AIREITEROne Plus user finished a single 4-hour coding session and found 47% of the weekly allowance gone with almost seven days left (user report, @BuildToCite, post). You can have weekly quota left and still be locked out.
This guide explains the meter system, what the October 29 doubling changed, and how much uninterrupted work Plus, Pro, and Business buy.
Your Codex allowance is three meters, not one
OpenAI's Using Codex with your ChatGPT plan help page describes Codex as sharing allowance with ChatGPT Work and several workspace agents, with limits that vary by plan, model, task complexity, context, and reasoning effort. In practice users see three gauges, documented in screenshots quoted by AI Primer's reset report:
- 5-hour rolling window — short-burst cap that stops new work when empty, even if weekly quota remains.
- Weekly allowance — 7-day budget that bounds how many full 5-hour sessions you get.
- Code-review limit — separate bucket for review tasks, also restored to 100% on plan-wide resets.
The official help page tells you to check Settings or the usage dashboard for which allowance ran out, the credit balance, and the reset time, and CLI users can run /status. It does not publish fixed message counts — OpenAI publishes ranges, not guarantees, a point the independent QuotaTick Codex tracker stresses.
That rolling design breaks workflows mid-build and forces a context reload later:
I just finished my FIRST 5-hour session (used 94%, 6% left) and it somehow wiped out 47% of my entire weekly limit. 6d 20h left in my week, and half my quota is already gone after 4 hours of actual coding. — @BuildToCite (post)
In r/codex's State of the $20 subscription thread, u/ryuukiba added "And no more running tasks until completion." The complaint is rarely "quota exists" — it is that the 5-hour cap interrupts a task that weekly quota would otherwise cover.
What actually drains the meter
Forget "messages." The same prompt can burn dramatically different amounts across days or models because Codex meters underlying work, not chat bubbles.
According to the help page and the GitHub Discussion #11406 clarification from OpenAI staff, usage depends on model, execution location (local CLI vs IDE vs Cloud), task complexity, context size, reasoning level, speed setting, tools called, and retries. Auto-review safety checks are free and do not count; almost everything else does, including Sites built in Codex.
Three drain patterns show up repeatedly in user reports:
- Model choice dominates. QuotaTick's current ranges for Plus illustrate the spread per 5 hours: GPT-6.1 Sol 15–160 local messages, GPT-6 Astra 5–45, GPT-6 Luna 350–3,000. Astra burns an order of magnitude faster than Luna. One user report describes 28% of a 5-hour window spent "just to check if 2 PRs were green" (post), while Luna's published range stretches far further.
- Agent loops and retries multiply cost. "Agents wasting usage going in circles" is a top complaint from @buildwithrajath (post): "Usage disappearing way too fast" plus "Quota changing unexpectedly." A stuck researcher calling the same API over and over burns quota with zero progress.
- Context and plugins count. One GitHub discussant disabled all plugins after finding they consumed context-window capacity and switched to agent skills instead. Large repos, attached files, and long histories inflate every subsequent call.
That explains why trackers and official docs can both be "right" while your meter disagrees: backend routing, cache hits, harness changes, and model efficiency shifts change the burn rate without changing the published range.
The October 29 doubling: what doubled, what did not
Misreading this update leads directly to buying the wrong plan.
On October 29, 2026, Codex staffer Tibo Sottiaux posted the Day-25 update: "We are doubling all usage limits for all Pro 100/200/500 tiers and Business Premium, effective today. We heard your kind feedback and won't be reducing usage limits for Pro 200, so your Work and Codex usage will stay the same." (post)
The post itself does not mention Plus:
- Doubled: broader ChatGPT usage for Pro $100/$200/$500 and Business Premium.
- Not doubled: Codex (and Work in the Pro-200 context) stays the same. QuotaTick's event feed lists "Doubling usage limits for Pro and Business tiers" on Oct 29 17:01 UTC as a limit increase, while parallel tracker summaries explicitly note Pro $200 Codex usage itself stayed unchanged.
- Plus: not named in the post, so treat Plus Codex meters as unchanged until the dashboard says otherwise.
Do not confuse this with the older, separate promotion. In Discussion #11406, OpenAI staff confirmed the February-April 2x promo "doubled the maximum usage for both of these windows" — both the 5-hour and the 7-day windows — and applied regardless of client, including OpenCode when signed in with ChatGPT. That promo expired; the October change is a different scope.
Bottom line for buyers: if you bought Pro expecting twice the Codex coding time after October 29, recheck the dashboard.
Plus vs Pro vs Business in usable coding hours
OpenAI publishes ranges, not guarantees — sources: help center and QuotaTick's last-verified table; check the Codex pricing page for your actual limits.
| Plan | Price (Oct 2026) | What sources show | What it means in practice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Quick tasks; GPT-6 Luna in desktop app rolling out; no numbers published | Try-out only, no Cloud |
| Go | $8/mo | Lightweight tasks; Luna in desktop app; no numbers published | Slightly above Free, still no Cloud |
| Plus | $20/mo | Per 5h: Sol 15–160, Astra 5–45, Luna 350–3,000; weekly cap applies | About 2 full 5-hour sessions = weekly on heavy models; burst workers hit the 5h wall first |
| Pro $100 / $200 / $500 | $100–$500/mo | No 5-hour limit at the moment; $500 = 25x Plus allowance + Astra Ultrafast | Best for daily coding; $500 tier is the only one with an explicit 25x multiplier |
| Business | $20/user/mo annual ($25 monthly), 2+ seats | Same 5-hour estimates as Plus per QuotaTick plan table | Same Codex stamina as Plus per seat; buys admin controls, not more Codex per person |
One full 5-hour window is 10–47% of your week (user-reported heuristic, not a quota guarantee). A low-burn Luna session might be ~10% (about 10 sessions per week possible), while a heavy Astra session that consumes 94% of 5 hours and 47% of weekly, as @BuildToCite reported, means two sessions exhaust the week. Dodo-reach calculated the shift bluntly: "a 5-hour Codex window is now roughly ~10% of your weekly limits. last month it was ~25%" (post). As a planning rule, budget Plus for two serious builds per week, not seven days of flow.
Pro removes the worst interruption, not all limits. "No five-hour limit at the moment" does not mean unlimited — weekly and credit mechanics still apply, and Pro users in r/OpenaiCodex's Usage limits are insane thread report 20% of weekly gone in 45 minutes on Pro 5x (user report). What Pro buys is continuity: no forced 5-hour stop mid-task. For daily builders, that alone justifies the jump; for weekend-burst users who can live with two sessions, Plus plus careful model choice can suffice.
If you use third-party clients, note the official GitHub clarification: the account-level allowance applies in OpenCode too when authenticated with ChatGPT, so switching clients does not dodge or double the quota.
Check, reset, and stretch without breaking flow
Start with measurement, because users report stale displays, and OpenAI's usage update says it fixed stale usage displays and clarified dashboard wording from "limits used" to "limits remaining."
- Check the right meter. Desktop/CLI: run
/statusfor instant 5-hour vs weekly split. Web: Settings → usage dashboard shows which allowance ran out, credit balance, and reset time. If the numbers look frozen, reload. - Use any available reset deliberately. The help page lists "use an available reset" alongside adding credits, upgrading, or waiting for the displayed reset time (Using Codex with your ChatGPT plan). Do not burn it on a looped agent; kill the runaway task first.
- Understand resets vs top-ups. Plan-wide resets restore meters to 100% but can move your window end date, which hurts conservers. Credits are pay-as-you-go allowance consumed after included usage; AI Primer notes purchased credits are valid 12 months and separate from API credits.
- Pick the cheapest model that finishes the job. Use Luna or Terra-class efficient models for scouting, planning, and PR checks; reserve Astra/Sol Extra High for the final implementation pass. In examples collected here, simple checks cost 10% (u/stockwet, Reddit thread) to 28% of 5 hours on heavy models.
- Batch to fit the rolling window. Since one heavy session can be half your week, split work into scouting (low-burn model, new window) → build (high-capability model) → verify. Cloud runs on OpenAI-managed computers so tasks can continue while your machine sleeps (help page), but they still draw the same allowance — schedule them after a reset, not before.
- Treat resets as bonus, not plan. Resets are vendor-announced with no fixed timetable (QuotaTick tracker). If you are near empty and a reset lands, you get relief; do not count on timing it.
4 minutes of work using GPT 5.5 and my 5 hour limit is down 10%. — u/stockwet in State of the $20 subscription
As a starting heuristic until your own /status history proves otherwise: assume any heavy-model task costs at least 10% of a 5-hour block, and budget Plus as ~10 such blocks per week (or ~2 full-burn sessions).
FAQ
How many 5-hour sessions fit in a weekly allowance?
It depends on burn rate. Light Luna work can stretch to ~10 sessions (each ~10% of weekly); heavy Astra work can consume 40–47% per full session, so roughly two sessions exhaust the week. Check your own ratio after one full 5-hour drain.
Why did the same task burn much more this week than last?
Model, reasoning effort, context size, tool loops, retries, cache behavior, and backend harness changes all affect metering. Identical prompts with different models or larger repos legitimately cost different amounts.
Does my task continue after the 5-hour cap?
New work stops; you cannot start replacement work until the rolling window frees or a reset/credit applies. Resuming later means resending context, and the help page confirms context size affects usage — so finish or checkpoint before the cap.
Is Pro unlimited after the October 29 doubling?
No. Pro currently has no 5-hour limit, but weekly allowances, credit mechanics, and model-specific costs remain. The October 29 doubling covered broader Pro/Business Premium usage; Codex-specific meters were described as staying the same.
When will Codex reset next?
Only OpenAI knows. QuotaTick marks its forecast experimental and currently shows "past patterns don't apply." Treat resets as bonus, not plan.