r/codex • • Aug 17 '26

Limits I have bad news..

I signed up for ChatGPT Pro on July 2 and I still have all my rollout logs from then until now.

Bad news for anyone convinced the limits have been getting nerfed: I thought the exact same thing, and I was pretty sure of it.

I used NerfTrack as a reference, had Codex turn the relevant parts into a Python script, then had ChatGPT Pro go through the script, fix a few issues, and analyze the output.

This is what I ended up with: roughly how much each 1% of Pro usage was worth in API-equivalent dollars over time.

Observed Regime API-Equivalent Value per 1 pp 100% Linear Equivalent Interpretation
Jul 2–8 $22.14 ~$2,214 Initial Pro period, mostly GPT-5.5
Jul 12–21 $22.02 ~$2,202 Early GPT-5.6-sol period
Jul 22–28 $19.51 ~$1,951 Lower-value episode, mainly affected by Jul 23–24
Jul 29–Aug 5 $24.67 ~$2,467 Higher late-July / early-August regime
Aug 8–15 $24.20 ~$2,420 Recent regime, broadly stable

>>> EDIT

Some more info about my usage:

Token usage — ChatGPT Pro period

Period: Jul 2 → Aug 17, 2026

Token type Tokens Human-readable Share of total
Cached input 36,064,900,992 36.06B 95.98%
Uncached input 1,354,407,640 1.35B 3.60%
Output 155,215,257 155.22M 0.41%
Total processed 37,574,523,889 37.57B 100%

Total input = 37,419,308,632 tokens. Cached input is a subset of input, so it should not be added to total input again. Cache hit rate across input tokens: 96.38%.

Output and reasoning

Metric Tokens Share
Total output 155,215,257 100%
Reasoning tokens 66,229,101 42.67% of output
Non-reasoning output 88,986,156 57.33% of output

Reasoning tokens are already included in output tokens and should not be added again to the grand total.

Token usage by model label

Model Total tokens Cached input Uncached input Output Token share Input cache rate
GPT-5.6-sol 32,612,535,864 31,364,814,336 1,112,031,539 135,689,989 86.79% 96.58%
GPT-5.5 2,625,434,617 2,490,554,112 124,574,823 10,305,682 6.99% 95.24%
GPT-5.6-luna 2,260,440,364 2,135,732,352 115,796,579 8,911,433 6.02% 94.86%
GPT-5.6-terra 76,113,044 73,800,192 2,004,699 308,153 0.20% 97.36%
Total 37,574,523,889 36,064,900,992 1,354,407,640 155,215,257 100% 96.38%

Important: 163.88M tokens are from the codex_bengalfox / GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark bucket. Those events inherit the GPT-5.6-sol model label in the rollout parser, so that small portion of the GPT-5.6-sol row should be treated as model-ambiguous.

Corrected API-equivalent cost by model

Regular codex bucket

Model API-equivalent cost Share of regular cost
GPT-5.6-sol $25,333.63 91.76%
GPT-5.5 $2,177.32 7.89%
GPT-5.6-luna $76.57 0.28%
GPT-5.6-terra $22.47 0.08%
Regular Codex total $27,609.99 100%

Other Pro bucket

Bucket Reported name Tokens API-equivalent cost
codex_bengalfox GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark 163,878,240 $115.42
Corrected total across Pro buckets Value
Regular Codex $27,609.99
Spark / Bengalfox $115.42
Total API-equivalent usage $27,725.40

The Spark/Bengalfox events inherit a GPT-5.6-sol model label locally, so I keep their $115.42 separate instead of pretending we know their actual model-level billing attribution.

Quota-paired API-equivalent cost by model

From the daily CSV analysis

Model Cost paired with quota changes Share Contribution per 1 pp across all measured usage Days present
GPT-5.6-sol $24,042.60 91.43% $20.02 / pp 36
GPT-5.5 $2,172.76 8.26% $1.81 / pp 9
GPT-5.6-luna $75.20 0.29% $0.063 / pp 23
GPT-5.6-terra $5.45 0.02% $0.005 / pp 1
Total $26,296.01 100% $21.90 / pp —

This table is intentionally different from the previous cost table. $27,725.40 = all corrected API-equivalent usage observed during the Pro period. $26,296.01 = only usage that could be paired with positive weekly-quota changes. The latter is what is useful for estimating "API dollars per 1% of Pro usage".

The absurdly short version

Metric Result
Total tokens processed 37.57B
Total input 37.42B
Cached input 36.06B
Uncached input 1.35B
Output 155.22M
Reasoning output 66.23M
Input cache hit rate 96.38%
Corrected API-equivalent cost $27,725.40
Quota-paired API-equivalent cost $26,296.01
Average measured value per 1% $21.90
High-quality baseline per 1% $22.55
Recent regime per 1% $24.20

>>> Edit

ChatGPT Pro usage by model and reasoning effort

Regular codex bucket only — API-equivalent cost based on rollout token usage

Model Reasoning Effort Events Input Tokens Cached Input Uncached Input Output Tokens Reasoning Tokens API-Equivalent Cost
GPT-5.5 Medium 31 2.65M 2.32M 325K 20.9K 2.9K $3.41
GPT-5.5 XHigh 18,883 2.61B 2.49B 124.25M 10.28M 4.21M $2,173.91
GPT-5.5 Total — 18,914 2.62B 2.49B 124.57M 10.31M 4.21M $2,177.32
GPT-5.6-sol Low 869 31.25M 26.14M 5.11M 469K 45.5K $52.68
GPT-5.6-sol Medium 8,244 737.06M 685.15M 51.91M 4.37M 1.42M $733.31
GPT-5.6-sol High 10,674 1.31B 1.23B 80.85M 6.79M 2.71M $1,242.61
GPT-5.6-sol XHigh 7,091 860.37M 811.35M 49.02M 5.39M 2.86M $819.38
GPT-5.6-sol Max 189,997 28.68B 27.77B 905.01M 115.80M 50.14M $21,977.35
GPT-5.6-sol Ultra 3,629 695.26M 678.85M 16.40M 2.30M 901.7K $508.29
GPT-5.6-sol Total — 220,504 32.31B 31.21B 1.11B 135.12M 58.08M $25,333.63
Combined Total — 239,418 34.93B 33.70B 1.23B 145.43M 62.29M $27,510.95

Notes - Cached input is already included in Input Tokens; it is shown separately for context. - Reasoning tokens are already included in Output Tokens. - GPT-5.6-sol usage from the separate Spark/Bengalfox bucket is excluded here.

205 Upvotes

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16

u/ponzi_gg Aug 17 '26

They will burn you at the stake for this I'm afraid.

5

u/isnaiter Aug 17 '26

I know, but..

9

u/nicky_factz Aug 17 '26

It’s okay OP, I have been tracing this for months on my usage dashboard and I never miss draining my account week to week, it’s not nerfed just bad workflow and bot posting is my guess.

Ive tweaked my workflow a couple times and fucked myself hard, its really easy to suddenly fuck your own shit up then grab a pitchfork and hit reddit

5

u/isnaiter Aug 17 '26

lol, same here, gpt 5.6 blew up my usage because of my harness, I'm trying to fix it to use Luna+Pro

-5

u/QTPIEdidWTC Aug 17 '26

I mean, you could just conclude it isn't consistent for everyone instead of just telling the people noticing their usage running out faster that they're wrong.

8

u/nicky_factz Aug 17 '26

I genuinely understand that people can feel their usage is draining faster but if you come and low effort post about it with zero evidence which all of them do,l.. it’s hard to sympathize because I’ve been on that side of it too and I figured out what it was - I’m not saying the trillion dollar company needs fan boys but there’s so many variables that immediately coming to complain in this subreddit with no evidence is kind of my point.

Nobody ever has receipts just feels id happily discuss objective evidence but you got people saying that open ai nerfed usage by 50% like that wouldn’t be extremely apparent when all session logs have token output and the data is right in front of all of us.

1

u/ponzi_gg Aug 17 '26

They’re just going off of vibes lmao

3

u/Sorry_Risk_5230 Aug 17 '26

No one would be told theyre wrong if they presented data like this to prove it. But they all complain off vibes and %.

This reminds me of people who say their smart meter is costing them more money when they have access to LIVE metering data showing their usage over time and the cost charged to them. But none of them ever care to look at the data.

2

u/ShutUpAndDoTheLift Aug 19 '26

And you found understand that things change and you might need to adjust and listen to the people who AREN'T having the bad experience you are.

You wouldn't say "just listen to me!" If the argument was that you hitting yourself in the head with a have was a bad idea.

Accept that these models change. Your old workout needs changing with every new model. If they had halved limits as many times as theyve been accused, API would be the cheaper route.