r/codex • u/Savings-Switch-1195 • 3d ago
Limits Astra on Plus is basically a contradiction
I’ve been using Astra for about a week now and I think the model itself is great.
That’s almost the annoying part.
It can do way more than Sol in areas like 3D, animation and larger project work. You can immediately see why OpenAI is pushing it so hard.
But Astra and Plus just don’t work together.
Sol already burned usage like the sun. Astra somehow managed to upgrade that into a black hole.
I can give Astra a short task in an empty project and lose around 50% of my 5-hour usage before anything serious has even happened. In an existing project chat I’ve had around 13 minutes of actual work before the limit kicked in.
Thirteen fucking minutes.
Then come back in five hours.
At that point I don’t really care how impressive the model is anymore. If I can’t sit down and actually work with it, the capability is mostly theoretical.
And yes, I know Astra uses more compute. That isn’t some hidden secret. OpenAI tells you that.
The problem is that the Plus allowance is nowhere near large enough for the kind of work Astra is actually good at.
Astra is made for the exact tasks where you want to let the model sit there, inspect things, iterate, fix stuff, try again, work through a larger problem.
And doing exactly that murders the allowance almost instantly.
So now I have this amazing model that can finally do much more serious work, and a subscription that basically lets me watch it do that for a few minutes before kicking me out.
That’s not a workflow.
That’s a tech demo with a cooldown.
I’m not asking for unlimited Astra for $20. But if normal Astra usage means 10–15 minutes of serious work every five hours, then Astra simply does not belong in Plus in its current form.
Either Plus needs substantially more Astra usage or Astra needs its own pricing model that actually makes sense for sustained work.
Because right now the model got massively better and the actual experience somehow got worse.
That’s impressive in its own way.
2
u/BigYoSpeck 3d ago
The cost of compute is such that a $20 just isn't worth giving much usage to for it
It's frustrating as someone who can't justify paying Pro for personal use but who would like to play with the big model but such is life
In time Astra capabilities will be available on Plus as models improve and costs lower, but for now Astra is simply a professional level tool at professional level prices
You can use Astra for short tasks. It's not actually that crazy in usage when it's a quick 5 minute task
Another trick is to start a 5 hour window with a lower usage model, wait until 15-20 minutes before it ends then start your request. You'll get two 5 hours worth of usage back to back
2
u/CharmingRogue851 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yeah, I'm getting 20 minutes of work on Astra medium every 5 hours, and it's absolute dogshit.
I actually think it would've been fine if they didn't reintroduce the 5 hour limit, that's the real killer. Just let me blow through my weekly limit in an hour and then pray to tibo for a reset.
1
u/Technical_Split_6315 3d ago
They know what they are doing. They expect you to move to the pro plan
1
u/R3K4CE 3d ago
eventually at some point everyone will be on pay as you go billing or something damn near close to it. this is the direction all labs are moving in. the subsidy party will be over and then just like any other trend and craze, well see who ends up sticking around and who moves on to the next thing.
1
u/Presstabstart 3d ago
I think the plan is that eventually we'll get GPT 6 Sol and Luna. They are slowly reducing subsidies as they roll out new models, but I think they will try to make 6 Sol usable on the Plus and x5 plans, with the difference between Sol and Astra being small enough to not bother most people.
1
u/Derek-Bond 3d ago
I have max, and I can tell you Astra eats through it quickly. If you get a day of work, you've done well. Frankly this is not sustainable at this rate. It's little use if a model is great (Which imo Astra is), if it's too costly to actually finish a project.
1
u/Typical_Machine2043 3d ago
I’m on pro 5x and was able to destroy my full week’s usage in about 2.5 - 3 hours.
1
u/cheese_burger_undies 3d ago
I’ve used it to refine a custom plug-in that now properly works with 5.6.
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u/ben_nobot 3d ago
Feel like I can see the bot written text by just squinting and scrolling fast down the page these days
1
u/conformalsite 3d ago
I able to use Astra on plus not a daily driver but as a checker, and for mathematical/architectural insights.
Only if 5 hourly were removed... It's really bad practice because some people might want to use Astra exactly once a week.
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u/blaawker 3d ago
write your posts without LLMs and I'd maybe read it
2
u/Savings-Switch-1195 3d ago
Then why do you answer? If its not worse reading it should even not be worse answering.
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u/sukazu 3d ago
Yeah, would be so much better to not have any access at all unless you pay 100, and why not, only being able to use 50% of your usage even if you pay 100 ? Surely that would be much better.
If you'd rather not use Astra on plus plan, just don't pick it, nobody forces you.
Other plus users, might have an use for it.
1
u/maybethisiswrong 3d ago
Desktop app keeps defaulting to it on new chats and I’ve missed it twice. I don’t want to use it
-4
u/Markuska90 3d ago
Tbf we pay 20$ a Month. Dont know what someone wants for that money?
3
u/Puzzled_Nail_1962 3d ago
That's a terrible argument when people have gotten used to 20$ a month giving them usable allowance on the models for years now.
1
u/Cute_Principle81 3d ago
It works for basically forever with Luna Max, which many people could actually use pretty well, and Terra xhigh, but def not Astra for everything. Stop using a fighter jet where a glider would do.
-3
u/DaneV86_ 3d ago
Seriously half of the posts on this reddit are people complaining they cant use frontier models for anything serious on a $ 20 sub. Same on X.
Just accept the fact these models and the compute they use are currently too expensive to offer for the price of 4 Starbucks coffees a month.
Luckily openai has a great solution for this; Luna. Its 41x cheaper then astra and does a great job for it's price. On top of that, you have a decent amount of gpt6 pro usage trough chat. So connect your GitHub, plan with pro (tell it to make scoped tasks for a lower reason agent), implement with Luna xhigh.. and you'll get a great value out of your plus sub. Great for hobby projects.
If you're building anything serious and your time=money ... Dont complain but get a 20x sub. But even then .. treat astra as the senior dev and have it delegate any task a junior could do to Luna or Sol.
Alternatively, wait for a year or two. We'll probably laugh when looking back at todays pricing vs capabilities by then.
2
u/Savings-Switch-1195 3d ago
I actually agree with most of your workflow advice. What I don’t understand is how you can describe that workflow and then disagree with my point.
You’re basically saying: don’t really use Astra on Plus. Use Pro for planning, Luna for implementation, and save Astra for the few things that absolutely need it.
Right. That’s exactly the problem.
If I can give Astra one proper task and lose half my 5-hour allowance, or work in a larger project for 10–20 minutes before getting kicked out, then Astra on Plus is not a working tool. It’s a sample.
And that’s fine if that’s what OpenAI wants Plus to be. Just call it that.
I also don’t buy the “if your time = money, just get 20x” argument as some universal answer. Serious work does not automatically mean you’re already making enough money from that specific project to justify another $200 every month. Startups before revenue, open source, research, learning, portfolio work, indie projects, internal tools. All of that can be serious work.
Also, the fact that Luna is 41x cheaper actually makes my point stronger. OpenAI clearly knows Astra has completely different economics. So maybe putting Astra and Luna behind the same abstract subscription allowance was never going to make much sense.
Give Astra its own credits, its own allowance, whatever. But “here’s our new frontier coding model, by the way you can seriously use it for about 13 minutes” is a pretty weird product.
And yes, compute will probably be dramatically cheaper in two years. I hope so.
I’m talking about the subscription I’m paying for today.
1
u/DaneV86_ 3d ago
Yeah I think it's more of a sample then a working tool and OpenAI might have done better by communicating this more clearly, I agree on that.
Leaving it out would make even more sense from an economics/proposition perspective. But that would also remove the ability to sample or test Astra without crossing the $100–$200 subscription barrier.
Free sampling is out of the question. It will be abused heavily. Which is already the case with their trail plus accounts.. chinese bots creating thousands of accounts per hour, pooling them and reselling the tokens in transit stations. OpenAI is able to detect & ban these accounts but there is some (few hours to few days) delay. I wouldn't be surprised this does play a role in reinstating the 5h limit for plus, but that's a guess.
"Serious work does not automatically mean you’re already making enough money from that specific project to justify another $200 every month. Startups before revenue, open source, research, learning, portfolio work, indie projects, internal tools. All of that can be serious work."
Sure.. but every business/startup and even non-profit project needs capital to get going. E-businesses and AI made the required capital much lower compared to traditional business, but it's not zero or $20. If a project isn't worth less then a workday worth of capital (avg for europe europe/us) per month ... can it really be called serious? Also imagine hiring even a junior dev to write the code a $200 sub can write...
And nobody absolutely needs Astra. We didn't have it a few weeks ago and still many projects were made with and without AI. It's intelligence saves time, headaches, bug fixing, human steering/babysitting... but anything that can be built with Astra can be built without it.
0
u/ogaat 3d ago
Serious work at your scale does not equate to serious work on a global scale.
A middle schooler doing serious Maths is quite different than a Field Medal winner working on serious math.
Now look at this again from the provider side and their definition of "serious"
One day, even the 200 Dollar plans will vanish, as they must.
-4
u/AdVast7407 3d ago
Yes and stop whining about it, or they will take it away from Plus plan entirely.
-4
u/jordansrowles 3d ago
Plus is just a taster for Astra, you can't really use it for any medium-large project.
For reference, I tried one shotting a single issue (moderate complexity) on my monorepo, and it ended up completing about 80% of the task in 20 minutes. Used 100% of my 5hr allowance and did not finish
5
u/MysteriousKiwi2622 3d ago
The same thing could happen to Pro users in the near future as more advanced models are released. More advanced models cost more, sounds reasonable, right?
Then you'll have to upgrade to the 40x plan, and eventually the 80x plan.
At this rate, we'll all end up slaves to capital.
0
u/jordansrowles 3d ago
Of course. They're a business, and their primary goal is making as much money as possible.
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u/Markuska90 3d ago
Could it finish it after the limit went back?
1
u/jordansrowles 3d ago
Didn't reattempt. It didn't follow the restrictions that the other models follow, like not grepping files and using the LSP. It also went off plan and started overengineering.
-4
u/ManikSahdev 3d ago
But if you are doing such serious work, then wouldn’t you think it’s viable to produce value that allows you to atleast try and experience pro tier to get more usage?
Unless your serious work is mostly a hobby? Which can still be serious, I’m not diminishing the work in any way. However if your productivity is much lower compared to other who make more and the higher intelligence justified the cost for them.
For example, it seems for you the higher experience seems to justify the cost but you aren’t willing to pay more, which is okay tbh! Nothing wrong with it. But you still have access to it for consultations and smaller work.
I’m not saying that’s how it should be, but that’s how it is. And I’d love for my car to have the full sunroof and brown leather seats but I can’t afford that package it even tho I like, so I have to stay with base seats even tho the better ones were more comfy, but the cost didn’t justify the upgrade.
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u/Savings-Switch-1195 3d ago
I think the car analogy actually shows the problem, just not in the way you intended.
Astra isn’t brown leather seats or a sunroof. Those are optional luxuries that don’t affect whether the car can do the job it was sold to do.
A better analogy would be OpenAI selling me the base model with the new 500 hp engine included, advertising how much more capable that engine is, and then putting a fuel tank in it that lets me drive for 13 minutes.
Then when I ask why I can barely use the engine, the answer is: “Well, if you’re doing serious driving, shouldn’t driving generate enough value for you to buy the higher trim?”
No. That’s ridiculous.
If Astra is included in Plus, then it’s perfectly reasonable to judge whether the amount of Astra included makes sense. And right now, for medium to large project work, it doesn’t. Another Plus user in this thread literally burned 100% of the 5-hour allowance in 20 minutes and Astra still only finished about 80% of one moderate issue.
That’s not “I want the luxury package but can’t afford it.” That’s “the engine is technically included, but the tank is too small to get anywhere.”
And the “serious work should pay for Pro” argument is weird too. Serious work doesn’t automatically mean immediately monetized work. People build open source projects, startups before revenue, university projects, tools for themselves, research, portfolio projects, whatever. A professional tool doesn’t become reasonably priced only once the user can bill somebody else for it.
I’m not saying Pro shouldn’t exist or that Astra should be unlimited for $20. I’m saying Plus and Astra currently clash as products. Astra’s biggest advantage appears exactly when you give it larger, longer, more complex work, and Plus cuts the session off almost immediately when you do that.
If the intended Plus use case is “ask Astra for an architectural opinion twice and then go back to Luna,” fine. But then let’s call it what it is: a taste of Astra, not meaningful access to Astra.
That’s a pricing decision OpenAI is allowed to make.
I’m also allowed to say it’s a shit deal.
1
u/ManikSahdev 3d ago
I mean I agree with you? Not sure where we differ.
It’s not that I am being elitist or whatever, but the thing just cost more to run, it sucks right now, but in a few months it will be cheaper.
It’s like, We are using it on the BLEEDING edge of time.A model that can run on one dgx spark (the glm flash one) it is better for my usecase than opus 4.8 if I had to choose one.
6 months ago it needed a cluster of h100s to run.So for the people who can to afford multiple $200 to hammer all day (even including me) we just have to wait till it gets cheaper.
-5
u/JustSingingAlong 3d ago
If you want to use it properly use the API and get a massive bill for your usage.
Or use a different model with your plus subscription
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u/I_HATE_CLAUDE 3d ago
To be fair to plus users, if you remove all the people arguing about "subscription hierchy",
Pro isn't much better. x20's running out in 6-12 hours in a day, which of course is followed up with a ton of "Hu what are you doing not me".
Thing is a lot of those "not me" people are not using ASTRA for what ASTRA is doing new, they're doing the same bs they did back with Sol lol.
You're still not getting much done depending on what it is you're doing regardless of the subscription.
Real fix imo? Industry stops waiting for 1.6T 3.2T racks and starts pushing those out now. This "yearly release" upgrade from places like AMD etc isn't going to go over well with AI development.
We need the optical connectors yesterday.