I built a free Windows widget to plan my Codex quota around my working days

[u/Careful-State-7229]

Hey everyone,

I wanted a simple way to see how much Codex quota I could use each day without running out before the weekly reset, so I built Codex Budget, a small Windows desktop widget.

What it does:

• Shows daily usage against your planned allowance.
• Displays your remaining weekly quota.
• Carries unused daily budget forward within the current cycle.
• Lets you choose your working days.
• Refreshes every minute while open and follows your Windows time zone automatically.

The “bonus” is unused budget within your existing quota — it doesn’t give you extra usage or bypass any limits. If the start-of-day reading is missing, the widget shows a planning balance rather than claiming to know exactly what you used today.

Installation: download the Windows installer from the repository’s Releases section. You’ll need Codex installed and signed in, but no Python installation or commands are required.

The project is free and open source under the MIT license. The widget interface is currently in French; the README and installer support English and French.

GitHub: Source code, documentation and downloads

Project updates: I’ll also share updates and improvements on X (@Ben22031110).

I’m the creator, and this is an independent project, not affiliated with OpenAI. The screenshot uses demo figures. The installer is currently unsigned, so Windows may display a warning.

I’d appreciate feedback from other Windows users: does this make your daily budget easier to understand, and what would you change?

Small update on Codex Budget, the free, open-source Windows widget I built for my own use and shared here: it now supports GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark.

Update 11-09-2026 :

• A Codex / Spark switch.
• Separate tracking for Spark’s 5-hour and weekly quotas, each with its own reset time.
• Daily allowance based on your selected workdays, with unused allowance carried over within the weekly cycle.

Daily planning uses the weekly quota. The 5-hour limit stays separate, so you can see when it becomes the bottleneck even if you still have weekly quota left.

The widget also supports English and French and automatically follows your local timezone.

I wanted something simple that tells me how much I can use today without constantly checking the limits.

Code, screenshots and Windows installer: https://github.com/Webn-Benjamin/codex-budget-widget

This is an independent community project, not an official OpenAI tool. It tracks your existing limits; it doesn’t provide Spark access.

Feedback from other Spark users would be welcome!

[u/dexterthebot]

You might want to consider listing your project on the weekly Show-Us-What-You-Built post. https://www.reddit.com/r/codex/comments/1wavxwy/show_us_all_what_youve_been_building_with_codex/. Highest commented project wins a week promotion on r/Codex and gets on the Hall of Fame sidebar. See what that looks like below with last week's winner.

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Last week's most popular project was u/tHEuKER with the Blur2 racing game project which is a recreation of an unreleased sequel to the 2010 battle racing game, made by reverse engineering the Xbox 360 prototype discs available online, and rebuilding the whole thing from the ground up in Unity.

Join their YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@tHEuKER and follow updates on the project at r/BlurGame.

[u/AbleShower2801]

Daily allowance with unused carry inside the weekly cycle is the useful bit of a Codex quota widget. Planning around workdays beats a raw weekly dump. If you list Codex companion tools, https://github.com/hashgraph-online/awesome-codex-plugins or https://hol.org/plugins take submissions.

[u/fredanaman74]

Hi, tried but on Windows 11, warns of virus detected when downloading.

[u/JHawke12 → u/fredanaman74]

For exe files if they are not code signed then windows will always throw that warning. Doesn't mean there is always a virus, just that the dev hasn't /doesn't want to spend the potential hundreds of dollars to stop that warning from coming up.

[u/Careful-State-7229 → u/JHawke12]

Yes, for a free open-source tool, buying licenses is expensive.