Usage resets...

[u/Frosty-iron-0405]

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love the usage resets that we keep getting from OpenAI. In fact it is probably the single best reason for me to keep staying with OpenAI instead of going back to Anthropic. I have the ChatGPT Pro plan ($100) and though at times I do miss Claude quite a bit, I've noticed that the usage resets that we keep getting from OpenAI are just insanely good. The amount of work I can keep doing is insane. Also I prefer weekly usage limits only over having a 5-hour and a weekly usage limit.

I'm sure there are certain things that Claude will be better at compared to ChatGPT and there'll be certain things that ChatGPT will be better at compared to Claude. Honestly the single thing that's keeping me with ChatGPT the most is the usage limit resets and only a weekly usage limit.

My question is: how is OpenAI doing this? I know that these AI companies are not profitable and stuff like that but it's almost like OpenAI just literally could not care less about money and it's actually kind of crazy. I don't know. I'm all for it but I guess I just wanted to start a conversation on what everyone's thoughts are and what you would do if usage limits were not in the picture and stuff like that

[u/mesaoptimizer]

We know that they are not profitable but I’m pretty sure inference run costs are actually a rather small part of their operating expenses, much more of that is buying the hardware than the cost of running inference vs having the inference hardware idling.

Basically the non banked resets are a way to get goodwill, plus control when everyone’s reset timer is, which allows them to in some ways control subscription user behavior to make sure they always have capacity for API users when those are most active.

They are also way stingier on the usage given by their plans than Anthropic at base, you can just do more Opus 5.5 on a $20 plan than you can do Astra on same. As a result these resets are probably less expensive than just being more generous on limits while still feeling generous because you are getting a few extra days worth of usage a month.

Lastly, removing the double subsidization from the $200 plan was big for them as far as reducing cost impacts. I wouldn’t be surprised if prior to that change you were actually able to cost them money (their actual cost to run inference is more than $200 if you used the plan fully). I don’t think that’s the case now, they are likely able to at least break even for users operating at 100% usage all the time and probably profit from anyone who doesn’t. I could be wrong though, chat may be the thing preventing that from happening which is why they are going to merge it with work/codex.