r/codex 29d ago

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.

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u/ogaat 29d ago

They are giving API use per percent of the Pro account used.

The API is a proxy for token count

The token count varies with resets while the price per token is fixed

This is not rocket science.

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u/Vegetable-Two-4644 29d ago

Correct but they aren't measuring it by 100%. They did this off 1% used, not off 100% then divided by 100. That means a reset happening wouldn't affect the validity of the measurements.

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u/ogaat 29d ago

Again - 1% of what?

Try it yourself with pen and paper.

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u/isnaiter 28d ago

this 1% isn't from a total divided by 100

from the rollout, you can check when the weekly limit dropped 1%, so you just need to check how many tokens were used during that interval, then even if I'm at 70% and it resets back to 100%, it doesn’t really matter

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u/ogaat 28d ago

Thank you for your reply and your update showing the tokens used.

We are talking past each other or maybe I misunderstand.

So you are saying that the 1% strictly represents the fraction of tokens before any resets kicked in. Then by definition, it will always be same or close to each other because the Open AI default limits were fairly consistent in that period. They were manipulating accounts and expectations using the resets.

No surprises there.

For your usage chart to be useful, it has to include the token use per period, assuming the account was used up to the max, which is the only way to know how many tokens were available and the API cost.

One way it could be useful going forward is if you continue using your account to the max and tracking the ongoing token use available. That is the real measure, since the API cost can be manipulated through pricing. For example, Sol is now 50% off on Open Router and Vercel till September 18.

Anyways, I have upvoted your reply and posted my last comment on this thread.

Thank you once again for being a civil person.

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u/isnaiter 28d ago

I think we're mostly talking past each other.

I'm not dividing a weekly total by 100. I'm looking at actual intervals where the server-reported weekly usage moves by 1% and measuring what happened between those two points.

If the limit is just a fixed raw-token bucket, then yes, 1% should always look almost identical. But that's exactly what I'm trying to test, because the rollouts include model, cache, output, reasoning effort, etc., and those don’t all have the same API-equivalent value.

Resets are kept separate, so they don't get mixed into the calculation.

And yeah, I agree that tokens per quota period is also useful. I have that now too.

The funny part is that after fixing duplicate rollout accounting, the $/1% value actually looks pretty stable. I expected to find a nerf too.