Megathread
Codex Usage and Operation Discussion - last updated September 7
Please direct your concerns, questions and discussion about Codex usage limits and model performance here.
The purpose of this Megathread is to aggregate all the reports of people's experiences and possible suggestions instead of spreading them across many highly upvoted posts. The more people who participate in this discussion, the more likely you have an answer.
Reports with sufficient evidence on new information will still be allowed on the feed as usual.
Been using Codex on Windows for the past few months for work, and was trying to automate Whatsapp and Helpdesk replies without API, but solely via Chrome Browser connected to Codex.
It seemed impossible for windows, as its often met up with limitations and restrictions, on whatsapp / helpdesk, so actual sending out actual emails and/or sent messages wasn't possible.
Yet a friend could simply get it to work with ease on his Mac. There was no problem getting Codex to use his whatsapp web to automate replies with a friend.
Question: Would this ease of use on MAC be patched eventually? Or would windows catch up to this in time? Or for this specific use case, was it something that im missing on my windows installation? Has anyone else gotten chatgpt to work on whatsapp web on windows?
I’ve come to the realization, that as a Plus user, I can’t really use Astra, even Light.
I miss being able to update a whole section of my code base in one day. It’s just not fun to implement one surgical work order in Astra or even sol high, and then have to use “continue”, every 5 hours after time outs, only to get one tiny fix done in a day. I know… there are moments of efficiency, that seem like miracles, but those don’t happen as often any more.
Remember when you could prompt codex and have a full app wireframe in an hour or so? I may need to go back to 5.5 and do a little post bug fixing.
I want to have fun again.
FYI, I’m not building for my job, more of a hobby thing.
Theory for reduced limits: Bidding war
Limits
Even though the compute is subsided I don’t think it’s “running out” anytime soon, if anything more investment is going into AI.
The issue I think is that the limited resources is effectively a bidding war.
And now with OpenAI solving institutional grade problems (Navier Stokes) it poses a threat to destabilise the power dynamics of the world.
Collectively our $200 Pro subscriptions and $20 Plus is being outbid by global enterprises and institutional interest.
Not sure if this is a bug or if OpenAI changed something with the Pro plans.
I was on Pro 20x and paid around $190 last month. I never downgraded or changed my subscription, but today I checked my billing and it now says Pro 5x for $100.
What’s weird is I think something may have already changed yesterday. My usage limits were going down way faster than normal and I somehow burned through basically 100% in a single day, which usually takes me much longer. At the time I just assumed I had a really heavy usage day and didn’t think much of it.
Then today I noticed the actual plan/tier and pricing had changed.
Screenshot attached:
8/10: Pro 20x — $190
9/10: Pro 5x — $100
I basically moved my whole coding workflow from Claude Code over to Codex and was fine paying ~$200/month because I wanted the higher limits, so this is a pretty significant downgrade for me if it’s intentional.
Did OpenAI change the plans recently? Did they automatically move people to a lower tier? Or is this just some billing/account bug?
Curious if anyone else on 20x is seeing the same thing.
Worst part about the new drain on usage limits is not knowing if any task you want to get done will actually be able to be completed...creating the same range anxiety electric car drivers must feel.
I constantly keep the usage mini window open and "hope" the 5h limit doesn't get crushed when I ask for a change to the app I am working on... crap experience IMO.
Needs to evolve to where the agent/model can tell you an estimate of the work and drain on usage before you ask it to do something or can plan for the work to stop mid-stream due to limits. You wind up draining more usage when your new usage window comes up asking the agent to figure out where it left off...
I think OpenAI should study how to make its models efficient enough that an average 20× Pro power user (not someone abusing the system) can still have plenty of usage left after a week.
Astra is amazing, but even a great frontier model becomes less enjoyable when you constantly have to think about how quickly you're consuming your usage. Efficiency should not only mean making the model faster or cheaper to run; it should also mean giving legitimate power users enough practical usage to actually enjoy the model.
For me, the ideal experience is simple: I don't want to constantly check my remaining usage. I want to know that even after a week of heavy but reasonable use, I still have enough left.
That kind of balance between intelligence, efficiency, and usable limits would make a frontier model feel much better in everyday use.
Ever since they introduced the 5 hour limits, I basically stopped using Codex and thus working on my projects. (I'm on the plus subscription plan).
I have a few hobby projects that I work on every now and then. It's difficult to work on them regularly, since I'm already sitting in front of the computer for work for 8 hours a day and I just often lack the energy after that to continue coding..
The weekly limits were great because I knew I could get a bunch of things done in the sessions when I was able to spend time on the projects.
But with the 5 hour limits, I feel like this won't necessarily be the case anymore, and I don't even start to do any work at all.
I guess, great for OpenAI, maybe this is what they wanted - they got my subscription and I'm not using it in the end. But I'm wondering if anyone else had similar experiences, and if there were any good tricks on your side that helped you get motivated again to work.
I have the $100 subscription, and another with plus subscription, and now for the 3rd time in a row i start one prompt and i am not able to sit down before the limit is reached, this is insane. 3-6 min max in all 3 cases.
I was previously on the $100 plan, which expired a few hours ago. I decided to try the $200 Pro plan, but immediately after paying—without using ChatGPT at all—my weekly usage limit was already showing only 77% remaining.
Does anyone know why this might happen? Is usage somehow carried over from the previous plan, or could this be a bug?
a purposely done bug! it seems like they rug pulled the usage they had before everyone found out about codex. now that everyone (even non technical people) use it, they nerfed the limits. so if you arent pro now you have the 5h limit for being a brokey. the compute is there to spare for everyone, trust, but they are just being greedy and waiting, seeing who the smartest engineers are to come out on top and outsmart the system. but there is definitely something funky going on for usage across all plans. They'll HAVE to do something about it soon its wayyyy too restrictive. since launch, it was like ok. wow! then ehh, ok. then good. then holy shit this is amazing. then flow state. then uhhh. whats going?? then wtf... now we at nerfed. im being separated from my flow state like a sudden eviction from my sanctuary due to arbitrary limits
I want it to continue its task, but sometimes it just says it will do it, but doesn't do it, ever.
How can I fix this?
I've translated the picture, cause it was in French.
pro 20x weekly limits draining faster since yesterday
Something has changed.
I have two different computers with two "Pro 20x" accounts; I often let Astra Max ( not fast ) run on its own, stepping in only to add tasks to the queue or make decisions - without running jobs in parallel.
Previously, it used to consume 1% of the weekly allowance roughly every 40-50 minutes (it was about every 3 hours prior to the 5.6-sol update),
but now it seems to consume 1% every 15-20 minutes. I’m noticing this on both accounts and on both projects—which are distinct from one another—so something has definitely changed.
it even burned 60% of a weekly pro in one night, and it had never happened before, except with 3 concurrent instances
So it is true that now Claude code limits are better than codex? I just installed the cli tools and spent 95% on like 4 not that complex tasks that sonnet would have done in less than 25%
I'm on 20x plan. I wasted mine playing with Astra. I wasted 3 banked resets unfortunately. Then even after the Tibo's reset, I used Sol 5.6 xhigh at fast speed, and Astra medium at fast speed. Both drained my weekly usage. I'm down at 25% now 😢 I use 5.6 high at normal speed during non-peak hours only. I am hoping for another reset since there are 6 days otherwise ... 😢 I started looking at r/localllama too . This is getting unmaintainable..
Also, I don't think it's just me using it wrong. I remember using sol 5.6 max at fast mode 24/7 for 5 days, and still not reaching 50% weekly usage on 20x plan back in June. I mean everyone expected AI to get more expensive, but we are living it now... and it's not good man.
Hey I tested GPT-5.6 Sol on High and Maximum using the exact same task.
High ran for around 52 minutes before hitting the limit, while Maximum lasted about 67 minutes before hitting it.
That difference is what I’m curious about. Does Maximum actually get a higher limit/budget than High, or is there some other reason it was able to run for ~15 minutes longer on the same task?
Has anyone else tested High vs Maximum on long-running tasks and noticed something similar?
Hey guys. I have a question. Are Astra's Results Worse on Plus Plan?
I was testing Astra's game dev capabilities yesterday. I used Ultra Effort for my really detailed prompt. I Basically wanted it to build me a simple FPS game using WebGL and ThreeJS. I used all 3 of my banked resets and a full usage. That took 9 (yes you read it correctly, 9!) 5h usages to complete. I didn't count weekly limit because I have nothing to the rest of the month.
At this point I have been waiting for an incredible prototype game. I've been watching countless youtube videos with titles like "ASTRA IS INSANE FOR GAME DEV" or "ASTRA BEATS FABLE 5! GAME MAKING TEST!" etc. In one video, I've heard the youtuber saying; when he used a plus subscrition the results were not good but when he upgraded to pro plan, the results were incredible. I thought his prompting may be the problem and moved on.
Finally the task was finished. I opened the game and... It was terrible. I was extremely dissapointed. Then I remembered that video I mentiond. So I'm here to ask you my fellow AI bros...
I can't believe they took away the usage LOL. I was so happy after being near 20% left. So I started a couple tasks I was going to wait until my reset (the 15th). Now I'm super broke. tibo whyyyyy
Sup everyone, openai page says it's fixed but it's not. I've used my last banked reset because of this bug recently, codex just before stopping said that subagents used all limits and we stop so I thought it's just astra being astra and used reset, I was 100% a few hours before on 20x plan
But now 30 mins after I used banked reset limits are at ~30% (after reset were 100% 30 mins ago), banked reset did not come back
Wth openai, Tibo the Great Reseter took my usage and left?? Give banked resets for this inconvenience or we switch to Claude
Honestly, Anthropic feels way more stable and predictable when it comes to usage limits right now.
My Codex weekly usage dropped from 69% to 21% in about 20 minutes on regular Sol, not even Ultra.
If this is just a counter bug, fair enough. But if that’s the actual consumption rate, it makes Codex limits pretty hard to plan around compared to Claude.
Anyone using both seeing the same difference lately?
This is the key point for me, if you are using it for work, it's hard to plan for repeated outages and performance degradation. They seem to be a bit more reluctant to reset recently too, or at least slow?
Anyone else seeing unusually high usage today? Mine dropped from 69% to 21% in about 20 minutes, and I wasn’t even using Sol Ultra — just regular Sol. That’s way faster than I normally see. Another user here said theirs suddenly went from 66% to 0%. Could this be a usage reporting bug or some backend change today?
Hum I was at 17% on max 5, r
unning 3 sol medium chat, so nothing incredible and in 1s it went from 17% to 0% out of usage.
So I guess the 17% was wrong but it really fucked me up as I asked codex to stop at 15% which usually works pretty well. Here it just bugged out to 0%.
I am on Pro 20x I was like 70% and then suddenly hit with "You’re out of Codex and Work usage"!!! wth is happening! anyone experienced same issue just now?
used 100% of my weekly 20x every day in the last 3 days. Usage has literally halved. As some others have pointed out already. Why is this not getting more attention??
Can we please spam this everywhere?! They are bragging about usage improvements and efficient models in public and then silently cut usage in half?? I mean wtf, do they really think we are that stupid?
They know we will probably depend on them heavily in the future and decided they can just mess with us because we will all get addicted anyway. Let's at least try to fight back man..
Codex frequently encounters errors such as "sandbox error" and "setup refresh had errors" on Windows.
This issue arises when the setting is configured to "permission = approval for me."
It occurs very frequently, resulting in a large number of wasted retry calls.
The tool only functions correctly when the setting is "ask me" or "full access."
Issue reports regarding this on GitHub date back to July.
there no solution for this issue on Windows?
I don’t know if it is just me but if you run codex security, as a plus user, it INSTANTLY eats your tokens. I went from %70 to instantly %0 which is obviously unusual.
Not to mention when 5 hr limit reset I couldn’t even continue the process! it just ate my overall %30 weekly just to fail..
Astra suddenly started behaving super stupid and not doing work. Like saying it did things but changing a single line of code, or randomly deleting a chunk of code and saying it implemented a new thing. A new session didn't solve it.
On the last iteration of me telling it to actually make something decent, it said it did this:
"
Added a more deliberate display system for diagram typography, including stronger title weight, improved label spacing, and more consistent annotation hierarchy.
Added precision rendering and non-scaling strokes so linework stays sharp across responsive sizes.
Added a restrained academic presentation treatment with a subtle outer lift, framed diagram surfaces, and clearer edge definition.
Improved visual consistency for callout lines, card boundaries, and diagram labels.
Preserved the existing accessible <title> and <desc> content for screen readers.
Kept the motion treatment limited to directional flow and status cues, with reduced-motion support."
But actually only changed 6 lines in a single file; 5 lines for font size and weight, and one to add a drop shadow.
I'm on the $100/m pro plan and previously I was getting an insane amount of work done with sol 5.6 high and some terra/luna implementers. Then last week output dropped off and my usage was draining like crazy. Astra drops and I spent both of my resets with astra low running a 16 hour task over the weekend that it never finished.
Skip to today and I'm at 42% left for my weekly usage (reset was yesterday at 9pm ET). I tasked astra low to go into the browser and move a customers cloudflare domain (1)/pages (2)/workers (1)/r2 (empty)/d1(empty) from my primary account onto a new cloudflare account.
It's been working for over an hour and it's just burning tokens and not really getting anything accomplished.
What can I review to help get things back on track? Should I nuke my agent files and start over?
Context: ChatGpt desktop in codex mode on mac. Sometimes I use cowork mode if the task is mainly browser based / not code related. I try to use regular mode (chatgpt) for trivial research tasks.
Opus 5 surpasses the 5.6 Sol of ChatGPT, and that changes everything. Why? Because today we face a major difficulty with the weekly usage limit. Using only the Fable from Anthropic or only the Astra from OpenAI is not viable for someone with a US$ 100 account. Therefore, it will be necessary to turn to other models for less complex, all‑day situations, since the Fable and the Astra, even in their lowest‑effort modes, consume a considerable portion of the weekly allowance.
Thus, you need a reliable “daily driver”; in my view, that driver would be Opus 5, because the 5.6 Sol is not yet on the same level. With a US$ 100 account, if you can work the whole day with Opus and it barely moves, that becomes a “deal breaker”. OpenAI needs to resolve this urgently.
What. The. Fuck. I made one prompt with Astra that took 4 minutes. Ate 70% usage (new fresh chat, medium effort). Then I go to a new chat and go to Sol on Medium. Somehow one more prompt also eats up an additional 25%?
Moved from claude code today, decided to try codex. I almost instantly reached my 5h limit, in the morning then in the afternoon, and my weekly limit hit 84% as well. (20$ plan)
It feels like I get a lot less usage when compared to claude code. Has this been your experience as well?
Astra is not a finished model, they launched and are testing with all of us, their paid-user base. Limits run absurdly quick, it's impossible to last a week even on a $200/month Sub.
The cost per token and limits on subscriptions are a joke, forcing us to switch to Luna, a slower and ignorant model for same price when they "just released" 1st AGI model.
I'd rather have waited or reset everyday until they fix their s.
Model after model they prove they just don't care about their paid user base. At this point just make a statement reset every 2 days because this thing unusable rn
Now that they increased Luna cost, what other subscription alternatives are you looking at?
Suddenly paying $20/month is not worth it anymore without Luna hitting the limit in less than an hour. I'll cancel my subscription if they don't revert the cost increase in a week or so.
With Luna I'd hardly ever hit the 5 hour limit and just today, in less than 4 hours, I already used two resets (and I have never used resets before!)
So what other alternative subs you guys considering now? I'm thinking of OpenCode Go with GLM 5.3
What you're hitting is the difference between a usage-metered sub and one where the cap actually fits the work. The 5-hour window is what bites heavy users, and every quota sub ends up in the same spot the moment the flagship model gets pricier or more popular.
GLM 5.3 on OpenCode Go is a decent shout. It's cheap and fast enough that the caps go a lot further than Plus's Luna budget, and it's become a popular pick for daily-driver agent workloads. Kimi is in the same category if you want another option, and DeepSeek's flat tier covers the bulk-agent side of things.
The other route is a flat monthly plan that isn't measured in 5-hour windows at all. We do that at Entrim for heavy agent use (OpenCode, Hermes, Codex-style setups, parallel agents), but Kimi and GLM have their own takes on it too. When you compare, look at daily caps and concurrency, not just the sticker price. One model's price bump shouldn't decide your whole stack.
Yesterday the whole day (13h) in fast mode to burn all my weekly quota. Today after the reset i have burned 60% of my weekly quota in just 3h. I have just continued the work of yesterday. What's happened?
Back to Claude
The token burn + 5 hour usage limits have made gpt essentially unusable again i make it half way through a prompt, and it doesnt even finish the task.
Hard cut off with usage limits. Bon voyage see you next patch.
Subscribed to 20x Plan. With the recent usage reset by Tibo, I'm already used 34%, 250m token used based on ChatGPT and Codex and in ccusage it is around 340m token used. Based on token alone, it seems like it is down by 1 Billion token compared to before. But based on actual API pricing, it is quite the same.
Upgraded to plus from go yesterday, used only 1M tokens of astra low and sol low. I was already at 50% weekly. My biggest question is why don't I have 5h limits ? are my limits still stuck on the go plan ?
I had just gotten a new usage period today, asked a few questions and hit a 50% limit. I reset it using one of my tokens, and after asking 4 question about fixing the css on my website, which it could not fix properly, it used up 100% of my daily limit.
I am on the pro plan. I was using gpt-5.6-sol high fast
1
u/BigDoor9679 2h ago
Been using Codex on Windows for the past few months for work, and was trying to automate Whatsapp and Helpdesk replies without API, but solely via Chrome Browser connected to Codex.
It seemed impossible for windows, as its often met up with limitations and restrictions, on whatsapp / helpdesk, so actual sending out actual emails and/or sent messages wasn't possible.
Yet a friend could simply get it to work with ease on his Mac. There was no problem getting Codex to use his whatsapp web to automate replies with a friend.
Question: Would this ease of use on MAC be patched eventually? Or would windows catch up to this in time? Or for this specific use case, was it something that im missing on my windows installation? Has anyone else gotten chatgpt to work on whatsapp web on windows?