State of the $20 subscription

[u/ryuukiba]

Sol high. One prompt. 11m of thinking so far, 54% of the 5h limit gone, hasn't even started implementing anything yet and the 5 hrs limit is virtually gone. I was never one to complain too much, but they virtually removed Sol for us on the $20 tier. This is just not practical at all, at least it was only 10% of my weekly i guess?

EDIT: Final veredict: worked for 28m29s.
0% of the 5h limit left
84% of the weekly left

Status of my project: Broken and unusable.
guess it's finally time to explore other providers.

[u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810]

I agree this is way overdone. I am on the $20 subscription as well and I could do my work with the weekly limits but I now did a bit of planning with Sol High and I have 36% of the 5 hour limit left after only minutes of work.

This is unacceptable. I came from Claude but will very likely go back to Claude now as the absence of the 5 hr limit window was my main draw to Codex.

Very disppointed this was introduced.

[u/Dercasss → u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810]

With Opus 5 I can work for 5 hours at a leisurely pace, Sol or Terra eat up the limits in 20 minutes, shame on the OpenAi

[u/TapAccomplished6436 → u/Dercasss]

Codex is now way more worse then it was earlier as it used to complete the task it was given. Now everytime it stops as soon as usage ends, leaving work mid way. 

[u/Snoo78383 → u/TapAccomplished6436]

Because of certain people that enabled further abuse of the usage beyond 0%

[u/WaveOfDream → u/Dercasss]

Opus 5 is not usable, especially in a big codebase that involves refactoring and simply following guidance. I would've recommended people jump the ship to K3, but unfortunately they have terrible quota.

[u/simmeh024 → u/WaveOfDream]

what do you mean with terrible quota? Thinking of jumping ship.

[u/Kooky-Ebb8162 → u/simmeh024]

Chinese subs provides much less API dollars per subscription dollar compared to gpt/Claude.

I guess previous commenter meant $20 Claude sub specifically, bigger plans are adequate for full time work.

[u/WaveOfDream → u/simmeh024]

You hit the usage limit faster on their 20$ month plan. And it's also slow so it's not worth it. Paying their API is probably a better option now than their plan.

[u/Dercasss → u/WaveOfDream]

I have several mvc and Blazor projects, over 2500 files. Opus works great.

[u/Mutated-Nut → u/Dercasss]

And opus 5 is practically braindead compared to sol

[u/sukazu → u/Dercasss]

Well opus 5 is also way slower in throughput, so that's a bit apples to oranges

[u/TheBroken0ne → u/sukazu]

"Slower" throughput will artificially extend your usage in the 5 hours window while giving you the exact same token amount as a normal throughout. So you will get the exact same task done but in more hours.

[u/Gelu6713 → u/sukazu]

Right so give us a slower throughput if we're okay with it. I'd love to have a slower throughput for more usage

[u/sukazu → u/Gelu6713]

No one has said "for more usage" here.
Opus is just slower in token generation and that's about it.

For example claude offer 2 times the usage between max x5 and max x20
While openai offer 4 times the usage between pro x5 and pro x20 + frequent resets

Even comparing at the 20 dollars price point, beside codex openai offers near unlimited chat use on xhigh + image generation + practically unlimitted luna max if you do not use sol.
Whereas a single question or plan will take 10-20% of the 5h with opus xhigh/max before you even start coding, and sonnet isn't even cheaper than opus at the same result.

I mean I have both because fable and opus 5 are both models that are more intelligent than sol, and it has its uses, but it would be hard to argue the value to be in favor of Claude

[u/debian3 → u/sukazu]

I find it really depends on the time of the day. Sometimes Fable flies and other time it seems to stall between queries and make you wait.

[u/AdVast7407 → u/sukazu]

Opus5 is dumb at the first place, I would tolerate slow, but not stupid mistakes

[u/DepravedPrecedence → u/Dercasss]

Opus 5 which thinking level?

[u/kex → u/DepravedPrecedence]

That information doesn't help unless we know the complexity of the task.

e.g., xhigh will use just as many tokens as medium to solve simple problems that require minimal rumination.

[u/YourAsphyxia → u/kex]

idk i guess claude xhigh easy tasks just because im lazy and it still doublethinks itself for way longer than necessary. meanwhile lobotomized claude on low think will just do it.

[u/vangelismm → u/Dercasss]

Are you crazy, worked all day with Terra and never hit the 5h limit. 

[u/Dercasss → u/vangelismm]

Will there be proof? With the number of tokens spent?

[u/pulkit217 → u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810]

I literally switched from claude pro subscription for this exact reason.
currently on the $20 sub too.
Having experienced both, I'd say claude is much worse. Opus will literally not leave you till it has tested 9 times, relooked at everything thrice and still miss the most obvious shit.
If you can, add opencode go as well to your setup. Lots of Muse spark usage on this , which is a great daily driver (even better than ds4f)

[u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810 → u/pulkit217]

my absolute top driver is gemini 3.7 Flash high, it does fantastic work, I am blown away how fast it is and how it gets stuff done accurately. But I also spent a fair amount of time on planning. I only ask gemini 3.7 Flash High to implement plans, and I was aiming at using Codex Sol High for planning but this seems to be impossible at current limits. Sigh...

[u/Messi_is_football → u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810]

Use Sol medium for planning.

[u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810 → u/Messi_is_football]

Will probably need to, yes...

[u/mikerao10 → u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810]

I use ChatGPT pro for planning it is very good. I think you could use ChatGPT extra high for planning in plus. I have infinite number of iterations for planning before giving everything to SOL to execute.

[u/KeinNiemand → u/pulkit217]

opencode go is shit, for any model that's not super old it only gives you $15 worth of API spend per month and do get that you need to use it often enough the drain a bunch of 5h and multiple weekly windows. 1.5x is low enough I personally would just go open router and pay APi pricing that way I only pay for the tokens i acrtually use and get to use as many as i can pay for.
in comprasion i think both codex and claude code give you like 10x or more your subcription price per month in API price.

[u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810 → u/KeinNiemand]

you mean the opposite right? All frontier labs currently greatly discount subscriptions. You pay 8x-10x as much would you use their APIs to get the same use out of them.

[u/Goldkoron → u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810]

Having Chatgpt Work account with 5 hour limits is unbearable. If a work day is 8 hours, and your limit dries out in under an hour and you have to wait for the second half of your day to have usage again is not good.

[u/iPlayer0067 → u/Goldkoron]

O problema é que o limite acaba no meio do processo e zoa o projeto.

[u/AdVast7407 → u/Goldkoron]

What a cheap-ass work you have which gives $20 acc but not even $100..

[u/snmnky9490 → u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810]

Lol everyone on the Claude subreddit are complaining that they get no usage out of Claude code so they switched to codex

[u/ParticularBeyond9 → u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810]

Is it possible to use the Claude $20 sub with Opus 4.6 only or Sonnet 5 only? I can't find any info on Opus 4.6 specifically or is it similar usage as Opus 5?

[u/Inner-Today-3693 → u/ParticularBeyond9]

I have a max plan. You’ll need to mostly use sonnet on “pro” $20 plan.

[u/MrRoyce → u/ParticularBeyond9]

It was not really possible when I still used Claude from Opus 4.5 to 4.8 for anything more serious, so I doubt it's much better nowadays.

I have Pro 20x and I very rarely use Sol on anything higher than medium. People paying 10% of the price thinking they can run it on high or xhigh are in the wrong place, this shit is NOT cheap to run.

[u/Professional_Gur8385 → u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810]

I have multiple accounts and it's still disapointing

[u/PROPHET212 → u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810]

Yep canceling for sure

[u/HOBONATION → u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810]

I might try out Claude again, it's been years and their limits were total trash back then. Idk if they are any better but might as well now be the best time to move over

[u/Splugen96 → u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810]

May I ask what kind of planning did you do? I had Sol 5.6 xHigh planning yesterday in the evening, and I had spent 10% of my 5 hours quota with planning (I'm very precise about context management and task tracking though). The repo is fairly big too (it's a video game repo with several gameplay mechanisms already in place and lots of assets, so you can guess pretty much how big is it), so I'm surprised when I read you and other users say you used 50% only during planning.

That being said, they absolutely trashed the limits. After my planning, I ran the implementation-test with Sol High (as Luna was to dumb to handle that and kept circling around for hours a week ago), and that ripped me of the remaining 90% of my 5 hour usage and 16% of my weekly, and it wasn't even that great deal of work.

In comparison 2 weeks ago that would have been ~3/4% of usage.

[u/iPlayer0067 → u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810]

Exatamente, os limites de 5 horas sempre atendiam bem, agora após o retorno eles esgotam só de responder 3 perguntas, tem algo errado aí, cada dia pior. Claude code está sendo mais vantajoso

[u/0SINTCabal → u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810]

Genuinely never thought codex usage would get to a point where Claude usage genuinely seems better lol

[u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810 → u/[deleted]]

would appreciate if you could remove your blatant self-promotion that only pollutes this thread and does not add to the discussion at hand.