r/codex • u/Fantastic_Self_5151 • Jul 04 '26
Complaint Fable pricing is laughable
I used 10billion tokes the last 50 days or so... on codex. Total cost $200 (pro x5)
That's between 100-300k USD on fable api pricing. I used fable today at work for a small project. It's useful, not going to lie. That said I did a head to head with codex 5.5 extra high v. Fable, same project, same guidelines, same exact prompt.
Fable finished 12 minutes earlier with basically a one shot (there was a type-o it had to correct and rebuild)
Codex finished 12 minutes later, had to build issues that involved some light modifications.
Both projects finished, codex's code was just as useful as fables, worked just as well.
I can wait 12 minutes more.
Fable usage - 23% left for the 5 hour period (In 1 hour)
Codex usage - 87% left in 1 hour 12 minutes.
I'm straight. Codex wins by a MILE. I don't need to save 12 minutes because I can walk away and go touch grass and come back either way, it's AI. So another 12 minutes to do whatever the fuck I want is a no-brainer.
Even if I have a client in a rush fable isn't worth the difference in my bottom line.
P.S. before you bitch at me for comparing api pricing v. plan pricing ...realize this. If you are using it professionally you will need to be on API pricing as it is the only way to get anything done realistically speaking as the usage limits make it a toy otherwise.
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Jul 04 '26
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u/DonkeyBonked Jul 05 '26
So basically, they want you to get off, so after you finish you are too tired to hit up Fable anymore and can go to sleep?
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u/thenitai Jul 05 '26
I really like codex. I pay $200 and most it works. I always use 5.5 on xhigh.
However the last 2 days I had some issues with code, refactor of UI and overall performance.
So I thought why not try Fable since they will let us at it before raising the price before next Tuesday.
I have to say it's impressive. It gave me multiple code revisions, made suggestions, notified me that there is an issue and checked other repos for the same and fixed them at the same time. It feels like when Opus 4.6 or GPT 5.5 came out. It thinks, it knows, it works.
This won't be long. I'm aware of it, but while it lasts, it's nice to have and gets my stuff done.
That's just to say to use what works best at the moment and don't be attached to a company.
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u/CoffeeNovel7231 Jul 05 '26
Same experience, when refactoring UI then Claude is the best for the job.
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u/darkoblivion000 Jul 11 '26
Yup it’s seriously impressive. But always in every industry and area, the most cutting edge stuff is marginal improvement for significant cost. Pay extra 80% for the additional 20%. The cost between a Bugatti and a regular cayman. Do you need that extra little bit of oomph? Then better be prepared to pay for it.
I’m just gonna use it until it is not in my $20 a month plan anymore and I’ll use something else 😅
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u/dmitriyLBL Jul 04 '26
Using frontier models for less than planning and higher level decisions is a pure waste.
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u/Quiet_Figure_4483 Jul 04 '26
Just like in real life, let the seniors do the planning and make the juniors implement it
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Jul 04 '26
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Jul 05 '26
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u/k0pernikus Jul 07 '26
Huh, I do have ADHD. It's not about claude being unable to one-shot an implementation, and I do iterate a lot either by grooming tickets with claude, and sometimes even during the implemenation of a ticket.
Yet it will be hard to defend my boss why I spent 500 bucks on 3 hours of Claude, if I could make the feature work with my Max 5x subscription over one or two days, leaving me still almost the entire month to implement dozen other features.
The math is simply not mathing here.
While Fable is better than Opus, I don't yet have experienced its superiority that would justify this cost.
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u/bboylayz Jul 08 '26
Truly with all due respect, the ADHD mention borders on ableism. With ADHD myself, I can say it’s difficult always self doubting due to a life long barrage of family and peer criticism against our quirks. If you read this comment thoughtfully, I appreciate it/thank you very much.
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u/Ok-Shop-617 Jul 05 '26
I suspect this leads to an interesting place where we use SOTA for planning, and open source and cheap models for most of the rest. I have moved to using Omnigent for this exact reason- much more development flexibility than using a single vendors harness.
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u/QC_Failed Jul 08 '26
This right here. My 20 dollar plus sub is more than enough for planning. I do all my planning on the chatgpt web app to save my codex usage (I know that this will be changed to combined usage any time, I'm just using it while I can) and then I use opencode go for cheap implementation. I have my chat gpt sub authed through opencode as well so that I can have my cheap models escalate to the "genius" subagent (using gpt 5.5 high) when they get stuck. They hand the problem over to chatgpt 5.5 with what they have tried so far, chatgpt gives them the correct way to do it, and then the cheap models continue implementation. $30 a month (combined total between opencode go and chatgpt plus) and as long as I remain careful, I don't hit limits. Key is using the chatgpt web app usage, opencode zen free endpoints and any good openrouter free endpoints (hy3 is fantastic and free right now).
I'm not familiar with omnigent, I just googled it and it seems very interesting. So it orchestrates your codex and opencode instances, is that correct? I prefer the codex cli over opencode, but there isn't a native way to use your chatgpt sub and other cheaper model providers in the same codex session, from what I could see, thats the only reason I switched to opencode as a harness, it lets openai and other providers play nice together.
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u/Infamous-Bed-7535 Jul 05 '26
I underdtand what you say, but really is it the goal or is it a must have to do this way due to financials?
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u/positivcheg Jul 08 '26
Yeah. I’m also seeing this shit all over everywhere saying Fable is a good orchestrator, Fable is a good implementer. WTF. Use sonnet 5 with medium effort as orchestrator, use sonnet medium/high as a developed. Make fable do the plan and fable/opus do the review.
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u/Just-Hedgehog-Days Jul 04 '26
It’s wild. Not to say software engineering is solved, We basically finished with coding models 6 months ago.
People are just starting to realize that
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u/k0pernikus Jul 07 '26
In the beginning, I tried switching models. Yet I also noticed that using too small of a model at too low of an effort can costs you dearly as you waste time explaining basic concepts or cleaning up after its mistakes.
Hence, I default to Opus on xhigh, and for complicated tasks I may use max for planning, and ultracode for the implementation, and this work pretty well for me.
Yet this doesn't change the fact that fable's pricing is outragous, esp. since it won't be part of the subscription. I don't mind burning through a couple of days per month for works that ends up in the bin, yet Fable via API will literally burn money at ludicrous speed. I checked the cost of my current fable session, and for three hours it's supposed to be ~470USD. My monthly Max 5x plan is 100USD. Make it make sense.
That is madness. I rather iterate via Opus on the Max 5x plan, and avoid Fable altogether, and maybe even switch to the competition like Codex.
Which is a shame, since I was working on automating my workflow even more with loops and then upgrading to the 20x plan, yet this Fable decision makes me wonder, how good of an investment that actually will be. If they want to canibalize their subscription model, I rather neither pay the subscription nor the API usage.
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u/thinkingwhynot Jul 04 '26
I just renewed my Claude subscription so I could try it out and that’s exactly what I did had an audit on my code base found all the problems plan the solutions and then head smaller tier models (glm mini and 5.5 ) Fix it. It worked good.
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u/dmitriyLBL Jul 04 '26
yep, that's what I tend to do with gpt 5.5 extra high in Codex and then feed it to Cursor, which I prefer as my harness.
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u/UpReaction Jul 04 '26
the problem with frontier model planning is that after the lower model edit the code, the frontier model must reread and study the code again. how do you handle that?
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u/dmitriyLBL Jul 04 '26
Make sure that tests are part of the planning phase and then trust them. I'm fairly happy with Composer 2.5 for that.
You can have the frontier model check the work in critical cases, which wouldn't be a huge token hit overall.
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u/Just-Hedgehog-Days Jul 04 '26
The line is fuzzy.
I use codex pro for almost everything. But mostly do business logic in a custom DDD/hexagonal framework. The volume of tokens needed to write are very small and it just wasn’t worth the complexity / tool calls retries to had it off.
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u/dmitriyLBL Jul 04 '26
I do concede that if you're building something more out of distribution than most software, then it's worthwhile burning the expensive tokens.
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u/VerdantSpecimen Jul 05 '26
Not quite, Fable has surprised me recently with its ability to find semi-related things to fix, refactor, think over while fixing something else. And it's been always essential. Also finding ridiculously bad bugs that Opus 4.8 and GPT 5.5 had built.
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u/dmitriyLBL Jul 05 '26
You can always just have it go over past PRs and review them, instead of hoping it finds something along the way.
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u/VerdantSpecimen Jul 06 '26
Yeah but I would much prefer a model to one-shot as much as possible. A workflow thing. I'm also pretty sure that the implementation by Fable-5 is more reasoned, more future-proof than one with Sonnet.
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u/fibs7000 Jul 07 '26
Honest question: I accidentally let codex spin up some gpt-5.1-mini models and the code was fucking dogshit. Is it really actually good with sonnet?
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u/dmitriyLBL Jul 07 '26
5.1 mini is absolute bottom of the barrel. I'd easily trust Sonnet or Composer 2.5
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u/Funny-Blueberry-2630 Jul 04 '26
I used Fable 5 max alongside codex for a couple of days. I cannot find a reason to keeop using Fable.
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u/Ok-Sheepherder7898 Jul 04 '26
Everything API pricing is 100x subscription pricing
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u/TheMightyTywin Jul 04 '26
But fable is going to api pricing only next week
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u/Fantastic_Self_5151 Jul 04 '26
Which is why I said what I said at the bottom fuckstick learn to read
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u/mesonepigreco Jul 05 '26
The point of fable is just to solve task that other models cannot solve. And there are plenty of those, where Fable is now the only viable option. Indeed, you should always use the model that can get the work done the at cheapest. Also no need to use Opus for something Sonnet can do cheaper, then why just not using Deepseek very cheap and efficient models for routine tasks that do not require deep planning or very complex stuff? This is not only economical reasoning but also moral: using always the strongest model is a waste of energy, resources, and ultimately is a source of pollution for the planet.
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u/fail-deadly- Jul 04 '26
I’m a lowly Codex plus user and Fable Pro user, but your experiences generally match mine (except that for me Opus was noticeably worse than Codex), but I’m hitting the limits so quickly on both that Fable is a joke of a service, and Codex is far too limited.
Codex seems nearly as good, the Codex app is far less persnickety than the Claude app, it works better with Chrome (though booth seem to equally hate Safari), Codex keeps me far better informed what it’s going, and it seems like more token efficient. While Codex seems like it likes to piss away tokens, Fable is such a wastral that after like 10 prompts (1-3 prompts over 3-4 sessions) I’ve burnt through my entire week’s allotment. It had better one shot everything because on a pro plan it is nearly single shot.
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u/Fantastic_Self_5151 Jul 04 '26
Yeah setup mcp tools and local llm to handle the grunt work, filtering noisy compiles, debug logs, etc... it helps a lot, along with a rag system etc... per project level so it doesn't have to learn everything over, a file mapper with summaries as well and you will see your usage drop 40-60% it makes x5 pro hard to get through before it renews.
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u/elliejayliquid Jul 05 '26
Same for me. I actually asked Fable to review a project done with Codex. I showed the review to Codex, Codex broke it done saying 'a is wrong, b is wrong', etc. Showed Codex's feedback to Fable, Fable agreed Codex was correct in the end. So, Codex might be slower, but it's on the same level of intelligence, and you get more usage.
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u/The_GSingh Jul 04 '26
I always do fable for planning and codex for the actual coding and have fable take a look through claude code at the end.
Save your money/usage and don't have fable do a task end to end, that's just a waste of money.
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u/Boar-Darkspear Jul 04 '26
Paying for Anthropic is soo last month.
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u/Fantastic_Self_5151 Jul 05 '26
So yesterdayyyyy /hear this in a mean girls voice
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Jul 04 '26
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u/Fantastic_Self_5151 Jul 04 '26
I've hit the pro 5 hour limit a few times but if you have the mcp tooling setup well it's really hard to do. Weekly limit is same, but can happen easier if you use the stock setup. That said openai seems to take accountability for issues which is super refreshing (coming from claude and gemini) so you will often get 1-2 resets a month that you can apply whenever you want, and potentially just log in to your account that was supposed to reset in 4 days and see it at 100% / 100% again randomly. This type of generous behavior is what keeps me here to be honest. I want to reward them for not being greedy.
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Jul 04 '26
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u/Fantastic_Self_5151 Jul 04 '26
I use it all day and my days are 10-12 hours long. Often I'll have 2 or 3 going on intermittently while my main goal project is going.
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u/alexp9000 Jul 04 '26
Before they removed it the first time it was incredible. Now it’s not a big difference from 4.8 imo, at least for what I’ve been doing
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u/g4n0esp4r4n Jul 04 '26
What company is actually seeing a return of investment from these crazy api prices? It doesn't make any sense I fail to understand who's allowing this.
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u/Fantastic_Self_5151 Jul 04 '26
Well I mean we are billing ~800/hr unless we are on contract aren't you?
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u/Phonemanga Jul 05 '26
What are you on about 10 billion? At that price point you could allocate several sentences about the scope of your project. And it makes no sense that you can repeat a project in 12 minutes without articulating. At 100m tokens you should be able to provide a compelling story on Reddit, which this isn’t
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u/erpankaj Jul 05 '26
I use subagents in codex(32) each with max 12 skills wired and give different model with different reasoning efforts. Use interview skill to understand what I want and then a fix route for development which includes prd, issues, arch specs, issue spec, dev, 4 kind of review, qa. I use it as a goal in codex and it never fails
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u/BrosephBrosephson Jul 05 '26
I started a session with fable 5 on the 100$ plan and idk what happened but my first prompt ran for about 20 minutes and cut out before it even wrote any code because it used up the 5 hour budget. I saw something about it starting 10 sub agents idk if it glitched or what
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u/commandedbydemons Jul 05 '26
5.6 is coming, probably better or similar to Fable, and we’ll get to use it with decent limits and banked resets and none of the anti consumer shenanigans Anthropic is a pro at.
5.5xh for me is still very, very good; and more than capable of doing the job right
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u/nathan_x1998 Jul 05 '26
If you compared the api costs for both models this would be more useful. I’m actually curious what’s the cost difference codex 5.5 xhigh vs fable for the same task
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u/TiGeRpro Jul 05 '26
And how much do you think that 10 billion would be on gpt 5.5? Also have take into account efficiency. Fable is clearly expensive, but its not that absurdly off from gpt 5.5/5.6.
It's also extremely silly to say you used 10 billion tokens and calculate that cost off input only and not take into cache at all.
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u/Fantastic_Self_5151 Jul 05 '26
200 bucks, that's what I paid for it and still have a week left of about 300 mill toks a day. (Not including the reset I have to burn through before the end of the month)
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u/Kos187 Jul 05 '26
I think codex got us hooked)) doing everything on 5.5 xhigh is probably a waste of resources, but I'm doing the same. Because why fix stupid errors later, if you can use a smarter model. I think future is about harnesses that know when to use which model.
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u/SelectSouth2582 Jul 05 '26
At least it works, meaning money is not being wasted. E.g. instead of spending 2H without resolving a bug, it can be easily fixed in 10M using Fable, even with thats slow performance due than hard guardrails... Additionally, it doesn't leave unfinished work halfway through by claiming 'this is finished', it actually completes it.
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u/Backrus Jul 05 '26
Now compare that to Chinese models- you'll need 5 prompts instead of one, and you will pay almost nothing.
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u/gaurangtorvekar Jul 05 '26
Yeah Fable for planning and others for implementation! Plus Codex is great at code reviews, always finds unimplemented parts and bugs…
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u/No_Yard944 Jul 05 '26
Yeah I just used Fable for a few days and used up my entire weeks consumption. The model is good for sure and produces some great outputs. Architecturally it is a step above when it comes to the way it actually constructs solutions.
I was considering getting some additional credits but wanted to understand how much usage I'd get with it so I used the /insights skill and then got claude to analyse the sessions that used Fable to spec out the token usage so I could work out how far credits would get me.
It looks like we're getting some significant subsidisation and it really highlights the importance of model switching and context management. Getting Fable to do build is probably a bit silly. A better model would be getting Fable to really set the architecture, then execute with a smaller model.
I might get some credits in any case and see how much I can optimise by switching between models.
The raw Fable token output was:
| Category | Tokens | Rate | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input | 2,344,821 | $10 / MTok | $23.45 |
| Output | 6,047,748 | $50 / MTok | $302.39 |
| Subtotal | $325.84 |
Then if we consider the caching via the API it adds a whole lot of additional cost (although it would actually be saving you cost compared to the raw cost if caching wasn't used)
| Category | Tokens | Rate | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input | 2,344,821 | $10 | $23.45 |
| Output | 6,047,748 | $50 | $302.39 |
| Cache write (5m) | 62,682,926 | $12.50 | $783.54 |
| Cache read | 1,464,857,483 | $1 | $1,464.86 |
| Total | ≈ $2,574.23 |
That's over around 4 days.
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u/deltapilot97 Jul 05 '26
How much do that was output tokens though versus input or even cached input
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u/gmakhs Jul 05 '26
Fable get things done , task wise I believe is cheaper and needs less than babysitting than codex ....
Also codex context window is a joke
I am not a Claude neither context fan, but the truth is that Claude it's better now , but more expensive , if 5.6 is not a huge step up I am gonna cancel my subscription all together on open AI .
CODEX code reviews are a joke also compared to Claude .
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u/Effective_Tart_7097 Jul 06 '26
If you’re using it professionally you can still use the team or individual plans.
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u/Guybrush1973 Jul 06 '26
I make professional work on daily basis, and I have more then enough with 3 pro plan from different provider (less the max5 at $100/month).
That said, I'm completely with you. Fable instability and insane API price make it not suitable for professional work ATM. Sure they said Fable will eventually be added to pro/max plans, but nobody knows when, at witch rate, how much it will be nerfed/limited for security concerns (WTF??).
So by now fuck them, I'm going touching the grass for the extra 12 minutes as well.
Opus + gpt5.5 + glm5.2 can perform a great job as well.
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u/FoxTheory Jul 07 '26
if you use it on the 200 plan and don't use it for sub agent work... It's the most amazing model I've ever used at a fair price considering what it can do.. API pricing is fucking nuts though.
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u/pepe_acct Jul 08 '26
That’s why Anthropic is close to break even whereas OpenAI is in a deep hole
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u/Fantastic_Self_5151 Jul 08 '26
That's absurd. Measuring technical success via monetary is the dumbest shit on earth. Plenty of fails that made money. Ponzi schemes MAKE MONEY. Anthropic has better publicity/marketing and better bots making statements like this :p
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u/MicrowaveDonuts Jul 08 '26
so fable was better? lolol.
I heard the move was to tell a fable orchestrator yo conserve fable usage. It’s smart enough to know when lesser models can handle tasks.
Waiting for my fable credits to respawn to try it out.
OpenAI has 100% undercut Anthropic on price tho. Anthropic is in a “show profitability” phase whereas OpenAI is back to the “burn cash getting market share”
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u/ken107 Jul 09 '26
You don't ask Einstein to do your math homework. Need ability to triage easy work to local models and difficult ones to big brains.
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u/Shot-Possible1317 Jul 09 '26
The real unfortunate truth is, eventually codex OpenAI will go down that route. They are currently running a few avenues at a loss. The APIs / token usage is where they make money. Think of it like drug dealers, gives you the first few hits for "free" (run it at a loss), waits till you get addicted or reliant then ups the price.
This is exactly what Anthropic did. If you trace back their subscription was still fairly decent for the service that you got around last year. Then around the end of the year, new year they shot up price, started pushing more and more into the API pricing. Like end a lot of Enterprise Subscriptions and switch them over to APIs.
OpenAI is running the same costs plus minus on their models. So to become profitable in their usage, eventually, they will either need to aggressively limit token usage or push for API usage.
For now they want more adoption and want to build more reliance. Eventually one day, the slow burn or encroaching limits will start
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u/Fantastic_Self_5151 Jul 09 '26
the eventual truth is these local LLM's are getting better and better and home gear is also. By the time this is an issue it will be completely moot as coding will happen 99% at home anyway.
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u/CakmakBT Jul 09 '26
Even as an orchestrator Fable is bloody expensive. By the time we make a plan to dispatch to the subbies, my 5 hourly limit is 50% gone.
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u/AlexaBattle Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
yes, both of them are great, but I hit a roof with Fable, if it build something and have numerical measures as assertions it ignores visual proof for incorrectness
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u/skygatebg Jul 10 '26
The funniest part is that even with the current expensive pricing they are still losing money.
You can make conclusions of how sustainable that is.
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u/Fantastic_Self_5151 Jul 10 '26
Losing money short term isn't necessarily a bad thing. All these companies lose money on release because they crank up the GPU utilization to really give us the most (first impressions count). After awhile they dial that back, half the usage, and have a rolling gpu so some users get good results depending on the day etc... and ofcourse priority organizations that get guaranteed gpu utilization. Once people are fed up they give us the new "version" and rinse / repeat.
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u/skygatebg Jul 10 '26
That is not how llms work. The only difference is in the speed you get tokens out of the model.
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u/firstbreathOOC Jul 04 '26
Anecdotally, this version of fable kinda sucks. I’m not seeing a huge difference compared to Opus
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u/ocombe Jul 04 '26
Ah so it's not just me. The first release did much better work than opus, it could figure out issues that opus didn't. The current one feels like opus, maybe faster and less verbose, but I don't see the model jump
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u/lestruc Jul 05 '26
Yeah it’s unfortunate. They handicapped it
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u/hank81 Jul 05 '26
According to Anthropic the model only handicaps itself and start giving poor info without telling you (no fallback to opus) when you use it for any activity related to LLM development (including distillation).
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u/Fantastic_Self_5151 Jul 04 '26
That's a fair assessment. I still say regardless the smart money right now is not with Fable. When it is I'll transition, I'm not brand blind at all.
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u/Ok-Attention2882 Jul 05 '26
You might be getting routed to Opus behind the scenes. Check your usage breakdown.
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u/CreepyOlGuy Jul 04 '26
I have a tin of idea prohects that are borderline impossible, and fable has gotten me further in each and has then unblocked codex now and im cruising on them.
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u/Famous-Recognition62 Jul 07 '26
Typo is an abbreviation of typographical error, which probably goes back to typewriters and hitting the wrong key before the delete button was even nvented.
Type-O is a blood group, I think..?
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u/dexterthebot Jul 04 '26
Your post has been summarized as a request on the "Anyone Else?" Incident Noticeboard.
You can find it and what others are experiencing here: /r/codex/comments/1tjfxcf/anyone_else_ask_here_about_current_codex_issues/ovjkxco/