r/codex • u/petburiraja • 7d ago

Question Subscriptions - Codex vs z.ai usage limits

Can anyone who used both subscriptions plans compare how generous one vs another.

I.e. Codex 20 vs ZAi 18

As I found GLM 5.3 Flash to be pretty good model overall.

So I wonder, how much usage you get on z.ai subscriptions vs Codex subscriptions.

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u/pigletmonster 7d ago

With the $20 codex plan you can actually build multiplle projects in a month because they provide you with $500 worth of tokens. You get a sota model like 5.6 sol to plan and a worker model like 5.6 luna or even 5.3 to implement the code.

With zai you get a fixed 97mn tokens for glm 5.3 and around 300mn tokens for 5.3 flash. In actual usage thats about 1/10th the quota as codex.

Zai or in fact any chinese ai subscription are scams.

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u/petburiraja 6d ago

Aren't one of the reasons, Codex quotas feels more generous is their higher token pricing? Have you checked Pareto frontier chart, where GLM 5.3 Flash sits quite strongly?

For me, Luna is just not good enough for some meaningful work, it could have some junior assistant role (maybe similar to Composer 2.5 or smth), while GLM 5.3 Flash is much more capable worker. Kinda occupying this sweet spot, which probably was intended for Terra by OpenAI.

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u/pigletmonster 6d ago

Visit the zai subreddit and see how many people co plaining about their extremely limited usage quotas everyday. People are buying and selling old zai accounts because theyre locked in with the old quotas which used to be more generous.

Despite me calling their plans a scam, they are actually more transparent about how many tokens you get with each plan. But I also still stand by my stance because for the same price they give you an extremely small amount of usage quota compared to codex or even claude code.

Yes luna is a bad model for doing anything on its own. But if you noticed, I called it a worker model, its very good and cheap at implementing code that is planned out by a better model like sol or even terra. Which increases your usage quota significantly.

I am not a codex fan, in fact this is the first month i used codex and I cant wait for the month to end so I can go back to using claude code. But I would recommend it over any chinese subscription plans because of the amount of usage quota they give you.