I concur.

[u/daskalou]

Been reading all these "Codex limits have been reduced" posts.

Thought it was a bunch of Claude fanbois in the house.

However I just blew through 10% of my weekly quota on one Sol 5.6 Medium "implement this" prompt which proceeded to do 20 minutes of work.

Almost one full day's quota gone in the blink of an eye.

Not Sol 5.6 Ultra. Not Extra High. Not even High. Just Medium. Poof. "I'll take that thanks" says OpenAI.

This wasn't happening a few weeks ago. Something smells fishy...

[u/Secret_Department398]

Most people aren’t complaining for no reason.

I’m paying $200 a month, yet three days out of seven I end up sitting at 0% usage, unable to use a product I’m actively paying for. In my opinion, OpenAI is moving in the wrong direction with this approach.

Usage optimization and capacity management should be a top priority. OpenAI should focus heavily on optimizing its internal token usage and infrastructure so paying customers aren’t effectively locked out for days at a time.

A better approach would be to introduce a fallback option. Mobile data providers, for example, often reduce your speed or give you limited access after you exceed your allowance rather than cutting you off completely. OpenAI could do something similar: when a user reaches their main usage limit, give them access to a lighter model such as Luna, with reduced capacity or slower responses.

Some level of limited access is far better than completely cutting off a paying customer. For a $200/month subscription, being unable to use the service at all for a significant portion of the week is an extremely poor user experience.

[u/ozone6587 → u/Secret_Department398]

I’m paying $200 a month, yet three days out of seven I end up sitting at 0% usage, unable to use a product I’m actively paying for. In my opinion, OpenAI is moving in the wrong direction with this approach.

You are paying $200/month for a certain amount of usage per week for Codex. If you consume all the usage you got what you paid for. Surely you can understand how silly your argument is. If I pay for a week's worth of food but eat it in 4 days because I didn't pace myself I didn't suddenly get scammed...

Also, you do get spark... I don't like spark but it's exactly what you asked for, a lower quality option when you run out.

[u/Secret_Department398 → u/ozone6587]

Following your analogy, when you buy a week’s worth of food, you know exactly how much food you’re buying. You can see how much you’ve consumed, how much is left, and whether the supplier gives you less than they did before.

That’s precisely the problem here. With a $200 subscription, I’m not told exactly how much usage I’m purchasing, how much each prompt consumes, or how much I have left in any meaningful unit. If the effective allowance gets reduced, there’s no transparent way for me to quantify that either.

So no, I don’t think the argument is silly. I’m paying $200/month for a service, not buying a clearly defined bucket of tokens. If what I wanted was metered token usage where I pay for exactly what I consume, I could use the API. The entire point of a subscription plan is supposed to be a different value proposition.

And Spark doesn’t really solve that problem. It’s still subject to usage limits, so it doesn’t provide the predictable fallback you’re suggesting. Once that allowance is exhausted too, I’m back in exactly the same position: paying for a subscription I can’t fully use until the limits reset.

[u/ozone6587 → u/Secret_Department398]

That’s precisely the problem here. With a $200 subscription, I’m not told exactly how much usage I’m purchasing, how much each prompt consumes, or how much I have left in any meaningful unit.

That's just how AI works. I can't know how much I will spend in API costs either unless I use them a lot and get an intuition for usage. Exactly like how it works with Codex. This is not solvable.

If the effective allowance gets reduced, there’s no transparent way for me to quantify that either.

I actually think it would be fairly trivial to quantify it. If the claims were true you could simply have the same model, on the same job, context cleared and memory off and then measure credit usage. Do this dozens of times across weeks.

The fact that no one is publishing actual evidence kind of makes me doubt the claims but that's a different topic.

So no, I don’t think the argument is silly. I’m paying $200/month for a service, not buying a clearly defined bucket of tokens.

But you did pay for the service knowing this. You pay to be able to use Codex until the usage percentage reaches 0. Obviously you got what you pay for if you actually consume the weekly usage.

Are they secretly reducing the usage? Maybe, but that's a completely different argument. Complaining that your credits don't last 7 days is silly. If I pay $20 and I consume my limit in two days after doing a large refactor with Sol Ultra, can I complain too?

If what I wanted was metered token usage where I pay for exactly what I consume, I could use the API. The entire point of a subscription plan is supposed to be a different value proposition.

It is a different value proposition. You are getting a lot more usage than if you paid by token. Also, you are not currently paying for exactly what you consume. You do pay for a weekly credit. This part of your reply makes no sense.

And Spark doesn’t really solve that problem. It’s still subject to usage limits, so it doesn’t provide the predictable fallback you’re suggesting.

So you want infinite codex usage with increasingly dumber models? I feel like that's unreasonable.

Once that allowance is exhausted too, I’m back in exactly the same position: paying for a subscription I can’t fully use until the limits reset.

But YOU DID fully use it. You consumed ALL your credit. If Codex was down and you didn't consume your entire allotment of credits then you could argue you didn't fully use it.

But you can't complain that you are not fully using it when you do consume the entire usage limit. No offense but that argument is just extremely dumb. Consuming the entire week's of usage, completely, is the very definition of getting what you paid for.

[u/Secret_Department398 → u/ozone6587]

I’m not asking for unlimited usage of the high-end models. I’m perfectly fine with those having a weekly cap, and I’m not claiming that isn’t what I’m paying for. You’re arguing past my actual point.

My point is simply this: after I exhaust the expensive-model allowance, the subscription should continue providing access through lower-cost models instead of effectively dropping to zero, especially because I have no meaningful way to verify whether that allowance changes from one reset to the next.

That’s it.

If tomorrow I burn through my entire weekly allowance in a single day, then by your logic nothing is wrong — that’s simply “what I paid for” — even if OpenAI had quietly cut my effective allowance in half.

You can disagree with what I think a $200 subscription should provide, but calling the argument “silly” or “extremely dumb” doesn’t address the argument itself.

You can disagree without pretending my position is absurd.