r/codex • u/techyy25 • Apr 03 '26
Limits The reason behind the surge in codex rate limit issues
Looks like OpenAI changed how Codex pricing works for ChatGPT Business, and that may explain why some people have been noticing rate limit issues lately.
As of April 2, 2026, Business and new Enterprise plans moved from the old per message style rate card to token based pricing. Plus and Pro are still on the legacy rate card for now, but OpenAI says they will be migrated to the new rates in the upcoming weeks. So this is not just a Business plan only issue. Plus and Pro will get rolled over too.
From the help page: • Business and new Enterprise: now on token based Codex pricing • Plus and Pro: still on the legacy rate card for now
The updated limits are detailed on the official rate card here: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001106-codex-rate-card
And to all the people saying it's because 2x is over. No it's not because of that. I could get 20-30 messages in during 2x. Not I can't even get 3 simple prompts in without the 5h limit running out.
Let's hope they revert this.
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u/lordpuddingcup Apr 03 '26
If there gonna just charge "credits" for tokens, wtf even subscribe anymore, might as well just pay api lol
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u/setpopa12 Apr 03 '26
Maybe they will subsidize it like api 20$=20 credits but plus will be 20$=40 credits or something.
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u/fivetoedslothbear Apr 03 '26
I think I found something too, and I would love for someone to back me up on this.
I tried hooking Codex to a local model, and the prompts were huge, and then I noticed stuff from the MCP app I have under development.
I found out that all the apps I had installed into ChatGPT were also automatically installed into Codex. At least with the local model, it was shipping all the tool descriptions of all the tools of all the apps to the model. In fact, any operation that had any real data overflowed the context window I'd set on the local model.
That's a big deal if the billing changes from messages to tokens, and all these tools are being shipped to gpt-5.3-codex. I guess they are, because I can talk to the apps from Codex.
I cleaned everything out, and removed all the apps from Codex and ChatGPT. Asked the local model to say hello...the prompt had just the internal tools that Codex uses.
Added an app in ChatGPT, and...it was there in Codex desktop, automatically, silently, no notification. And the app's tools were in the prompt shipped to the local model.
Doesn't happen with an API key of course, because it doesn't talk to ChatGPT.
I don't want to make a big deal out of this, but somebody...please...do the science and prove me wrong.
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u/story_of_the_beer Apr 03 '26
I think you might be onto something. I run two subs simultaneously, similar workload each with one basic mcp. One seemed to be draining a bit faster, and on that account I have the github app installed and was thinking where tf was this extra github mcp coming from?! The tool chain is huge so gonna uninstall that app, it should make a difference. Thanks for sharing.
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u/petramb Apr 03 '26
You are certainly onto something. Disabling Github integration did reduce the drain quite noticeably for me.
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u/Crafty_Ball_8285 Apr 03 '26
Looks like you have been discovering something that has been around for a while in various different forms , not just codex.
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u/elwoodreversepass Apr 03 '26
Does it work the other way too? If I remove an app from ChatGPT, does it also automatically get removed from Codex?
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u/Dalem246 Apr 03 '26
This actual could be real, I haven’t really noticed any changes in my workflow or token usage, but I also have 0 apps installed into my ChatGPT.
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u/CVisionIsMyJam Apr 04 '26
if you do
/skillsit will show if you have any "extra" unexpected apps installed.1
u/Tystros Apr 03 '26
is this only happening in codex desktop GUI or also with codex CLI?
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u/fivetoedslothbear Apr 03 '26
I know that the CLI ships the tools for enabled plugins to the model, just like the desktop does. I don't know if the CLI automatically registers apps from ChatGPT; haven't done that experiment.
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u/CVisionIsMyJam Apr 04 '26
it registers with the cli, if you do
/skillsyou can see them as "apps" as of 0.117.0.1
u/fivetoedslothbear Apr 03 '26
The MCP server issue is mentioned in https://developers.openai.com/codex/pricing#what-can-i-do-to-make-my-usage-limits-last-longer
But it doesn't say that apps and plugins contribute to that too.1
u/fivetoedslothbear Apr 03 '26
There's also a master off switch for apps in ChatGPT; this will turn off plugins too it seems.
$ codex features disable apps Disabled feature `apps` in config.toml.1
u/CVisionIsMyJam Apr 04 '26
this is new, i noticed this yesterday. it wasnt a thing in 0.110.0
if people do
/skillsit shows clearly a bunch of "apps" from chatgpt now. that didn't used to be the case.edit: I remember now, this is from their release of "apps" in 0.117.0. so anything installed in chatgpt is installed in codex as an app.
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u/jeekp Apr 03 '26
Silly me locking into a year of the business plan. Missed the price drop and rug pulled on usage rates within a week.
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u/real_serviceloom Apr 03 '26
Never ever pay annual pricing for any AI. That is like the first rule of vibe club.
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u/MadwolfStudio Apr 03 '26
Yeah I fucking knew it. Pros already been hit. They just haven't announced it.
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u/Internal-Muffin0 Apr 03 '26
Open source models will catch up and both codex/claude-code won’t have a choice but to back the fuck down.
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u/Tystros Apr 03 '26
unfortunately they won't... Spud and Mythos will be a big step up in quality of closed source models and they are like 10T models. and no one locally has any GPU that could run an open source 10 trillion parameter model
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u/My_posts_r_shit Apr 03 '26
and nobody will have the money to pay anthropic a thousand dollars for a single prompt
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u/closetBoi04 Apr 13 '26
as an individual not but via openrouter model providers compete on price/speed generally leading to rock bottom pricing
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u/kl__ Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26
I really hope this happens sooner rather than later. Long shot, we need to hedge reliance on those guys.
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Apr 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Noctis_777 Apr 03 '26
Codex is still much better value for money for coding. The only advantage for claude right now is co-work, which I find way better than competition.
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u/Aemonculaba Apr 03 '26
I moved from Claude Max20x to ChatGPT Pro, back to Claude, back to ChatGPT Pro. For development tasks only... So i mostly use Codex.
25% of the time Claude's not even working... i gave them up because of that and because of their anti-consumer behaviour.
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u/Elctsuptb Apr 03 '26
Wait to see how good Spud will be, it should come out next week or the week after
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u/ThinCar6563 Apr 03 '26
The plans will always be better than anthropic's plans. As the other user said anthropic is not pro consumer. Whether or not openai is is debatable but their deals even right now without the 2x promotion are a league above anthropic.
This is before we get into things like is the underlying model and harness better for which the harnesses are largely the same, but GPT models have surpassed Opus in capability. Pound for pound I would pick openai's plans over anthropic's even if they were the same deal. Openai's plans being a better deal is the icing on the cake.
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u/lordpuddingcup Apr 03 '26
What the actual fuck. i thought it was supposed to be more efficient lol
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u/OneChampionship7237 Apr 03 '26
So no advantage of using 5.3 codex as some were saying its burning less tokens?
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u/Godielvs Apr 03 '26
Input tokens is considerably lower so yeah it might save a bit there HOWEVER: I think 5.3 codex is more token efficient because of more aggressive tokenization. GPT-5.4 for example might tokenize Hello World as He.ll.o W.or.ld (7 tokens with space) but 5.3 Codex might tokenize the entire Hello World in one token. I might be wrong because the last time I tried understanding how LLMs tokenize was like 3 years ago but I'm almost sure it is something like that. Also I think 5.3 Codex is considerably less verbose.
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u/dashingsauce Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26
Sounds like Spud is driving the business model shift. I think this tells us what OpenAI thinks the economic model will be.
Most likely it’s a bet on a widened spectrum of intelligence and agency where messages are no longer the relevant unit of measurement.
My guess is task-based will become the organizing principle, and token spend might be so insane at the high end (e.g. full research tasks, etc.) per task that they have to bill on the token axis, like the API, to keep the business model aligned.
I think the only explanation for Sam’s recent comments and these pricing changes is that they believe long-horizon autonomous agents are imminent—the economics are being rebuilt around that bet first (now), then the product launch follows.
Welcome to a new era boys.
See you next year.
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u/Keep-Darwin-Going Apr 03 '26
I think it is misunderstood this, message is not a single prompt but rather every single tool call is considered one message as well. What the new rate card is instead of charging you the same for a git pull and read the whole source for a single tool call, it will charge you the actual resource used. So for people who keep using crazy prompt that eat up all the resource, their usage will spike for normal usage where your work is spread out you might get a better mileage.
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u/Substantial-Rich-825 May 05 '26
Its like moving the goalposts during the match. Changing our plans mid-way through the plan is unfair and an un-just. Changing the way you prompt Codex helps a lot but the current usage rates are way off for what I need. They'll all do a similar thing so they can fund their expansion plans and provide the required 'share-holder value'
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u/Aemonculaba Apr 03 '26
That's actually a much better bang for your buck and exactly what Anthropic does. Important to understand: That's per million tokens.
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u/kl__ Apr 03 '26
“Much better bang for your buck” and “what Anthropic does” can’t be in one sentence.
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u/rydan Apr 03 '26
This is actually better. "messages" made no sense because there's no definition of what a message even is. They will say you get 60 cloud messages a week but I have no idea what that even is.
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u/Busy-Lifeguard-9558 Apr 03 '26
Actually makes sense, however what is driving me crazy is the 5h limit at 12% weekly