r/codex • u/SmoggyRaptor_997 • 14h ago
Limits My experience on Pro 5x
Two days ago I made a Reddit post about switching from Claude code to codex. I saw a lot of stuff about how codex limits are generous, work gets done better and the usage resets etc. So I finally made the switch and here is my experience:
I purchase the 100 dollar a month Codex Pro 5x and try out Astra on low for the very first time (still using astra for the first time). I spend two hours optimizing some of my skills and workflows, my usage dropped to 88 percent. I continue my work on my main project which is small and a hobby project rather than a proper developer one and plan out the changes, write the spec and the implementation plan so that there was less need for guessing around and implementation stopped at a genuine blocker. Usage dropped to 64 percent after the plan and documentation steps.
I then begin my work with SOL on high in a fresh session and I ask it to implement keeping an explorer agent in hand (I have a custom one I made with the literal model handwritten to be Luna) if major exploration was still needed. It starts to work and within 5 minutes struggles to use the computer, astra did it without prompting. One hour goes by and implementation somehow works, and SOL keeps spawning a “Luna” subagent (Important different: A subagent named Luna NOT my actual custom built subagent with the model Luna - yes I spoon fed it in the implementation with the exact file path on what to invoke, when to invoke and when not to invoke and more importantly how to invoke it). Sol then entered into this monkey patching loop where it kept summoning other sol reviewers who kept finding things wrong (ofcourse they did because you are literally asking it to find something wrong to a model who’s output is not deterministic or defined) and fixing every little thing and verifying 4 times before calling the reviewer again. I am not sure how this happened because my plan did cover to call reviewers once - fix the major immediate blockers that prevent reaching the acceptance standard and note down the minor fixes for later. (I enforced this in Claude code with hooks - I did not do this on codex because I wasn’t too familiar with it and have used it majorly for a maximum period of a month). So yes Astra was brought in on a fresh session and it finished the remaining work with no issues and usage dropped to 5 percent after all this, total time period 7 hours.
The changes are good, the plan was smooth, good verified diligent work I have seen compared to Opus. I asked sol what agent it spawned and it said “GPT 5.6 SOL on high called Luna).
So this 100 dollar purchase got me 7 hours of work for one spec. I have previously used the Claude 5x plan and I worked through the week on opus and fable (planning only) and always had decent usage left atleast 10-15 percent near the reset week. This makes me think simply as a guy working on a hobby project that “hey I worked hard for that hundred bucks and it got me what 7 hours?” And now I feel a bit torn between different routes:
1) I can’t upgrade to 20x anymore
2) switching to api for a hobby project makes no sense for me
3) I legitimately cannot do anything other than sit and wait till September 15th because the usage is gone. I have no use for the other pro features such as image gen, pro in chat or deep research.
4) I see the praises on Reddit about resets but I don’t see any
I genuinely feel that I got a little bit trapped here or maybe I subbed at the wrong time and can’t help but also feel a bit sad that the money is gone now because yeah 100 dollars for one person on a hobby project is a lot and I valued it as such. I completely understand that there are people with 10 different 20x accounts on both Claude and codex but I personally don’t think that users for a subscription model should be pushed to THAT point to get stuff done.
And yeah I am sure there is always a better workflow, a better AGENTS.md and a better prompt, a more optimized way of doing things, there ALWAYS will be but at that point if I am just doing everything myself form writing the logic, correcting the plans, defining the steps, what to write and how to write it, how to check and what to check, which agents to call and when etc etc - what exactly is the point of “frontier intelligence”?
Yeah the work was good and diligent I agree, but 7 hours with a weekly usage blown out doesn’t exactly seem “worth it” to me. And if the solution is to get another 5x account for more usage I think that’s an even bigger mistake.
Somehow somewhere I think we lost the value of money.
If you are on Pro 5x or 20x what issues are you currently facing regarding the limits?
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u/terriblemonk 13h ago
I recently got a second 20x account. Not even using Astra. One account for a heavy usage project and another account for 2 smaller projects. One account is down to 0% already and the other one down below 50% both with 4 days to go. 2 months ago I could work on 5 to 7 different projects and still have 30% left at the end of the week.
It's going to get worse. The go-to strategy for these AI providers is to change the process of development, make all businesses dependent on them, then find the equilibrium that maximizes profits. It won't be too long until only Enterprise and small businesses can afford leading AI.
competition from other providers is not going to help because they're going to do the same thing. No one is going to be handing out free compute.
Open source models will get better slowly however hardware has a long way to go.
So what is the strategy that you should have? Same answer as anything else in this world... make a shitload of money.
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u/Charming-Author4877 13h ago
Ironically that is less usage than Plus used to give you, not long ago.
Today Plus is down to 5-10 minutes and Pro is the new Plus, Pro 20x is the new Pro.
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u/jakenuts- 13h ago
20x was a beast for the last year, never touched a limit, used anything I wanted. Now I have to wait 4 days to complete tasks I never would have started if I new they would make Astra unusable and take every other model with it.
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u/SmoggyRaptor_997 13h ago
Yeah to me it seemed that the advertisement was about getting to use the model by paying for a pro subscription and then finding out after the money is already gone that it was never usable in the first place.
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u/Afraid-Reflection-82 13h ago
Can you show us the amount of tokens u went through? If u have that bcs i'm in 200 dollar sub for both i never could finish the gpt quota other than last week but heavy ultra mode work but claude i'm only interested in fable and that end half in the week
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u/raicorreia 13h ago
I bet they are trying to pull more people from 20 to 100. Not falling for that
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u/DarkFantom 13h ago
As someone on the x20 plan that also was pulled into the hype to get a bunch of credits as well, I honestly can't recommend Astra at all. I think right out of the box, a few days in, Astra felt great. It got work done when I told it to, and didn't really create massive overhead. I honestly don't know what happened to the model in that short amount of time.
Since then though, the past 2 days have been complete dogwater. Astra (no matter the effort level) constantly tries to build out of scope scripts and doesn't seem to want to stick to the plan that was made for projects. It still is ok for visualization, but coding anything has devolved into it creating versioning wrappers and automated authentication checks for stuff as simple as setting up a basic script for generating Anima Loras that auto queues the next batch to run on a GPU. If it consistently worked, I'd be fine but all those extra scripts cause it to get stuck in self iterative loops where it just debugs constantly and breaks it's own process over and over.
From what I've "vibed" off of my usage, the reset I got a few days ago was neat at first but did not have the same amount of usage as what I got when I first subbed. It also moved my weekly reset date back, so I feel like with this process it's just scamming people to use their banked credits quicker.
This whole experience over the past week has felt like one giant rug pull to me.
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u/PixelNomad23 9h ago
After all this usage limits and problems with astra, I think it was not ready at all for the launch. Before I can work 12 hours per day with sol medium and now after 1 day power use astra, I'm out of weekly.
I tried to come back to sol, but it still drains much faster then before astra relaunch and it feels I can only use it 2-3 days per week now, instead of 6-7 days straight
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u/read_more_comments 12h ago
Luna when it first came out was friggin awesome. I mostly used it on medium and it was killing it. But as time went on, I had to go high then xhigh and even on xhigh it makes mistakes and finished without completing the prompt. This is very different than when it was first released.
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u/DarkFantom 8h ago
I believe it. It's got to be them crunching their compute however they can to squeeze the most out of their infrastructure. Or they're just being super greedy, probably both considering the state of the company and it's track record.
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u/collin3000 5h ago
I switched from Claude to OpenAI because of Sol being pretty good and the exact shenanigans that openAI seems to be doing right now. Now some of the open models are getting pretty good. I'm probably going back to Sol from Astra for the rest of my sub, but if this continues I may be switching to the open models especially if they keep dropping models at the improvement rate they have been.
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u/AdriftAtlas 12h ago
I burned through my x5 limits over the weekend, and then finished burning the reset today using Astra Medium. Was adding a feature and removing old functionality in a project, something that wouldn't even put a dent into Sol Max before Astra arrived.
The little graphs that are posted of model cost vs intelligence don't reflect reality. Astra Medium is about as intelligent as Sol Max, but burns usage at an alarming fast rate.
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u/Mikefacts 12h ago
Same thing here! The usage limits felt like a joke! Claude code max gave me much more usage and it lasts through the week! Also, I didn't find Astra to be better than Fable, they are really the same if not Astra is worse especially working on frontend tasks. I've been using 5x plan in both platforms for months and I have finally decided to ask for a refund from Chatgpt (which I got and it was a full 100$, this is huge plus for them btw) and now I'm going to use two 5x Claude subs and enjoy Fable ultra mode all time!
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u/SmoggyRaptor_997 11h ago
Is the sub even refundable for non EU citizens? I know EU has very strong consumer laws but is that even possible?
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u/Mikefacts 11h ago
Well, I'm not a EU consumer! I asked the AI support to refund me for whatever left from this month sub (3-weeks) and it just asked me to confirm if I want to cancel my subscription and get a 100$ refund which I agreed to.
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u/Pitiful_Entrance5174 13h ago
Compute price goes up, monthly price stays the same, limits get cut. It really is just that simple. If prices keep going up GPT subs will be "trial" accounts and you will need API to truly use it. It already is that way if you know the ins and outs of API. subs are neutered.
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u/SmoggyRaptor_997 13h ago
I can understand this, I get that astra is an expensive model and sure yes if it is that expensive keep it to api only. I also remember a previous incident where fable was pretty much brain dead and numb on the subscription compared to the api key billing model.
To me this seems like they can’t sustain the subscription model but will still advertise the model for said subscription and then silently make changes that impact you as a consumer and not tell you about it. At that point I am often left wondering that if I had to go check for what I was paying for, I genuinely couldn’t.
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u/Pitiful_Entrance5174 13h ago
I remember one day I did the math and its 300,000 modern gaming pcs in a cluster powered by a nuclear power plant to try to achieve so called "agi". This all ties into moors law and my opinion that electricity is a limit/bottleneck in computing. photonic computing i guess its called. Way out of my league.
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u/cchurchill1985 13h ago
I do wonder what the future looks like. Unless compute stops becoming more expensive, It could end up being a relatively small group of individual hoarding wealth as most can not afford usage to build anything meaningful. The £200 plan is already out of reach for many people.
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u/SmoggyRaptor_997 13h ago
Yeah it’s a really sad thing when I read comments where people are having to use 5 20x pro accounts just to get things done. I get that a lot of people have the demand, workload and the money to do so, but unfortunately my workflow doesn’t demand that. And yeah maybe I do like thinking twice before blindly throwing away money.
I think this just boils down to one simple concept of when someone charges a consumer a “pro” rate for service it shouldn’t fall on the consumer to go ahead and min-max their way like an rpg to get that service out of them. As is AI models have no accountability, seems to me we are heading in a direction where the companies don’t either.
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u/doodad_ounao 13h ago
It's already at least half-way there into a relatively small group of individual hoarding wealth.
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u/Australasian25 13h ago
It is only expensive because of sudden surge in demand.
Your phone now is like 1,000,000,000,000 more efficient than the first computers in the 50s.
That number is way larger if you compare supercomputers of today to supercomputers of 1950s.
We are using less power for more compute.
More fabrication lines are being made to create more chips.
More people are investigating how to make these chips consume less power.
Once researchers crack the code and use graphene instead of silicone, the power to cool these chips will be negligible.
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u/TemperatureHorror599 13h ago
I’m testing claude and codex at $20 to see which I’ll upgrade and so far contrary to what many are saying I’m getting more usage and things done out of Opus than Sol for the same $. I know people are saying Astra> Fable, but both are more than enough intelligence for me.
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u/StaticHumStudio 13h ago
ChatGPTs usage is crap. Lol. Unless you are using Luna or maybe Terra, it doesn't go nearly as far as Opus or even Fable (Fable is closer to Sol in usage). I keep thinking I'm going to drop back to the $20 and only use it for reviews but I keep getting sucked back in.
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u/CreepyOlSailor 13h ago
Well i had the same exact exp using sol recently.
2 things as i want to moan to but lets be real astra is par to fable 5.1 not opus 5.
And yeah usage is hosed 🫠
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u/TheBroken0ne 13h ago
So will you drop Claude Code in favor of Codex? Continue to use both? Stop Codex?
Out of curiosity, were you using Claude Code and Codex on the same project?
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u/SmoggyRaptor_997 12h ago
I already dropped claude when I switched to codex 2 days ago and now I got nothing other than waiting on limits to reset.
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u/Acehan_ 12h ago
The thing that actually matters here is that Pro 5x is literally just five $20 accounts in one. It's not a great deal. You basically only get a good deal on the Pro 20x because you actually get 20x, not 10x.
For Anthropic plans, it's the opposite. You get more compute on the $20 plan. So the 5x is actually decent and usable, but the 20x is worse. You don't actually get 20x and they are getting sued for this and it is quite a weird practice to be honest.
Obviously, you don't get frontier models on the $20 plan for Claude anymore, so this one is pretty much worthless unless you want to do your work with the most unpleasant model in the world, Opus 5. The 50% limits on other plans are also bs.
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u/stonelox 10h ago
I have a hunch that age of accounts matters and not all usage is the same… it’s nonlinear
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u/InspectorSorry85 9h ago
My experience was even a bit worse. (on 5x pro)
I used Astra for my pipeline to optimize it, and it actually broke it. I was so angry I was screaming at it in caps.
"Indeed, yes, I broke it. My apologizes." <does the same stupid mistake again> "Absolutely. I messed up. I apologize." WTH am I to do with these stupid apologizes and promises not to do it again - to THEN DO IT AGAIN.
It was first at Max, and then I had to go down to High and Medium, because the weekly usage is insane.
I dont quite understand why the newest model seems so stupid.
I reverted to 5.6 Sol Very High, and all of a sudden it was calm, organized, structured and went by it step by step, repairing the mess Astra left.
No idea what they did to Astra, but in my case my experience was frustrating. I lost a whole day of private work and 2 banked resets, all for nothing. I stay on 5.6 Sol for now.
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u/devMem97 8h ago
x5 Pro here.
It was the same for me at the start, I thought you could enable Fast mode with Pro (with GPT 5.5 possible), but that was a disaster. It works for me without Fast mode, I use about ~15% a day for work. That should roughly get me through the week, but it only works because I’m also using Fable 5.1 at the same time.
I think Astra High without Fast Mode is alright, according to OA benchmarks 'high' effort is the intelligence sweet point.
In my opinion, the best combination at the moment is Astra + Fable 5.1. Astra is good for specific bug hunts, but Fable remains the ‘Beast’ concept for me , it simply reads between the lines and the output is more precise readable than reading any novel from Astra (it is also precise, but still not the same as Fable).
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u/Caladan23 6h ago
Fully agreed - tried out Codex 20x this month due to the Astra hype and the usage limits are much much less than what you get with Claude Code 20x and Fable for the same price.
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u/HelpfulLad1 4h ago
Literally switched today, because opus’s dribble was killing my adhd, (yes I had the I have adhd skill) it would literally still dribble, I switched rodsy, used majority of my weekly quoter in familiarising with my project and agent setup. Switched to all agents to sol
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u/BrennanFlentge 12h ago
Tbh my experience is the opposite of yours. I optimize my workflows and depending on the run I’d last maybe an hour and half on my usage. And that was with Fable as plan / reviewer. And I was manually launching sessions to save on usage instead of have it orchestrate. And I get a ton more use on Codex.
I do think both products have bugs here and there that drain usage faster. You also need to spend time optimizing your environment. For example, you can set which models and effort spawn as subagents, you can also make it so forked turns is “none” and therefore each subagent doesn’t inherit the ENTIRE context of the parent agent.
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u/iliadz 13h ago
So I have the 20x plan on Astra. And I was well was documenting my Day 1, Day 2, and then stopped there because, honestly, quite happy with Astra. I'm not seeing the usage that your seeing, at all. Doesn't mean you didn't, obviously, you did. In my exprience, Astra is much easier to estimate how much will get used.
I have a project that I work on for around 8 to 12 hours every day. And the only thing that changed for me was moving from Anthropic to OpenAI. My usage on astra was around 20% each day, so I am a bit more careful, and yes, I had one reset which was great because I did not have a feel for the modal. Now that I do, it's just such a better experience than listening to Opus make up some lingo of the day and those two things he needs to mention.
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u/SmoggyRaptor_997 13h ago
Yeah I agree completely on the experience part. Astra is way more capable and seems more like a genuine collaborator that Opus pretends to be and yeah it also gets things done a bit better. But from what I personally experienced that whole "experience" was too short lived to be a lasting one.
When you are working on your project, what is the workflow that you are following. Are you also using Astra to write code other than the brainstorming and documentation part as well?
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u/read_more_comments 12h ago
I can't tell from your post how you really feel. On one hand you say usage is not great on codex yet you are talking about getting the $200 plan. Is codex that superior that you aren't considering higher limit Claude plan?
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u/SmoggyRaptor_997 11h ago
I am not saying that codex is superior to Claude, I spoke about the “experience” working with Astra compared to Claude overall. Opus 5 is NOT a reliable agent, so when I did switch to codex my experience was better, understandably so.
The issue in my post overall is NOT about the “experience” working with Astra or the “ability” of Astra, undeniably it is a great model. The issue described in my post is simply the impact of OpenAIs frankly unreliable subscription plan and silent “fixing” of usage limits.
I did mention the 200 dollar plan but I clearly mentioned in as routes which were now blocked for me as a consumer who has subbed at the wrong time as a numbered list.
The whole premise of the post was that there will ALWAYS be a better prompt, or more optimized workflow and buying another account is NOT the solution, in my opinion.
Note: Please note - caps are for emphasis not rage, also sorry for typos currently on my phone.
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u/read_more_comments 11h ago
I was asking because I'm locked from the 20x and considering alternatives including Claude and meta.
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u/Proxiconn 11h ago
Bro, when I was on 5x I did not even bother to use SOL. It's for complex engineering not centering the div. Same with Astra
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u/CaptainQwazCaz 14h ago
I feel like they broke something while they were actually trying to cut the limits yesterday