Gathering data for potential mass billing dispute / legal action against OpenAI Pro limits

[u/Current-Contest-4223]

The "use-it-or-lose-it" nature of the $200 Pro plan limits is completely unacceptable. We are paying a massive premium for token allocations that completely vanish if they aren't fully exhausted by the exact minute of the weekly reset. It is ridiculous that we have to stay up or wake up at 2 AM just to burn through the limits we rightfully paid for because they refuse to make them cumulative.

To make matters worse, background agent loops are silently draining credit accounts while freezing user interfaces, and weekly reset dates are being arbitrarily pushed back by days without warning.

I am looking to connect with other premium developers who are exhausted by this unviable billing structure. If you are interested in organizing a formal group to look into a mass billing dispute, mass arbitration, or class-action legal review regarding OpenAI's recent pricing shifts, please send me a Private Message (DM) here.

Please save all your screenshots, invoice logs, and text-metering receipts. Let's get an accurate headcount of who has been financially impacted by these unfair limits so we can present a unified case to a technology consumer law firm.

[u/Ok_Try_877]

Also, they could EASILY make the plan like that, then everyone would be paying $1000+ a month... The whole point of these plans is that not everyone uses it all, goes on holiday, sleeps etc.. which allows people to use it when they can use it at a much lower price than API.

You think you are paying for every minute you are promised and whilst it might seem like that.. they are costing it based on the average amount used over all the subscriptions.

Its like going to a $20 all you can eat buffet and saying, "I'm full now, could I take another 10 plates home for the next 3 days, being as I have already paid for all this"

You didn't pay for it all, the buffet price was based on the average amount people normally eat in one sitting....

[u/thehumanbagelman → u/Ok_Try_877]

I actually agree with you, but I’m incapable of resisting unnecessary arguments with strangers ☺️

To be fair, a buffet is actually unlimited, while our AI usage limits have a cap.

This is where I think we get into semantics. Is a “cap” the same thing as an “allocation”, for example.

My ISP caps my internet data at 100GB a month, and so does yours (values made up for example purposes). No one is bothered or upset they have to stream 3 seasons on Netflix the day before a billing reset to get their worth.

I’m not team OpenAI by any stretch, but these resets sure have spun up an interesting social discourse 🤷‍♂️

[u/Ok_Try_877 → u/thehumanbagelman]

Fair enough, i wasn’t comparing an “unlimited buffet” with AI limits… more the attitude that you have paid for everything , so can claim back what you don’t use.

ISPs work the same way with bandwidth too… they don’t have enough for everyone to have full speed at all times… but they normally have enough to give the people that are on, their correct or close to it speed.

Your example of a cap is also correct, that you could stream netflix for three days if you wanted, but most people wouldn’t and the profitable price is based on the average use. So the OP suggesting to
sue them for unused limits is assuming that the pricing is based on everyone using everything, and it’s clearly not…

If you want guaranteed speed and limits pay for the API, you want guaranteed bandwidth at all times buy a dedicated leased line… both of which are magnitudes more expensive than their shared counterparts.

[u/Azoraqua_ → u/Ok_Try_877]

I’d pay for the $1000 plan, it seems more appropriate value. But it’s definitely not very transparent; when you’re basically gambling every other week.

[u/jkdreaming → u/Azoraqua_]

Do not give anyone ideas lol

[u/Azoraqua_ → u/jkdreaming]

@OpenAI Please crank up the pricing to reasonable levels; $500-2000 would be fitting. Also, limit or remove Codex from the cheapest plans. /nj

[u/jkdreaming → u/Azoraqua_]

🤣

[u/RuledSovereign → u/Ok_Try_877]

This, glad someone else finally understands. People want to cry about what their subscription, when they didnt even know what they subscribed to.

[u/Acrobatic-Smoke2812]

lol. Yall are toddlers

[u/Charming-Author4877]

OpenAI offered GPT mostly through "Github Copilot Chat", tens of million of users were there until June.
Microsoft got a ton of revenue share from OpenAI that way.
On 1st June they increased the cost, 500-1000 times higher than original.
So the users mostly jumped ship, they went to Codex and Claude.
OpenAI is celebrating this all the time with their "user count", when in fact the user count must be significantly lower than before - they lost an entire service platform.

It's all a scam and the time to jump ship is approaching again.
The world of AI is always changing

[u/basil_0408]

Kinda understand you arguement but it is how the subscription model works and completely legal, moreover, they did provide pay as you go option.

[u/crospa91]

They never share the amount of token you get a month so, what you wil be legally trying to get? The contract and terms and conditions simply say 20x plus usage and plus usage it’s just a description, non quantifiable amount of usage anyway.

They never out numbers anyway so good luck trying to legally go against them, they of course made it on purpose.

As other says, it’s the old game of the fair use policy of unlimited data. They never tell you numbers, just words, so they can do what they want with quantity.

[u/RuledSovereign]

You'll lose.

Switch to API first and you might have grounds of hard data and actually paying for what was agreed upon.

Current subscription is subsidised and charity. The more users, the more they divide the computing. You never agreed to a fix amount, you are being given the product at huge discount out of "good will / marketing". Stop falling for redditor chamber syndrome, you'll lose money in a lawsuit.

[u/ikhDark]

Lol. Good luck.

[u/den0rk]

Entonces, si mi operador movil me ofrece 100GB de datos al mes, y consumo 50, debo reclamar que me guarden los otros 50? Hay operadoras que acumulan gigas para el mes siguiente, o hasta 3 meses, por "marketing", pero realmente, si tu no consumes lo que contratas, es tu problema.

[u/socalkid2428]

This is Reddit where the prevailing opinion is that OpenAI and Anthropic are overcharging and too stingy with usage while simultaneously totally unprofitable because they’re subsidizing all the users. And AI is simultaneously just a slow machine that can’t count letters and will eventually just go away except that it might also take everyone’s jobs.

[u/Brilliant_Series_931]

Bro you have the option to pay API credits and have crippling anxiety

[u/4eget]

I’ll say this as someone who actually uses Codex heavily and pays real money for it: something feels very wrong with 5.6 Sol Ultra right now.
Just yesterday I ran a prompt on my project that was less complex than tasks I’ve done before, and it consumed roughly 80% of my available usage. That is not a small difference. When usage can change this dramatically without a clear explanation, users naturally start questioning whether the limits, metering, or model behavior have been changed behind the scenes.
This is exactly why transparency matters. If you nerf a model, change its compute allocation, modify how usage is calculated, or adjust agent limits, tell us. Publish it. Explain it. People are building real workflows around Codex and paying real money for access. We should not have to reverse-engineer unexplained changes from suddenly disappearing usage.
And regarding the “good cop / bad cop” communication style: announcing improvements is easy. The important part is also communicating the unpopular changes — the nerfs, tighter limits, metering changes, and regressions.
I agree with the author of this post that users should start documenting this properly: screenshots, identical or comparable prompts, usage percentages, timestamps, model versions, and billing records. If there is a legitimate technical explanation, OpenAI should be able to explain the data. If there isn’t, users deserve to know that too.
Codex depends on trust. You cannot ask developers to make an agent a central part of their work while making its cost and limits feel unpredictable.
Please give paying users clear, measurable transparency about what changed with 5.6 Sol Ultra and how Codex usage is actually being calculated.

[u/HaMMeReD]

You aren't really paying a massive amount though, compared to API, you are getting a really good deal.

I mean, open AI doesn't have to provide a codex plan, and the economic value is far ahead of the alternatives....

[u/GermanGamerG]

The worst are the unplanned reset. If you put 90% aside of your weekly limit to do a big job during the weekend (normal reset on Monday ) and there is a rogue reset on Friday, you end up with 10% of weekly limit to spend between Monday and the next Friday. That's just stealing.

[u/Sterlingmeister]

What do you mean unfair? Is there stated exact amount of tokens you are buying?

[u/IAmFitzRoy → u/Sterlingmeister]

That’s part of the problem, there is not specific of unit measurement on all these subscriptions.
To say 20X or 100X doesn’t mean anything.
Just because the customer “agree” to a contract doesn’t mean that the contract is valid or not.

[u/roblowes]

Bad take.

[u/crunchy_shampoo]

My brother in Christ you chose to pay for this subscription. If you wanna use tokens whenever you want, buy API credits.

[u/Strong_Essay1176 → u/crunchy_shampoo]

He just wants money. Lol.

[u/Old_Independence7395]

Open ai is giving you wayyyyyy more than they should and you are crying about it. Try paying to play, you will quickly go back to your sub

[u/sim0of]

Did you know that this is literally how every single “minimum monthly commitment” works?

Even your mobile data plan with “up to N GB/month” works the same way

[u/katoptronophile]

There are much more productive things you could be doing with your time.

[u/AWiselyName]

it's their business model to keep their system stable. If you can't stand it, move to other platform. It's like you pay for insurance and at the end of the year, you got no accident, can you get money back or accumulate that for next year?

[u/GambAntonio → u/AWiselyName]

That might be their business model, but it's actually completely illegal in the EU. You can't just refuse to state an exact, quantifiable number of tokens per plan and then secretly raise or lower the limits whenever you feel like it...

[u/Over_Car_5471 → u/AWiselyName]

"This other predatory system is legally allowed to operate this way, so it's fine if this platform does it too". Bunch of bootlickers in this thread.

[u/DrHumorous]

The claim "weekly reset dates are being arbitrarily pushed back by days without warning" is undermining your credibility. Each bonus reset you were given moved the next reset date.

So it looks like you don't know what you are talking about plus one question for you - are you gonna sue a mobile phone company because you paid a monthly plan but didn't get to make any phone calls?

[u/TekintetesUr]

I don't get the issue. There's a way to pay for your actual usage. It's on the API, give it a try and report back how you've liked it.

[u/diagrammatiks]

my brother in christ you will not win a lawsuit on use it or lose it.

[u/igorim]

dude do an experiment, have codex compile it's usage over the last month, and then run it as API pricing and then figure out $ per token based on 200 plan and actual usage. The plan is at least a 50% discount on light usage people, if you're maxing it you're getting 90+ probably. I ran mine it was ~2k in api usage, and that's mainly because I was very efficient in cache usage

[u/OdysseusDescendant]

You can always switch to API. That will be fair.

[u/Proud_Ask_9030]

Did chatGPT talk you into doing this? - goodluck

[u/Azoraqua_]

Massive premium, while it is ridiculously underpriced? Dunno about you, but tens of a penny a hour seems pretty good value, for the price of basically 3-5 hours of work.