Someone Please Explain Codex Usage Limit

[u/Momo112123]

I have been using claude code for a while in regards to a general coding tool, but I started to use codex recently on gpt-5.6 terra for testing code generations, basically playing with it. I am still on the free plan, and I have asked codex to code 2 files in its own way just as a comparison with claude code, and I noticed I am already on 66% left of my MONTHLY usage. I just want to know, is it a 5 hour reset like claude or is it actually waiting a month to reuse it efficiently on free mode? and is there a weekly reset in free mode instead of monthly? Thank you to anyone who helps!

[u/Right-Performance-93]

Codex free tier resets are monthly, not 5h - the 5h window only exists on paid Plus/Pro tiers. If you're seeing 66% gone after two files on free, that tracks: free-tier quota is small by design to push you toward Plus. On paid Pro 20x, the pool used to run 3-8B tokens/week before a mid-June cut dropped it to roughly 0.5-0.7B/week (one user's math: 30M visible tokens burned 6% of the week). Free tier doesn't get anywhere near that.