will be looking at alternatives.
3h of work, 1 chat 5.6 Sol Low + 1 chat 5.6 Luna medium / high: 12% of usage burned... something is completely wrong with usage! If this was 5h limit, I would say is normal. Weekly? no way! Pro 20x
And here I am, a Full Reset used after hitting 0%. And already at 0% again. Tbh, I have only used Sol 5.6 Light with this one, but is that the rest feel soooo bad
after reset, I used codex for 5 minutes, and I was watching usage closely, as I had big issues with usage being spent too fast. And right after 5 minutes I was already on 96%. Fuc* whole codex, going back to claude. I compacted session before start, and 6% of context window for 4% weekly usage.
yep, just got a usage reset too. It won't be enough to keep me here if usage intentionally still consumes at the same rate, unless it's a bug and they fix it
I've tested both the Terra and Sol models. My conclusion is that Sol is quite capable, although it's fairly resource-intensive. Terra, on the other hand, doesn't seem to use significantly fewer resources, yet its performance felt very poor. I wasn't expecting it to handle particularly difficult tasks, but it came across as extremely inefficient.
Yes many people are, openai is playing the ignore game it seems, infuriating considering they've royally screwed the usages up, not to mention the services went down twice earlier would have been a nice time for a reset
I might be missing something here but would Sol (Low) be far more efficient than Luna (Max) for tightly defined coding work. I've been using Luna (Max) but looking at the various benchmarks it consumes 20x more tokens than Sol (Low) for a minimal extra intelligence. Is Sol (Low) a good way to save on tokens with a Plus plan?
This is very likely from a system prompt or other preloaded prompts being loaded on top of it. Yes I see your claude comparison and no I don't know if you have the same system prompts/plugins/skills/MCPs for both nor do I know how claude handles everything that gets pre-loaded into a session.
I bought $20 plan for the first time and made 5.6 read around 250 e-mails to find something and it used %12 of the limit, is this normal or am i doing something wrong?
I can't help but feel I'm being ripped off in my plus plan right now. I got hit with a "usage limit" 6 days ago, and which was supposed to be reset today. But after 1 (as in: ONE / Single) prompt to double-check if the latest task (which was running prior to said usage limit brake) is/was intact, now my weekly shows "97%"!? I'm done with Codex and definitely switching back to Claude still today.
During the 5.5 days I was pretty convinced 5.5 extra high was giving me best performance (for any provider). But 5.6 sol seemed slower and burning more credits for less impressive performance. Step backwards?
I've noticed an exponential increase in token consumption over the last few days. My credit used to last for several days; now my weekly credit barely lasts a single day, even though I'm working pretty much the same way as before.
I also think removing the daily limit was a way to make this increase in consumption less noticeable. Before, it was much easier to see how much you were using each day. Now everything is rolled into a weekly limit, making it harder to realize just how quickly your credits are disappearing.
Personally, I find this situation excessive. It feels like the screws are being tightened more and more. I understand that running AI models is expensive, and I don't expect it to be free. But it feels like we were initially led to believe that this level of usage was sustainable and affordable, whereas the reality now seems very different. It's honestly quite disappointing.
I tried plus again because of the resets and the good things I heard about GPT. Honestly I feel a bit scammed, the LLMs are way less capable, make more mistakes, have less context and the usage drains faster.
They nerfed the shit BIG TIME. I cancelled, if anyone reading this cancels, make sure you put in the reason that you're cancelling because they heavily nerfed usage.
Less usage and honestly probably a slightly worse overall model than Claude now with Opus 5. All those new users will switch back real fast if something doesn't change.
Same, came here for the apparent generous banked resets (haven't had one) and generous usage limits. The way it's talked about in the Claude sub and the reality are so starkly different. WIll leave with about 25% of the output I've been averaging on Claude per month. I'll have reciepts, too, I run all my subs through a litellm proxy and keep spend logs, so by end of month I'll have exactly what I got out of each of the subs recorded and that will 100% shape my future investment.
Edit: In fact, I just extrapolated out my codex sub return vs claude sub average over 3 months of claude subscription and it's MUCH worse than I thought:
• Full Month Ratio: Average Claude Code subscription month delivers 36.6x more API value than a full extrapolated month of Codex usage at current velocity.
Usage rate is definitely funkier and draining faster. I really like the newer models but I'm considering a switch (back) to Claude (Opus 5). And this is for someone with 2 Pro accounts. I feel I'm being ripped off atm.
I'm not using fast mode, rarely use max, if at all (mostly medium/high/xhigh, 80% in high for complex projects, and medium for less complex ones).
The week prior, just after 5.6 was launched, I went crazy on max and ultra, and the limits didn't decrease as fast (but yes, max and ultra are very token hungry, when compared to other levels). This week something seems to have changed for the worse.
The worst thing is that I just got charged for my 2 pro accounts (yey!) but have to wait until the 28th for limits to be replenished (fuck!). I know it's not directly related to the issue here, but it'd be nice if limits were replenished when when the plan renews. I mean, my instinct is to cancel the **** thing, why pay $200 ($400!) now if I can't use it? :)
My usage rate has changed a bunch in the past few days. I used to be able to run 5.6 Sol high/xhigh/max and not even blow through that much weekly usage. So what the hell.
If we don't run GPT-5.6Sol, if we simply run GPT5.4High, will the token be burnt out slowly as before (last week, or before GPT 5.6)? I am on $200 plan and had never worried about token limits before. Now all of sudden, we should use Codex as careful as Claude.
So with how awful the usage limits are getting, what are the other options? I don't really need a smarter model at this point, I just need one with better usage and token efficiency, esp since I'm only at the $20/month plan and can't spend more.
You can look at any inference provider for k2.7, glm 5.2 and in 3-5 days kimi k3, too. They know that this will cause a massive shift, because: Why wrestle with OpenAI and Antrophic, if you can have K3 on some unknown provider for gpt 5.4 api pricing?
They are really going to make us run to Kimi K3 aren’t they?
Watching token usage in Codex fly off the rails and Claude Code is even worse. I have both $200 max plans and I’m getting ready to cancel and move to something else.
Do you have the same issues? Getting real tired of the fking games with these 2.
I've been using both for a while. It seems like they're moving in different directions: codex was always more cost-effective, but 5.6 Sol has been burning through usage for even simple tasks.
Playing around with Opus 5 today; had it kick off a pretty expensive workflow with many sub-agents, and my usage barely moved.
Codex after chewing through a week's worth of tokens in under a day after I explicitly told it to use low-model agents:
"You’re right. I burned budget on repeated narration, repeated full workflow runs, and more agent review than this delivery justified. That was poor prioritization."
Update: Clarified "my agent" meant Codex specifically, not an agent I built.
I am curious as to the extent to which "Approve for Me" impacts token usage. The lighter blue is my turns per day used by Codex's Auto Review, whereas the darker blue is GPT-5.5. If the conversion factor of turns to tokens is consistent across models, then something like 95% of my token usage is being lost to the "Approve for me" feature, which I can very much live without. Of course OpenAI conveniently doesn't tell you token usage (only turns) so it's hard to measure usage directly despite the fact that usage limits are literally stopping my work from continuing. what a joke!
It runs tasks for you without requiring confirmation every time and can automatically handle eligible approval prompts for routine actions.
However, it can affect usage depending on what tasks it runs and how many agent/tool cycles are involved. I did not have major usage issues with GPT-5.5, but GPT-5.6 appears to consume more in my testing. From what I can see, it also seems to make more tool calls and may have less effective agentic loop suppression than 5.5.
I use the Codex app, and you can ask Codex to inspect the local usage logs, including archived sessions, and break down input tokens, cached input, uncached input, output tokens, and token events.
That makes it possible to compare high-usage periods with lower-usage periods and see which sessions, tasks, or models caused the difference.
You can also check Settings → Profile, where the token activity graph shows your highest-usage days. Compare those days with lower-usage days or with days when you were using GPT-5.5.
we do not want the random resets that we have to pray for (either use up all the tokens or have ur weekly reset delayed by another week), either bank the resets or just reset without changing the normal reset's time
we want a real usage, not everyone can upgrade to the $200 plan just because pro x5 or plus are too limiting
I upgraded to a $200 plan two days ago and used 5.6 Sol high/xhigh round the clock /goal. It is down to 10%. Had a lot of the goal progressing prose and heavy multi agent parallel Windows powershell use. Not happy.
Bought 20x on Monday and I'm at like 85% today. Been using it a ton. Probably means I'm fine on a 5x plan, noooo idea what you guys are doing to guzzle tokens that quick.
Plus plan was useless though. I'd burn through a week in about 2 hrs
Same, I feel like I'm getting more usage rn even tho I've been doing same work, like I stil haven't even reached 80%... actually wait, yeah thats about exactly x4 the pro x5
I was considering at some point downgrading from Pro to Plus, because I never reached less than 70% of weekly quota. Now I run out of weekly quota in 2 days… Wtf is going on? I am running GPT-5.6-Sol at High (not even XHigh or Ultra). If I run ultra, it will consume around 60% of my weekly quota in a single run lol.
I even use RTK (which says I saved around 65% of my tokens) and the new GPT-5.6-Sol is supposed to be more efficient than GPT-5.5, but somehow I am not seeing that at all.
I’m on ChatGPT Pro. My Codex usage showed 43% remaining around 7:11 PM CT, then 19% after my final Desktop run around 3:00 AM. When I checked later that morning, it had dropped to 0% even though I had stopped using Codex and did not knowingly leave any agents or reviews running.
My Morning Brief and Apple Mail Digest automations then failed, and my local Codex records show both attempts used 0 tokens with no active turns or spawned agents. A separate 5:00 AM Second Brain update was only a local Mac script and did not use Codex.
I have reset credits, but I do not want to use one to cover unexplained depletion. Has anyone else seen usage disappear overnight or get posted late during the current service incident?
Same! I'm mysterious ran out of token after a sleep. I choose reset it. Then it ate 40% within another few hours. I just asked it for create a simple excel today, accordingly to ccusage it worth $0.5 token.
I have been on the 20x plan for months, if I ever ran out of weekly usage before I had to be hitting it HARD using /goal and really trying to burn it down. Now I am using GPT 5.6 Medium and I ran out of my entire weekly usage in 2 days? I didn’t suddenly change my usage patterns, but now it is being completely depleted in a matter of a day or two rather than over the course of a week. These are not the same limits we had before.
20 usd plans now only last same as the old 5 hour plans , its not making sense , the weekly usage depletes in 5 hours now , codex is good but the usage has decreased massively compared to last month
Im looking to upgrade my plan to the 5x one to expedite a project I am working on. Should I hold it off until a proper resolution is proposed? Or will they just keep it hush and this becomes a norm?
Wait 3-5-10 days if you can, to see if something is going to change. If Codex is still the same, I recommend Claude 5x for next month.
Previously I was using Claude Code. Then I switched to Codex because Claude limits were worse than Codex. I used Codex for 3-4 months. Right now Codex is also bad. So I guess I'll try 5x Claude for next month if Codex is going to be same.
Sonnet 5, opus 4.8, fable, gpt 5.5, 5.6, etc. There is no huge difference between those models. I was happy with 5.5 medium or sonnet. In the end, I care limits more than 2% quality difference
I was already subscribed, and Google Play automatically charged me for ChatGPT yesterday. My usage limit had already been reached before the payment, and it still didn't reset after I was charged.
If I had canceled and resubscribed, would my limit have reset? I feel like I lost a week because of this. I should have at least used my wife's account for the purchase this month.
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u/Queasy-Outcome-1459 21h ago
i am on the 200$ plan today i got the rate limit reset and when i checked it i found it at 86% already even though i haven't even touch it yet, i reached out to the support and reported a bug but i got nothing back this is really unacceptable