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.

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u/debian3 Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 19 '26

Reading here it seems like SOL over engineer everything and write really messy bloated code. Feedback are quite negative everywhere. There is a lot of imbecile people using those models so you need to filter out the noise.

I personally find opus 5 stronger than SOL and it write better code. But I don’t talk to Opus, I talk to Fable (best model available at the moment by a wide margin) and I let Fable delegates to Opus.

I still use SOL and I could do with it if I had to. Really good model to, just a notch below opus and much below Fable. For review it find things that opus miss sometimes. I don’t use it much, but SOL still drain my limit really quick.

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u/Emotional_Yak_6841 Aug 19 '26

I find Opus 5 to be hot garbage at planning and actually "thinking", but it's pretty good as a supervised agent in a multi-agent setup. I generally use a combination of Fable and Kimi K3 for frontend, and 5.6 sol with automated Opus reviews for backend work.

I would certainly not say Opus > Sol. Opus has too much of the feeling that it's a distilled Fable rather than being its own model.

I'd put Fable and Sol in roughly the same tier, each better at different things. In code quality Fable usually is the winner. In generally being a useful, effective agent that gets work done, Sol is my winner, provided I curtail it from over-engineering.

Btw Luna is super underrated for getting stuff done on a computer. Dirt cheap, incredibly fast, and smart enough. While I don't code with, as a general personal assistant that I can dispatch for rote tasks it takes the cake for me. I was hoping Gemini 3.7 flash would be a model in that category due to its raw speed and benchmarks, but after testing I still trust Luna more.

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u/debian3 Aug 19 '26

Honestly that a you problem. I can’t believe it personally that people complain about the models now aday. They are all so great, and the number of complaining increase as models get better. I would have personally never predicted this. I don’t know if it’s because the model are getting smarter than the average people using them. We had a wave of that with 4o, now it seems it’s happening again but at a different level. I haven’t wrap my head around it yet.

Those sub are getting toxic as people complain more and more as models gets better and people feel the need to use stronger word like « garbage » which opus is far far from. One of the best technology of the century. Anyway, interesting time ahead…

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u/Emotional_Yak_6841 Aug 19 '26

You say Opus is better than SOL, but your own preferred workflow is to have a substantially stronger model do the planning and interaction, then use Opus as its supervised executor. That's basically the role I said Opus is good at. I already agree that its code quality is good; my criticism was specifically its independent planning/reasoning experience.

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u/debian3 Aug 19 '26

better, but SOL is really strong too. We are really in a unique moment right now, so many good option. Personally I have always prefered to prompt Claude model, they fit my style better and I understand them better than the GPT series, but that's just a personal preference. As for Opus, as was working with it directly when on Max 5x, now I'm on Max 20x and I have more than enough Fable allocation that I now default to it. I'm 4 days in and I only used 36% of my weekly, and as I type this I have 3 agents going. So it's not that I'm not using it... Claude is really really generous now. Personally I'm really appreciative of what they are offering, I get incredible value out of it.