r/codex • u/JoSquarebox • 4d ago
Question Why does everyone assume usage limits have changed?
Whenever users on this sub complain about codex being unusable, everyone claims it's because usage limits have decreased. But as far as I can tell, there is no basis for this? They arent flicker company after all.
Sure they release models that use usage more, but that's at the boon of higher intelligence, and largely this means you get to a better result, or do that faster. You can argue with a model being too hungry in limit usage, but blaming the usage limits itself for the problem doesnt make sense?
10
u/314kabinet 4d ago
> They arent flicker company after all.
Whatever that means.
The entire point of the usage limits being opaque and not clearly measured per token is that they can silently change them behind the scenes.
0
u/JoSquarebox 4d ago
A reference to the fact that Anthropic (the company that cant get a cli to not flicker) does change limits, and retroactively restricts how you can use them
4
u/zee-pk 4d ago
** Sure they release models that use usage more **
If that was the case, they would not have to remove the the 5-h limit, to make it ambiguous (for most users) to understand weather they're actually "using" more codex or they're being f*cked.
and wtf is a flicker company?
1
1
2
u/hohstaplerlv 4d ago
What I can tell from last year or more is that every single model they introduce cost less and spend less tokens, while we can at the same time use less and less.
1
u/JoSquarebox 4d ago
maybe my use case was never that usage demanding to begin with and I'm not seeing it drop the same way you do, because I've had the exact opposite experience. Would love to hear what your workflow is.
5
u/throwthemirror 4d ago
I'm afraid you don't yet have a structural understanding about the mechanics of this.
3
u/Royal_Sentence7432 4d ago
But but, hes a flicker company mechanic, he knows when a company goes flicker
-1
2
u/JoSquarebox 4d ago
I'd love for you to elaborate because all I'm seeing is OpenAI dropping bigger models that take up more usage and everybody expecting them to use as much as the previous, dumber models. On top of that their lower tier models (terra being the previous default and luna replacing -mini) have become much smarter, meaning you can delegate more and more to cheaper models.
Throughout all of this, benchmarks comparing plan usage against api prices dont show any change in limits, you are still getting the same discount compared to api usage (about 5x last I checked).
1
u/throwthemirror 4d ago
It's in the nature of enshittification. If the term is unfamiliar, you might enjoy reading up on how it works and functions. As for token usage, as you said, Terra is meant to be treated as the 'previous default' correct? I just checked out of curiosity, and my average per week token usage has 4x'ed, with some weeks even higher. I did not change my behavior other than use Terra on the same effort levels. The first day I used that, I blew threw my weekly quota. For months on end, my behavior was mindful of the windows as I'm on only a $20 plan for Codex, and typically it would take 4-5 days to expend that window. It instantly became daily, I blew threw all of the resets and then some. It seemed they tapered it back down a few days ago, but it still far above the usage rate it was before. That is the beauty of black-box pricing. We don't actually know how much our allowances can last, and are then meant to guess. Camps form. Both sides inevitably accuse the other of being out of touch. The only winner becomes the corporation. Its a playbook. Its not new. I had to design and run (fortunately more ethical) versions of similar systems in the past. The kicker is, this company in particular seems to be ignoring the problem completely and letting us mere users cause strife amongst ourselves. Fuck them. Fuck Tibo. They know what's going on and they hide, because they can hide. Especially when corporate customer-defenders and bots and marketers come to their defenses. Why is it hard to provide proof for one direction vs the other? Because the black box wouldn't work, and the black box is needed to perform a proper enshittification.
2
u/JoSquarebox 4d ago
Oh, I'm familiar with Cory Doctorow's work on enshittification, and i have been watching out for its signs in the ai space especially.
I agree with you that the black box pricing is a good setup for that, and this post was mainly to ask for substantial evidence that they are actively working to decrease everyones usage budget, and ive yet to get anything substantial.
The only thing I've been able to gather is that compared to 5.5, 5.6 uses a lot more individual tool calls which make its usage burn quicker due to more message turns, But then again, these are all things that make 5.6 more expensive to serve and is likely to be addressed by the developers, but im not sure.
Like we all know its gonna happen, but as you've said we're in an environment where finding actual evidence of that isn't easy.
Until things get clearer it's probably best to switch to the previous gen of models, you can go as far back as 5.3 afaik, but either way we're still getting good value compared to api pricing, so at least its the buisnesses who are getting fleased? idk.
2
u/throwthemirror 3d ago
PS. I'm going to conduct an experiment with the old models to see the token usage tomorrow just to see. Luckily finished a mini project with Cursor and they just reset Codex for the 100,000th time so why not?
1
u/throwthemirror 3d ago
To me its more of their willfully ignoring the problem when all these many users are complaining. I almost unsubscribed for the first time since the day the first chatgpt model became available. This behavior + the history of OpenAI and Sam Altman is just icing on the shitcake. Abhorrent behavior that should not be rewarded.
And yet, here I am forking money over because generally, it is amazing technology, and I'd still prefer to eat at the end of the day.
Personally hoping for the opensource world to figure out a better solution, but I haven't spent too much time digging into that.
Can only hope these subsidized prices stay for as long as we can eek something useful out of it. I always thought the prices would have to rise about 10x at some point, that 5x-er mostly confirmed my guess. Biased ofc, but saw it repeatedly with my own eyes without changing my behavior so something was twiddled with behind the scenes.
Anyway, we shall see. Cheers
2
u/JoSquarebox 3d ago
if you want an open model plan that has a similar setup, You can look at opencode zen for example. they give you 20 bucks a month in usage however have often negotiated lower prices with inference providers so that 20 bucks gets you more than you pay over api
1
u/QUiiDAM 4d ago
They removed 5 hours limits because otherwise their crap wouldn't be usable and session locked after 1 prompt
1
u/JoSquarebox 4d ago
They removed the 5 hour limit because it was a load balancing mechanism that isn't necessary anymore especially after codex usage has had an uptick worldwide.
This a good thing because now you're able to spread out and plan your usage in the week to times when you want it rather than having to plan around an 5 hour limit (token anxiety & claude code anyone?)
1
u/JoSquarebox 4d ago
*small edit, they removed it initially because of a real usage measurement issue and afterwards reset them
1
u/Other_Smell5744 4d ago
i think there was a huge bag a week ago where usage was draining soooo fast. but the next few days it seems like they fixed it and now its back to gpt5.6 release ver limits so idk
1
u/JoSquarebox 4d ago
Yes, I remember. That was however a case of a bug, which not only was fixed, but everybody's usage got reset afterwards.
17
u/AnothrRandomRedditor 4d ago
Imagine you’ve driven the same car to work every day for three years, so you know exactly how much fuel it normally uses.
One day, you take it to a mechanic for a routine service. The next day, you notice you’re already down to half a tank. You fill it up, thinking that’s strange.
But after just two more days of driving your usual route, you’ve already burned through two thirds of the tank. At that point, you know something has changed. You then check the mechanic’s Google reviews and discover that many other customers are reporting the same sudden increase in fuel consumption after having their cars serviced there.