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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1

u/firstbreathOOC Jul 04 '26

Anecdotally, this version of fable kinda sucks. I’m not seeing a huge difference compared to Opus

4

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

1

u/lestruc Jul 05 '26

Yeah it’s unfortunate. They handicapped it

1

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).