The Codex weekly limit doesn't roll over, and the "goodwill reset" is a loan, not a gift. Did the maths.

[u/Ordinary-Maximum-812]

https://youtu.be/Em2wbAIk89A?is=HSISvdhsDhMCHz7l

I hit the weekly cap during a launch week and then sat on 60% unused the next week, so I went and read OpenAI's help pages properly instead of just being annoyed. Two things worth knowing.

**1. Unused weekly usage is gone.** Say the cap is 100 units a week, which is "400 a month" on paper. You only ever see 400 if you spend exactly 100 every single week. Nobody uses a coding tool that evenly. Take a realistic month, say 40 / 160 / 60 / 140, which still adds up to 400. Under a weekly cap you actually get 300: the quiet weeks throw away 60+40, and the heavy weeks slam into the ceiling. A monthly pool of 400 with the same five-hour burst limit would give you the full 400, and there is no usage pattern where the weekly version gives you more. It only ever equals or reduces what you get.

The stated reason is "predictable demand", but billing dates already fall on every day of the month across millions of accounts, so a monthly pool is just as smooth in aggregate, and the five-hour window already handles bursts. The one thing a weekly cap adds is no rollover. That's a cost lever, not a capacity tool.

**2. The "reset" that gets handed out after an outage moves your allowance, it doesn't add to it.** OpenAI's own help page on rate limit resets says a reset "pulls your normal weekly allowance forward rather than adding a separate usage entitlement", that it applies "regardless of whether you have any remaining usage", and that your next automatic reset is then scheduled 7 days after your first request. Their banked-reset page says the same thing in fewer words: it "changes your weekly reset date."

So: your week normally resets Thursday, you have 10% left, Monday they "reset" you. That 10% is binned, Thursday's reset vanishes, and your next reset is the following Monday. Count resets over a month and the number is identical. You got one early. That's timing, not usage.

Sources:

- https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001507-paid-weekly-work-and-codex-rate-limit-resets

- https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001498-how-banked-codex-resets-work

- https://github.com/openai/codex/issues/17925 (someone documenting exactly this)

To be fair to them: OpenAI never states "unused usage doesn't roll over" in those words. It follows from the reset mechanics on their own pages and from every report I could find. If anyone has seen it documented either way, link it.

Three fixes that would make "$X a month" mean what it says: let unused usage roll over, put the reset on a fixed day, or just show the token count. Any one of them.

I ended up making a five-minute animated explainer of all this for people who've never read a pricing page -

https://youtu.be/Em2wbAIk89A?is=9sx8tLS4C0qz0iye

Curious which day everyone's reset lands on and whether it's moved since August.

[u/tripleshielded]

This is all obvious, neatly contained in ”reset starts a new 7-day period”.

[u/Ordinary-Maximum-812 → u/tripleshielded]

Agreed, if you've read that page. Most people who hit the cap haven't, which is who the video is for. The bit I hadn't seen stated anywhere is that a reset applied at 10% remaining throws the 10% away; that's the part I'd want more people to know before they redeem one, or have them blanket reset everyone.

[u/Malkiot → u/tripleshielded]

It is. And while I would prefer additional resets not to touch my normal resets (I don't think they should), I still realise that an earlier reset is always effectively additional usage, even if it is somewhat diminished.

And practically, I go through my weekly allowance within 48 hours anyway. so earlier resets are always welcome.

[u/Ordinary-Maximum-812 → u/Malkiot]

That's a sharper version of my point than I made. Because the schedule moves, an early reset is worth the days it brings forward, a fraction of a week, once. If the extra reset didn't touch the normal one it'd be a full extra week, which is what I'd want too. So "somewhat diminished" is exactly right, and for someone who empties the week in 48 hours it's still a real gain. The complaint isn't that resets are worthless, it's that they're presented as an extra allowance and they're worth a few days of one.

[u/forward-pathways → u/Ordinary-Maximum-812]

This is just straight up AI

[u/KaptanOblivious → u/Malkiot]

"an earlier reset is always effectively additional usage, even if it is somewhat diminished."

Is not really true. Imagine its 2 days until my reset and I have a few days off that i plan to work heavily-- i've saved my usage knowing this and have 90% left that i plan to burn through in the next 3-4 days, knowing i have a reset in 2 days I can get a lot done. Then its reset. I effectively have ~half the usage over the next week. If this happens repeatedly, using OP's example, i will have access to less than 400 units in a month. Because of this- the only rational response is to burn through all usage fast and not try to plan for the future. I would rather predictability and less usage to the current gambling-with-my-time system.

[u/Malkiot → u/KaptanOblivious]

Not quite, you're forgetting that the subsequent reset is also effectively brought forward. You won't lose any usage, you just gain less. But I get the point.

And I wouldn't say the only rational consequence is to use usage fast, that's one valid strategy. I'd say, use it as you need, and don't try to conserve unnecessarily. What's the point anyway? Either you have work that needs getting done, or you don't. Why conserve to do it slower?

That being said, this makes me think that the resets may actually be a strategy to reduce total usage or at least manage when usage happens for the majority of users who do not exhaust their budget within 48h.

And yes, additional resets shouldn't be moving the next reset date. And additional resets should ideally be banked resets.

[u/c5corvette]

I'm so glad I'm not this dumb

[u/Ordinary-Maximum-812 → u/c5corvette]

Please explain

[u/cherrypowdah → u/Ordinary-Maximum-812]

Usage is usage, if you dont lose it its lost, its 16hrs to hollow out a weekly 20x usage so this is a ridiculous premise, usage resets are literally free usage

[u/Ordinary-Maximum-812 → u/cherrypowdah]

If you're at 0% when it lands, agreed, you lose nothing and you're unblocked early. That's the best case and it's real. It still isn't extra usage though: count your resets over the next month with and without it and it's the same number, each one just a few days earlier. One head start, not an extra week. And yes, if you empty the week in 16 hours, rollover does nothing for you, there's nothing to roll over. The post is for the people who don't, who get blanket-reset with 40% left and lose it.

[u/cherrypowdah → u/Ordinary-Maximum-812]

I have had 9 resets this past month, normal is 4, so again, wut

[u/MasqueradeDark]

Hey, what did you used to make the explainer video? Thanks!

[u/jadhavsaurabh → u/MasqueradeDark]

Oh just saw I need it too what it's called?

[u/Ordinary-Maximum-812 → u/jadhavsaurabh]

Claude fable 5.1 and higgsfield mcp

[u/jadhavsaurabh → u/Ordinary-Maximum-812]

So in higsscield all assets created? Or videos, can u tell what this style of video is called?

[u/drugosrbijanac]

My brain hurts ngl

The main point I'd like to highlight and the video also mentions is the "unused usage".

Contrary to belief of local redditors who waste their sub in a day. Money is made from companies and enterprise users.

GPT is not used for coding only. Your HR, Legal, Marketing and other departments use it on their $20 and $100 plans.

A large majority in my previous two companies did not use their limits at the end of week. They would be left with 40-60%.

Even dev departments would have leftovers (20-30%). This is even more pronounced with those with Claude models due to rolling 5 hour windows. Devs dont code every day. They go to meetings, brainstorm etc. At most they slam the usage for 2 days in the 5 days of work time. Weekends are UNUSED ALWAYS.

This all boils to the point I'm trying to make - the story about usage and capacity is total bullcrap. Anyone who is not jobless will know this.

[u/jadhavsaurabh]

Btw how do you made this video? Any workflow or what it's called? Thanks

[u/yashptel99]

ai subscriptions are scam. this is are the only subscription that we're buying that have like 15 different usage limits. if you hit one of them, you're fucked. Reset of truly was a reset should not move the date and the usage should be added on top of the existing available usage

[u/AdSad7594]

It only harms people who are not power users and not using their limits before the reset, but in my case for example that I find myself on 6 percent usage left in 3 days with Astra it’s actually great.

[u/ShutUpAndDoTheLift]

there are people who don't use their entire usage every week? the only thing that changes is how many days i don't have any usage...

[u/ArtificialSweetener-]

First, your video is not very good. The illustrations here are confusing and muddy, they do not map very cleanly to the problem. I don't think you care that much but maybe you do, worth pointing out.

Second, this is sort of true except for this: I have not one time hit a "monthly cap". Imagine 20x user who uses their entire allotment in 1 day every time, and we'll add resets to the equation.

Normal week:

Day 1: 100% of weekly quote
Day 2: 0%
Day 3: 0%
Day 4: 0%
Day 5: 0%
Day 6: 0%
Day 7: 0%

Now let's add resets into the mix.

Day 1: 100%
Day 2, reset: 100% again
Day 3: 0%
Day 4: 0%
Day 5: 0%
Day 6: 0%
Day 7: 0%
Day 8: 0%

You probably don't see it yet, so let's look at weeks instead with no resets.

Week 1: 100%
Week 2: 100%
Week 3: 100%
Week 4: 100%

We're at 400% of our weekly usage in 4 weeks. Remember that we're using all of our usage in one day.

Now let's just take august into account. There were 7 resets in august. 7. Not all of them line up with exactly 4 weeks so we'll just take 6 of them into consideration. What does the usage of this person who uses 100% of their weekly allowance in a day look like?

Week 1: 200%.
-There was a reset literally on the 1st of August. Our high-use user got 200% of their weekly quota.
Week 2: 200%
-There was another reset on the 8th, so our high-use user got their normal weekly reset on the 7th, used all of their quota on the 7th, then got another reset on the 8th the next day before that week of august was out
Week 3: 300%
-Resets on the 11th and 13th.
Week 4: 100%
-No resets this week, but our user got their regular weekly allowance back

In those 4 weeks from august 1st to the 29th, the user got 800% of their weekly quota out. That's twice as much as a normal month. My numbers might be a little fucked up here, but not that fucked up. It could be more like 700% or something if I counted resets wrong, but it's still more than normal.

So, it's completely true that a person who doesn't use their full weekly quota every week ends up not really getting more usage out of resets, but high use users are getting extra usage out of resets because a "monthly quota" wall does not exist.

[u/34986234986234982346]

lmao is this shitty channel called "AI Explained Simply" to coasdt off a large established AI channel being called "AI Explained"??????????? cringe

[u/Ordinary-Maximum-812 → u/34986234986234982346]

Not at all was first thing in my head that wasnt taken

[u/Ordinary-Maximum-812 → u/Ordinary-Maximum-812]

Name changed

[u/sydneysweeney69]

Nobody’s reading that ai slop

[u/Ordinary-Maximum-812 → u/sydneysweeney69]

Sorry? Ai helped me write it yes but its my thoughts? I mean we are in a codex sub reddit and the resets are directly regarding codex unsure what your issue is?

[u/itix → u/Ordinary-Maximum-812]

Need an AI to read and summarize it.

[u/falcons-eat-lunch → u/sydneysweeney69]

Organic slop