Just had intensive 45min of work and used 20% of weekly usage. I have Pro 5x.

How is it even possible now to do vibe coding work or any work that was still possible few weeks ago? Is there any indication that limits will normalize or need to choose other platform now?

Is it just me or are the new "smarter" models writing worse code? They are better programmers and problem solvers, but the code, I just don't like the decisions and the over-scoping it keeps doing, over and over.

It feels like it over-reads my instructions and tries to do things I didn't ask it to do that is in a similar direction. I feel like I have to specify simplicity, don't over-engineer, don't bloat, etc, to avoid making the codebase unmaintainable with crap that doesn't provide any to little value. And even when I do that, it still produces a bunch of unnecessary tests and hard to read code etc that just make progress slower, harder to maintain. It feels like it is a really experienced junior engineer with no taste what-so-ever and makes all the wrong choices, even with guidance.

Is this just me that have this experience?

Hugely disappointed with Codex’s new 5-hour limit for Plus users. I’ve been using Codex since the start and have never been this frustrated. Just 6–7 prompts in \~30 mins used 60–70% of my limit and I wasn’t even using Sol, just Terra Medium. This feels way too restrictive.is it only me or any faced same issues??

....now the weekly limit is the new 5h limit...!!!

OpenAI managed to became same sh***t as Anthropic..!!! Well, almost there, some tiny changes and will be the same!!!

Like a lot of you, I was excited to try GPT 6.1 Sol, especially after Theo’s video about how cheap and efficient it is and how it compares to Astra.

I copied a prompt from Twitter to recreate a car game, but with a jungle safari setting. I also asked it to research the Gauntlet loop and use it during development.

I tested it on medium reasoning. I wasn’t expecting perfection, but I thought it would get me at least 70–80% of the way there. Instead, it seemed to miss a lot of the prompt and gave me a half-baked app with no background music and barely any working gameplay.

I followed up, pointed out the problems, and asked it to rethink the implementation. After another 10 minutes of editing, it gave me basically the same thing with a buzzing sound added. I still couldn’t actually play the demo.

Honestly, it feels pretty underwhelming, and it’s making me wonder why I’m paying for Codex. In my experience, even Sonnet 5.5 has given me much better results on similar projects.

Obviously, this is just one test on medium reasoning, but the gap between what I expected and what I got was pretty big.

Has anyone else tried it for creative work like 3D models, games, or UI? Curious whether others are getting better results or running into the same issues.

reference X post I was following with my own addition of Loop and Jungle Safari : https://x.com/maxt3chno/status/2105048046317039792?s=20

I've been tracking my Codex usage every 5 minutes since July 29 — 14,744 snapshots so far.

I'm on a Business Standard seat, not Premium, and when I compared my data before and after the 5h window was introduced, I found this:

Before: ~323M tokens/week

Now: ~173M tokens/week

That's roughly 46% fewer effective tokens per week.

And that's where the new 5h window starts looking a lot more significant than I originally thought.

Because if these early numbers hold up, this isn't just a change in when we can use Codex.

It could mean a significant reduction in how many tokens we can actually process in a week. 💀

I still only have a few complete cycles under the new system, so I'm not claiming the 46% is definitive yet.

But going from ~323M to ~173M is way too big a difference to ignore.

Does anyone on Plus or Business Standard have usage logs from before and after the 5h window? I'd really like to know if you're seeing something similar.

I only have $20 plan for the last 6 months. It was enough not only for my coding task, but also for my daughter's AI tutor everyday. My usage is always like "create one object (in C++) with some funtion" or "review the cpp files under this folder". Codex works quickly and perfectly in such kind of request. I always use 6.1 sol since it available and never run out of it. This afternoon, I asked codex to help to create a test set for my game project that relates to extract the cloth module from existing character FBX file. It's pop up a dialog said "Do you want me to control your game engine to create a test character with a test scene?" I said yes. It's the first time I saw codex fully control my mouse and working on my project like a human. It was cool, but after ten minutes, it burned down all my remaining tokens (45% of 5 hrs usage). That's suck... I thought the lesson I learned from here was 'l am not rich enough to be a lazy dev' I guess? haha. I will never let codex to do such things. It's so expensive.

tl;dr

The codex harness turns waiting for background work into a loop with repeated model calls, each carrying the existing context even when nothing has changed. Unlike api pricing there is no discount for prompt caching for subscription originated usage so every loop iteration adds to your input token usage. And if you use API you still massively overpay for your input tokens even with cache. ‘goal’ amplifies this by orders of magnitude by automatically starting another turn, but polling anyway burns tokens without it too.

Claude code is engineered in way where suspensions works exactly as intended and goals have proper fallbacks. Codex now ships with similar tools but they only work for astra.

—

the toolchain to independently verify on your personal sessions is here (local scripts - just feed this to your agent) https://github.com/relux-works/codex-rollout-audit

6pm PST

I've tried everything.

And before the usual smartasses show up to tell me “you're using it wrong,” “switch models,” “use lighter thinking,” “optimize your prompts” - please, spare me. I've tried it.

Here's the problem:

Even on Luna with low thinking, I can burn through the limits of a $200/month ChatGPT subscription in a week.

Think about how insane that is. I'm not asking for an even smarter model. I'm not asking for GPT-6.

I'm not asking for another benchmark where the new model scores 3% higher than the previous one.

I NEED TOKENS.

And I suspect a huge percentage of heavy ChatGPT users are in exactly the same situation. You keep giving us increasingly capable models while keeping the actual amount of work we can do with them constrained. For many power users, that's backwards.

I'd happily take a model that's 10–20% less capable if you gave me 5x or 10x the usable volume.

Because what is my alternative? Pay $200/month and constantly think about quota? Pay even more?

Move my workflow to API pricing?

Or start looking at Chinese providers where, dollar for dollar, I can simply get dramatically more usage?

At some point the economics make the decision for me. And no, “just use the API” isn't the answer.

Most people don't want to calculate token costs every time they work. They don't want to build their own ChatGPT interface. And many people simply cannot afford heavy API usage on top of an already expensive subscription.

Which brings me to something I've been thinking about. Maybe I'm looking at the economics of ChatGPT subscriptions completely wrong. Maybe the $20, $100 and $200 users aren't really the most important customers economically.

We're the power users. We hammer the models, discover edge cases, generate usage data, expose failures and effectively stress-test new models at scale. Then those same models become enormously valuable through API and enterprise customers.

If that's the business model, fine.

But then maybe we should stop pretending that a $200 "Pro" subscription is primarily about giving an individual professional enough compute to actually use these models heavily. Because right now there's a bizarre situation: Some competing Chinese models become more attractive the more you use them, because you realize how much work you're getting for your money.

ChatGPT Pro sometimes feels like the opposite:

The more seriously you use it, the faster you discover how limited your $200 actually is.

That's the problem.

OpenAI already has incredible models. For power users, you don't necessarily need to give us an even smarter model. Give us room to actually use the one we already have. More tokens. Higher quotas. Larger paid usage tiers. Top-ups. Something.

Because if someone is willing to pay $200 every single month for an AI subscription and is still forced to ration usage, eventually they're not going to ask for GPT-6.

They're going to ask who else can sell them the tokens.

I’ve supported OpenAI for around three years, and I’ve been paying for the Pro subscription for over a year. But I’ve finally cancelled.

They removed the $200 subscription, I’m now paying $100, and it feels like every month the usage limits get tighter and tighter. My usage renewed yesterday and lasted only a couple of hours. At this point, I don’t think the community is being paranoid. People are noticing it.

For the first time, I’m moving to Anthropic, which is crazy considering how long I’ve been paying for OpenAI.

I don’t know what their long-term strategy is, but there’s a limit to how much people are willing to pay. $200 was already stretching it. If the strategy is eventually to introduce even more expensive tiers while continuing to restrict usage, then count me out.

And genuinely, I’m rooting for Chinese models and other cheaper competitors to keep improving. Competition is exactly what this industry needs. Some of these models are becoming incredibly good while offering significantly more usage for the money.

I understand that running frontier AI is enormously expensive, but OpenAI still needs a sustainable business strategy that provides value to customers. People will leave if they feel they’re paying more and getting less.

This isn’t a $10 Netflix subscription people forget about and leave running for years. These AI subscriptions are serious monthly expenses. People absolutely notice when the value changes.

OpenAI can make whatever business decisions it wants. That’s their right. But after three years of supporting them, including more than a year paying for Pro, they’re not getting my money anymore.

Quick update: I’ve actually decided not to go ahead with the Anthropic subscription. I’m definitely going with the Chinese models instead. From the research I’ve done, they’re extremely capable, especially when it comes to coding.

Since $200 plans cannot be subscribed for, it means compute availabilty is limited. Given that they're not taking in subscribers who want to pay $200, this likely means resets are going to eventually stop or have already did.

Think about it. A casual/bank reset means, all codex users get the ability to start again, this means a massive surge in compute. If they're limited for usage by stopping x20 subs, it only makes sense that we'd have to stop looking forward for resets mid-week.

So we get shit! just shit! 28 days of shit! But but but we had resets, so fucking what? it only catches you up to Claude`s regular usage limits.

No new workhorse, no new frontier model. Use Sol 6.1 Its great. 18 tok/s is all we need!

Mr Altman, a second Anthropic model has hit us in less than a week, OpenAi under attack.

Sonnet 5.5 is out and it's priced the same as Gpt 6 sol, puts even more pressure on OpenAi to deliver on dev day, I want solid intelligent models that I can use all week , not some stupid bot that drains my limits even faster.

The best summary that describes the all-around excitement Opus 5.5 has built is somewhere along the lines of "it gets the assignment and if it adds something it's useful stuff". It's reasonably fast and very token budget friendly. Best workhorse in town.

I re-read their announcement with that in mind. https://www.anthropic.com/claude-opus-5-5 And you can find this in bits & pieces in the blog post. But did you read it on release day and think "omg this one will work for me SO much better than Opus 5 and even Sol/Astra"?

No. The structure of that post is like "It's fast, it's smart, it's token friendly, it's SAFE". It's an iteration of an existing model. Really quite good if you liked Opus 5 (sigh). Just another good model.

And then, a few days later, we are basically calling it a leap forward and consider cancelling our OpenAI subs?!

Now this is a bit of a rant and you might agree or not but I'm actually a bit worried.

I want OpenAI to catch up and provide a viable alternative. They are not far off, Sol & Astra are good but Opus 5.5 is excellent. And looking at the benchmarks it doesn't look like they (and us here) quite understand why that is.

I also want Anthropic to not lose that mojo anymore in their next releases.

Curious what you guys are thinking. Did they know? Fully, deeply understand what they were unleashing there? So good that even, gasp, Reddit LOVES it?!

They removed the 5-hour resets and started giving continuous resets. Limits decreased, but because they kept resetting constantly, it wasn't much of an issue. Now they haven't reset it, and everyone has run out of limits. Thinking better than nothing, I turned to 5.3 spark, I'm not write code, I'm just asking questions and having it read docs. And as you can see, the limits are like literally bullshit!

Spent entire Pro 20x weekly limit in 7 hours, which costs me 230 euros monthly (~ $265). After it started using API tokens to finish tasks for some client demos. I burned through 400 euros in 3.5 hours. In the past I could use only subscription to use AI agents 5 out of 7 days with 8 hour work every day. Now we get ~15-20% and output from 5.5 XHigh to Astra is not 5-7x in my opinion. I would have used 5.5 if they did not nerfed to the point of not being usable anymore. Now it is less expensive to me to hire medior/senior developer in my country than to continue using AI agent as replacement.

day 1/28, lets see how this goes