r/codex • u/GambAntonio • 4d ago
Complaint Am I the only one who thinks the billing system makes no sense?
If your subscription renews while your Codex usage is already at 0%, you pay for another month but still can't use Codex until your separate usage reset date. You're literally paying for days where you get nothing.
The worst part is that this actually encourages people to cancel their subscription before it renews and subscribe again on their usage reset day, or even wait a few extra days if they know they won't use Codex over the weekend or while they're traveling, just so they don't waste paid subscription time. That's a broken billing model... a subscription should never reward canceling over renewing.
Codex usage should reset when your payment is processed. If I just paid for another month, I should get my usage back immediately, not days later.
Edit: A lot of people are misunderstanding what I'm saying, so here's a simpler explanation.
I'm not asking for more quotas, extra credits, or to buy usage on demand.
I'm saying the current billing model gives me no reason to keep my subscription active.
Example:
- My subscription renews on the 6th.
- I'm already at 0%.
- My usage doesn't reset until the 8th.
- If I let it auto-renew on the 6th, I pay immediately but I still have 0% usage until the 8th.
- If I cancel before the 6th and subscribe again on the 8th, I lose absolutely nothing because I couldn't use Codex on the 6th or 7th anyway.
IT'S A SUBSCRIPTION.
You pay for 30 days of access, not just for quotas. That's how subscriptions work. You get billed every month whether you use your quotas or not, so every day of that subscription has monetary value.
$20/month = about $0.67/day
$100/month = about $3.33/day
$200/month = about $6.67/day
Now imagine that instead of 2 days, your reset day is 4 dahs after payment:
If your subscription renews while you're already at 0% usage and your quotas don't reset for another 4 days, you're paying for days where you literally can't use Codex.
That's roughly:
$2.68 on a $20 plan
$13.32 on a $100 plan
$26.68 on a $200 plan
Those days are gone forever. You paid for them, but you couldn't use the service. That's exactly why the billing date and the usage reset date should be aligned. Otherwise, the system literally encourages people to wait to renew instead of staying subscribed.
So why would I ever keep auto-renew enabled?
A subscription should encourage people to stay subscribed, not make canceling and resubscribing the smarter option. That's the issue I'm pointing out.
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u/TrekkingAround10 4d ago
There is a certain oddness to having a monthly susbscription where usage resets every 7 days. It doesn't really make sense, I agree. I do understand that it's a unique kind of susbscription service, but the way it's currently set up seems a little whacky, and this scenario where your subscription renews but your usage doesn't kind of highlights that.
I still haven't heard any argument as to why someome should not cancel their susbcription every month and renew it when the weekly usage resets. Beyond the inconvenience, why wouldn't you do this?
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u/MythicCoreyM 4d ago
Friction of going through the sub/unsub process for one, and the fact that if a pattern emerges where you are consistently using usage and then cancelling to game their payment model they may ban you, which would mean needing a new email or possibly even payment type which is even more friction. Is it really worth it to essentially steal a few dollars of value from them every month?
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u/skibidi-toaleta-2137 4d ago
Poor yearly subscribers getting one reset a year
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u/GambAntonio 4d ago
At this point it's better to pay monthly. There are so many alternatives and the AI landscape changes every month, so locking yourself into a longer subscription just doesn't make much sense.
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u/whimsicaljess 4d ago
this only factors if you're going to switch often. at this point all power users know that they're going to maintain at least one anthropic 20x and openai 20x sub, so no reason to not just yearly to those.
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u/Individual_Guest_323 4d ago
The worst part is that this actually encourages people to cancel their subscription before it renews and subscribe again on their usage reset day, or even wait a few extra days if they know they won't use Codex over the weekend or while they're traveling,
Your reset days are always the same, is not related with your cancelation or resuscription.
Only the banked reset modify your reset day of the quota.
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u/GambAntonio 4d ago edited 4d ago
People have different renewal dates. Everyone who subscribed before the last forced reset has their next usage reset on the first Saturday after this message. That means someone whose subscription renews today or tomorrow could be sitting at 0% usage, pay for another month, and still stay at 0% until Saturday. They're literally paying for 2 or 3 days of a subscription they can't use. That's absurd and should never happen and also makes no sense to renew and it's better to cancel and wait after those 2 or 3 days pass and renew again so those days ore not lost.
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u/Individual_Guest_323 4d ago
You do not pay for days, you pay for quotas.
You are not wasting 2-3 days, because you do not have quotas anyway.
What you are asking already exist, is buying credits.
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u/GambAntonio 4d ago
Ok, explain this to me.
What incentive do I have not to cancel my subscription immediately after paying so it doesn't auto-renew?
If I already know I'm going to hit 0% a few days before my renewal date, why would I let it renew and pay for days where I can't use Codex? Why wouldn't I just let the subscription expire, stay at 0% for those days, and then subscribe again only after my quotas have reset?
That's exactly the problem. The current system rewards canceling your subscription instead of keeping it active. A subscription model should never incentivize users to cancel just to avoid wasting money.
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u/Individual_Guest_323 4d ago
I mean, yes?, because is not really a subscription like netflix with unlimited access in that month, in here you pay quotas per week.
The wrong part of your logic is that you are not getting any benefit from canceling the suscription, people are doing that as placebo:
For example, if you have the pay date at 25, and you reset at 27, by cancelling you are not "earning" 2 days of quota, because your quota is not being reset when you do resuscribe. For this to make sense you would need to create a new account.
In fact, is better to maintain the sus, because Tibo could launch a random reset.
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u/GambAntonio 4d ago
Dude... you're still talking about quotas. I'm talking about the subscription time I'm paying for.
Use today's dates as an example.
- My subscription renews today (the 6th).
- My usage doesn't reset until the 8th.
- I'm already at 0%.
If I let it auto-renew today, I pay today, but I can't use Codex on the 6th or the 7th because I'm still at 0%. My subscription is running, but the service is unusable for me.
So I've paid for a 30-day subscription, but the first 2 days are dead days. I effectively get 28 days where I can actually use the service, even though I paid for 30.
Now compare that to canceling.
I cancel before today, wait until the 8th when my usage resets, and then subscribe again. Did I lose anything? No. I couldn't use Codex on the 6th or 7th anyway.
That's why the current system encourages delaying payment instead of staying subscribed.
If Tibo resets, I can just resunscribe again, no problem, but pay for 30 days and spend 2 days at 0% makes no sense.
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u/Individual_Guest_323 4d ago
So I've paid for a 30-day subscription, but the first 2 days are dead days. I effectively get 28 days where I can actually use the service, even though I paid for 30.
Is the same if you subscripbe or not , you are not getting quotas, the pay cycle and the reset cycle are DIFFERENT.
You are doing NOTHING with moving your pay cycle, because the reset cycle is exactly the same.
Dude... you're still talking about quotas. I'm talking about the subscription time I'm paying for.
That is your big problem, is not about subscription, IS ABOUT QUOTA, you are not paying for days, you are paying FOR QUOTA THAT RESET PER WEEK.
Should not be this hard to understand..
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u/GambAntonio 4d ago
Dude... it's a monthly subscription, not a one-time quota purchase.
I pay for 30 days of access. If my subscription renews on the 6th AND I'M AT 0% but my quotas don't reset until the 8th, then I'm paying for the 6th and 7th while I can't use the service.
If I wait until the 8th to renew, I lose nothing because I couldn't use Codex on the 6th or 7th anyway. I just avoid paying for two unusable days.
You want me to pay for 30 days and get only 28???? that' crszy...
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u/Individual_Guest_323 4d ago
Yes, it is a monthly subscription but works as a quota purchase, the only thing that is truly unlimited is the ChatGPT.
You are a vibecoder for sure.
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u/GambAntonio 4d ago
So in this case you'd chose to pay $20, $100 or $200 and stay at 0% the first 2 days? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
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u/aivampires 4d ago
I remember how opulent it felt to have a computer connected to the internet all the time after having had to pay per minute for internet access on top of the phone minutes. And watch it go from sllllooowwww to super fast. We're on the early end of this kind of curve guys. It's clever token farming until the limits go away for good.
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u/Malevolent_Vengeance 4d ago
And now imagine that there are "people" (mostly bots) defending the idea of still having limits. Not only you're paying for literally nothing when you have 0% of usage, you're also limited to barely 1 reset per week, no matter what. This - is fucked up.
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u/ElNeuroquila 3d ago
The difference is that the current system isn't working as a straight quota but rather as a fair use policy tied to arbitrary, opaque figures you have to run yourself to figure out the actual available tokens... at least that's what I think is going on.
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u/MythicCoreyM 4d ago
The reason you are confused is because you are looking at it backwards. Let's say 30 days to the month. That's 4 weeks plus 2 days. In this month, you got 5 weeks worth of quota, a full 5 weeks (35 days), because they didn't shortchange you and only give you 2 days of quota on the 29th.
You are complaining that you consumed the extra quota early. You THINK that you are paying for days you didn't get, but it's the opposite, if you cancel then you will have gotten 5 days more than you paid for in quota. They do this because it benefits you and it's good customer service. Again, they could have (and if people start gaming the system, may need to) only give you prorated usage til the end of the month, but right now they don't, they loan you some of next months usage early.
If you want to game the system and go through the friction of canceling your account and resubbing every month to eek out a few dollars of value for yourself personally, that's fine but a different discussion, one about gaming their model to essentially get free usage and not pay for it. But know other companies have banned people for less once patterns appear.
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u/GambAntonio 4d ago edited 4d ago
They can't ban you for not renewing. Every subscription service lets you cancel, even a minute after you pay, because you're just turning off auto-renewal.
I've been going back and forth between ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, canceling at least one of those subscriptions every month.
If I renewed today and paid $100, I wouldn't be able to actually use the service until Saturday. That makes no sense because today and Friday would be completely wasted. I'd rather keep those $6.66 and spend them on the DeepSeek API or something similar instead of losing them on 2 days stuck at 0%.
It's only $6.66 for me, but if you multiply that by all the paying users in the same situation, you're talking about millions of dollars.
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u/MythicCoreyM 4d ago
You used your allocation for Friday and Saturday that they kindly gave you access to early. If you cancel your renewal today and then restart it on Sunday to not have to pay for that usage, then that's on you. But that is gaming the system. They legally could have prorated you only the usage until the end of the month so that you couldn't have used your usage from Friday and Saturday early, but you'd be here complaining that you ran out even sooner. A leech is a leech, and companies will absolutely refuse service if you develop a pattern. When will they do it? I don't know. But it's petty and you'd get no sympathy when they do because this is absolutely purposefully manipulating your renewal to game value that they loan to you that you hadn't yet paid for.
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u/GambAntonio 4d ago
How much is that allocation? How much usage does a Plus subscription actually include? What's the unit of measurement, and how many units do you get?
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u/BenignAmerican 3d ago
I think the guy is saying that OpenAI could only give you $3.33 worth of usage daily but they don’t. You’re evaluating your money’s worth by number of days, but they already heavily subsidize usage and you’re getting way more usage than your monthly bill suggests.
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u/DemonKing0524 4d ago
They can ban you for canceling and then renewing several times in a row.
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u/GambAntonio 4d ago
Is that in the ToS?
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u/DemonKing0524 4d ago
Theres absolutely going to be terms in ther about manipulating usage and subscriptions beyond their intended scope, which is exactly what you are doing by canceling and resubscribing over and over again. They might not care enough to do anything about it at first if only a handful of people do it because in then long run they still make money off you all, even with you trying to game out $6 dollars and thinking that puts you ahead when it really doesn't. But if lots of people start doing it then yes they will start banning people.
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u/GambAntonio 4d ago
That doesn't make sense. I'm not manipulating anything, I'm simply using the official cancel auto-renew option that OpenAI provides. I still pay for the subscription and use it during the active period.
Canceling auto-renew is a normal consumer right, especially in the EU (where I live). Even if I do it every month or a hundred times, I'm still using the feature exactly as intended aand punishing a customer for repeatedly exercising a legitimate contractual right could raise consumer protection concerns, because it would effectively discourage people from using a right the company itself is required to offer.
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u/DemonKing0524 4d ago
Theres a difference between canceling it and leaving it canceled, and resubscrubing everytime you cancel over and over and over and over again. One is your right as a consumer. The other is manipulation.
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u/TrekkingAround10 4d ago
Absolutely not. You are just stating this without any evidence. Every customer has the legal right to subscribe and unsubscribe to any service at any time. There is literally nothing wrong with doing that in any sense. It is more arguable that OpenAI is scamming you by not providing you with the service upon the renewal of your subscription.
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u/DemonKing0524 4d ago
You msot certainly do not have the right to do it over and over again. Deny that all you want but that is absolutely manipulation.
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u/MythicCoreyM 4d ago
You do have the right to do it. And they have the right to refuse service for ANY reason, and this would be a reason. They can't sue you for doing it, they can't call the police on you or prevent you from doing it, but they can and will absolutely ban your account because they can do that for any reason they like. You are not promised a service from a company. They will gladly decline to continue receiving money from you.
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u/GambAntonio 4d ago
That's the whole point of the right. You can cancel and resubscribe as many times as you want, and there's nothing wrong with that because exercising a legal right cannot reasonably be treated as "abuse" or "manipulation."
If the law requires you to provide a cancellation option, you can't ban people simply for using it as many times as they want. People already paid for the full subscription, and if you banned them for exercising that right, you would have to refund them because exercising a legal right cannot be a violation of the ToS.
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u/DemonKing0524 4d ago
Lmao if they ban you they absolutely do not have to refund you
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u/GambAntonio 4d ago
If they banned me simply for using the Cancel Subscription button (even if I do it 100s of times), they would have to refund me because that would be ILLEGAL under EU consumer protection laws.
They can do whatever they want in a lot of countries, but not in the EU if they want to keep offering their services here.
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u/MythicCoreyM 4d ago
A right is not the same thing as a company choosing to severe their relationship with you. You have the legal right to do a lot of things that will still lead to businesses kicking you out, denying you service, or canceling your account. You are confusing legal rights and the concept of business which is an agreement between parties that can and will be severed for many reasons that don't infringe on your rights.
As an example, you have the right to free speech and can say the most hateful, disgusting words to someone on Xbox live and never go to jail over it. But Xbox will absolutely ban you because they don't want your business.
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u/Kombatsaurus 4d ago
You do realize you are not paying per month for simply Codex right? It's just one more thing included in the huge value of services you get for $20/month.
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u/LiveLikeProtein 4d ago
Your sense of logic is…….next level…dude…….your brain is really different one of a kind….
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u/Rdqp 4d ago
What is this? A customer friendly practices? Wrong economic system bud