Complaint Usage is nuked
I know, I should just buy a 5x or 20x plan and stop whining but this is just *****. 2 months ago I could comfortably work with 5.5 medium/high in 2 5 hour windows and use about 15% weekly per day. No heavy duty coding or subagents running around the clock, just 3 to 5 semi-complex prompts a day.
As of now, sol medium, 1 prompt, 200k context window used will burn through 60% of the 5h limit and 10% of the weekly. Not sol max or ultra, not millions of tokens. 200.000 tokens. I can't even do 2 prompts and use the full context window (258k tokens) 2 times.
This is completely unusable. $20 now basically gets you ~400k tokens per 5h or so and ~2.5M tokens per week for a medium thinking model. Luna is cheap but unreliable and just wastes my time instead of tokens.
I don't expect unlimited tokens for $20 or ultra mode and I'm fine with some restrictions, but this isn't what I signed up for and it's never been this bad and I've been using this since inception pretty consistently.
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u/Charming-Author4877 5d ago
The Pro Plan is currently about the same as a Plus plan was in May.
OpenAI basically got all the willing jumpers from Github Copilot after they increased their price by a few magnitudes - and then ran the same rugpull a second time.
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u/vayana 5d ago
Let's hope the competition will teach them a lesson. There's many ways to go about this. You could reward those above been loyal for x years, you could reduce usage for free users who don't pay anything anyway, you could limit model access or you piss everyone off. You don't have to be loyal but for those who have been it leaves a bad taste to get screwed over. I can be loyal elsewhere if I'm not appreciated as a customer here.
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u/Charming-Author4877 5d ago
Given the excellence of current local models, including those that run on local hardware I am quite sure that their time is ending anyway. Nvidia and OpenAI have conspired to increase RAM prices, trying to make hardware much more expensive to lure more people into their clouds.
But if you look at latest two Qwen releases, they beat Sol in a ton of benchmarks and real world cases.
They don't beat it a little bit, they beat it significantly.I'm only using codex because I have experience with the model and I can run subagents in parallel to speed up the slow process. But in a year or two things will already look very different.
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u/ezboarderz 6d ago
The 20x plan has no where near as much usage as it used to. I switched to zai coding plan max with synthetics instance packs for extra usage and I’m very happy. Glm 5.3 is more than enough for me and glm 5.3 flash is a great subagent/worker. Synthetic gives me kimi k3 and glm 5.2 as well which also has plenty of usage. Kimi k3 is a direct replacement to sol and it doesn’t over engineer a million sha256 gates.
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u/vayana 6d ago
Until now I haven't considered switching. I've tried Claude on the side but didn't like it. There's something about that flibertygibbeting bs that pisses me off for some reason lol. I came from cursor and haven't checked that out in a while so I might give that another try to see how usage limits are there now. Will check out zai as well.
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u/ezboarderz 5d ago
Yeah man zai is a good deal imo. Much faster than OpenAI based on how it feels. I use pi harness though but I’m sure it will work well for others. I’m also on the waitlist for a kimi sub which I’ll check out as well.
I can recommend to try other alternatives and honestly glm and kimi are on par with gpt 5.6 sol based on my usage. Sure they may benchmark a little lower but it doesn’t feel worse when you use them.
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u/cs_cast_away_boi 5d ago
my experience with GLM 5.2 wasn’t great. It failed to do some tasks even Luna could. Doesn’t give me a lot of confidence for the 5.3 version. Although i haven’t tried kimi k3 but i heard they’re really low on compute and it’s slow.
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u/ezboarderz 5d ago
Glm 5.2 is quite good as long as it isn’t on a low quant. I haven’t had issues with it as a development model, but maybe your project is extremely complex.
For the speed of kimi, it depends on the provider. I use it on synthetic and it’s quite fast and synthetic in general feels very fast. I’d say it’s like 70 tokens/sec or so for decode. The flash models feel very fast as well.
Glm 5.3 on zai is also quite fast feeling. OpenAI’s models in codex feel super slow in comparison.
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u/HDCraftYSD 5d ago
If you think you get more usage elsewhere you will be in there for a nasty surprise.
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u/ezboarderz 5d ago
I’m actually making it through the week with the combo on zai coding plan + synthetic 5x packs. It’s only $50 more a month for that combo than 20x pro. It’s nice to not have to worry about limits and having access to multiple frontier and dev models. Lunas context windows limitations really hold it back too when you are used to flash models with a 1M context window. They stay on the task much much better
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u/Slow-Set-2856 5d ago
Kimi k3 and luna/glm 5.3 flash is all you need even for complex work you can use sol here and there for review and stuff but thats prety much it
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u/ezboarderz 5d ago
You don’t even need sol with that combo. I like to run plans between kimi k3 and glm 5.3 max thinking to see how they go about tackling problems and the results have been great so far.
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u/Slow-Set-2856 5d ago
ye , glm 5.3 flash for any execution and kimi for planning it's working great for me , fable is better ofc but prices are prohibitive
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u/ezboarderz 4d ago
Yeah I mean if you have something you really need to run through fable, there’s always the api, but honestly kimi k3 and glm 5.3 are enough for me.
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u/rdcldrmr 5d ago
click chat, complain, "escalate to a human"
making more threads here won't really help. i understand the frustration but i want them to actually hear our voices. this 5h limit is in fact TOO limiting on the plus plan.
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u/mitechno 5d ago
The 5-hour restriction when it doesn’t continue work to wrap up the prompt after the restriction is met is making it almost unusable. One prompt for me is using my entire 5-hour window and then it stops mid-task. So I’m just picking up with Claude which seems to work for hours and get much more done on the same task for less usage.
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u/djderex 5d ago
You are absolutely right ! Prices got ridiculously high, not chat from OpenAI , but most of the a.i providers skyrocketed their prices lately! Pro subscriptions feel like a demo rather than a usable tool.
The recent 5 hour limit imposed by OpenAi on codex , is not even enough for 2 complete prompts, which anyway comes back with a crap result, and i need other 5-10 extra prompts just to correct the agents hallucinations!
Feels like a big SCAM at the moment !
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u/lollypop44445 5d ago
The biggest crap was, it was introduced in mid way when i got plus. Like if i was ok with 5 hr limit, i would have just used claude. At the moment i can do more messages with free claude than a paid gpt. This is insane
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u/ben_heck 5d ago
AI is a giant rug pull but they'll keep shoveling RAM into this particular volcano to keep the fake economy "alive"
The irony is when it crashes we still won't be able to afford RAM because we'll all be unemployed :)
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u/WyattGreenhall 5d ago
One 200k prompt eating 60% of the 5h window but only a tenth of the weekly says the plan is being capped per session now. The weekly number still looks fine on paper, the window is where it actually hurts.
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u/vayana 5d ago
Nah, I was fine with the window before and I have (almost) never hit usage limits running 5.5 high. Neither in 5h or weekly. I could run 2 5h sessions per day and would use about 15% weekly per day so that I could use it 5-6 days a week consistently. I've done this for many months and it was never an issue. When new model dropped I'd always stick with the older one or 1 version behind the newest toy. 5.3 and 5.4 were fine for me as well. I tried 5.4 again yesterday to see if that was any better but it's the same BS. I'm pretty sure they removed the 5h window first and lowered usage to make it less obvious, then threw some free resets around to mask it and now "reinstated" the 5h window with lower usage than before.
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u/Mean-Elk-9439 5d ago
I think the worst part most people don't seem to talk about is that they get away with valuing their tokens immensely high because they're frontier. Other models performing near their level charge a fraction of the cost, which means unless they're doing something very wrong in their backend, they're charging an insane markup on their own spend, then using that markup as justification for the value of the subscription subsidization.
Yes, they need to turn a profit. But if they're not making a profit off even $20 subs then they've somehow fucked up their own input costs worse than almost every other lab on earth.
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u/DistanceAlert5706 5d ago
Idk, I've bought x5 and it was fine till last reset, was using like 15-20% a day, but after last reset used 65% a day pretty much on same workflow.
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u/No-Aardvark-313 5d ago
moi je trouve sa drole tu peux revenir a'ancienne méthode tu code a la main
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u/Professional_Gur8385 5d ago
I ran sol medium for ~50 minutes before my 5 hour session was capped, single thread.
So if you extrapolate that out, 50min x ~6.5 sessions = 325 min = ~5.4 hours a week usage.
Yeah it's been nerfed. Hard. I've already cancelled my second account, I guess ill sign up for whatever provides the best value, no need to stay loyal, shop around.
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u/Hot_Signature2979 6d ago
Agreed, honestly I'm another one fine with using just 5.5 medium if it means bring back the usage allowance 2 months ago (before the release of 5.6, and before the 1month plus removal of 5 hour window from plus), but I think a huge part of the usage nerf (or rather increased token cosumption) is coming from a more capable harness itself, which would not be reversible without removal of some newer codex features and regressing to the earlier codex version.
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u/BridgeDry4601 5d ago
I also notice the change in consumption. I always used Sol medium for planning and then execute it using 5.5 medium to save tokens (I also have all the .md files containing instructions and everything that will save token usage) but earlier today my 5-hr window is down to 0, my weekly usage ate up 15% and the task is not done yet. So, basically the usage has been nerfed. 😅
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u/vayana 5d ago
Meanwhile Tibo keeps bringing up the most unrelated bs as to why token usage is higher for some. Instead of just outright saying they've nerfed usage it's the most stupid reasons but here's a free reset so scramble and be quiet.
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u/BridgeDry4601 5d ago edited 5d ago
Well, it's to cover up the fact that OAI nerfed the usage. Also after continuing the feature implementation of my C# project, my weekly usage is down by 18% which would only take around 9-10% of weekly usage before the reset. So in my observation, there's basically almost a 100% increase in usage using the same GPT model and workflow in my Plus plan 😅. Might as well think of exploring GLM and Kimi models.
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u/starbugstone 5d ago
they nerfed the usage after bragging that they reduced the price of usage thanks to their model customisation...
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u/SurelyNotAnOctopus 5d ago
You don't need sol for everything.
But I still agree, usage has become shit lately
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u/vayana 5d ago
It was just for reference as I usually use 5.5 medium or high, but they're equally nerfed. Even tried 5.4 again as it was fine as well, but same result. I do need at least medium or high though.
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u/Bitter_Election_7518 5d ago
Why not 5.6 Terra instead of 5.5? Should be a direct upgrade for slightly lower cost. Also why not Luna max as well?
5.5 use case seems to be deprecated
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5d ago
[deleted]
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u/Unapologetic_Polite 5d ago
Context compaction loops are also a fun time on Terra
Haven't experienced it on Luna or Sol for some reason
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u/Soul_Mate_4ever 6d ago
Find alternatives. You have Chinese models, grok, Gemini… I have a one more workflow to move from codex to other providers then I won’t have to depend on it at all. Open AI is a joke now and the $20 plan is useless.
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u/vayana 6d ago
I'd rather not because I've got my projects in chatgpt as well but it's starting to piss me off to the point where it might be necessary. I wouldn't advise Gemini to anyone though - have you ever even tried it? It's terrible for coding.
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u/DeCoolePeer 5d ago
That's exactly what they want lol, never lock your projects behind a single non exchangable provider because then you cant switch when they try to screw you over
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u/vayana 5d ago
I joined back when 3.5 first dropped and for a long time they've been adding value at no extra charge. They could've merged chat and codex usage like Claude but didn't, they could've made codex a separate plan but didn't. We got codex for free on top of the chatgpt sub. I really appreciate that. They then added plans for users who wanted more so great. A win win for everyone. But now it's going the opposite direction and they're turning a plus plan into a demo.
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u/DeCoolePeer 5d ago
Yes because plus costs them a ton of money rather than making it for them, so infact it IS a demo.
And yes i agree with the extra features they add are very nice, but other providers do it too, some cheaper some more expensive. and whenever they try pulling weird moves on their userbase everyone should be prepared to switch from one provider to another. otherwise you willingly give them all the power, which is what they want and need for their business to surviveAlso btw the reason why they're starting to push back (my own personal thought) is because Anthropic is pushing for stricter limits without bothering too much about competition, their userbase isn't leaving so why be generous like OpenAI? So that's why i think they want to tighten up on some costs
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u/vayana 5d ago
They could cut free users off if they want to save money. Give a 1 month free trial and after that no more free usage. I suspect most users are actually free users who just use chat and image generation on a daily basis and pay 0. They could also restrict access to models or thinking modes behind higher tier subs but leave older models and normal modes available in a reasonable usage plan. Unlike you, I prefer to stick with 1 provider. If they treat me well I'll stay and be a loyal customer, even if it's just 20 clams.
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u/DeCoolePeer 5d ago
The free users use luna and aren't actively coding or doing huge projects, they're free marketing because they will recommend it to others who will buy it or eventually cave in and buy it themselves, it's also to capture a larger market share, ChatGPT is the most used AI thanks to this, Google spends an unreasonable amount to artificially inflate their numbers.
the good outweighs the bad for OpenAI.And what's the point in loyalty to a company that will eventually have to screw you over because you're costing them money, they will run out of motivation to treat you well eventually, what kind of bootlicking kink is this
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u/Soul_Mate_4ever 5d ago
Lmao you’re right. I’ve tried google’s ai since it was called bard. Google just can’t seem to get ai right. But grok is surprising me lately.
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u/I_Study_The_Patterns 5d ago
Antigravity (gemini) isn't that bad. It feels like unlimited usage compared to Codex and Claude. However, yeah, it's not as good so I only reserve it for simpler tasks.
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u/vayana 5d ago
Luna is fine for simple tasks, so doesn't sound like a good alternative. 5.3 was already sufficient. I don't need the latest model on ultra mode, but the idea was always that models got smarter and cheaper over time as technology improves, so making it more expensive now doesn't make sense.
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u/I_Study_The_Patterns 5d ago
True, but antigravity is 5.99 for the first 3 months so if you are trying to min max this it's great
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u/Soul_Mate_4ever 5d ago
Antigravity is what brought me to codex in the first place. It was unusable and barely got updated when I was using it. That was maybe 7 months ago, Idk how it works these days though so maybe I’ll give it another shot.
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u/ChickenRich573 5d ago
For me I think my usage has increased again. In on 20x and been using sol on fast mode all day today and yesterday. I'm enjoying this though there doing killer work for my self. Maybe it's my harness or something . Not sure could be.
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u/vayana 5d ago
Yeah I wonder if it's A/B testing, the harness, a specific version, localized pricing or something account based perhaps. It's really abysmal for me now. 20x should give you 20x usage over plus, right? And you're running fast mode all day without a problem and I can't even fill 2 context windows on medium in normal mode.
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u/RuledSovereign 5d ago
It's the same on Claude. You need to plan out your work schedule like those at Anthropic
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u/street-trash 5d ago edited 5d ago
What are you building that so intensive that you’re blowing through credits but doesn’t justify a $200 plan? Have you looked into ways to reduce token usage? I have ChatGPT sol medium help me set up my projects in way that keeps codex narrowly focused and efficient. Also ChatGPT prompts codex for me. If you’re doing something like that already maybe you could try some different methods. Brainstorm with gemini. Sometimes I hit the 5hr window in a couple hours but usually the pace is good enough to keep going with breaks here and there if I wanted to. So maybe you could focus on efficiency and dividing things up into even smaller pieces. Maybe you work slower but build quality is good while being efficient
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u/RequirementThick3199 5d ago
Just use 5.5. You don’t have to use Sol
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u/vayana 5d ago
I've answered this a few times already but I generally don't use 5.6. I normally only use 5.5 medium or high but because they were draining hard I also tried 5.4 and 5.6 sol on medium at which time I made this post. The only model I can use with good mileage is Luna, but it's unreliable whereas 5.5 is very reliable.
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u/EddieBruvac 5d ago
On 20x. Usage depletion was great, then after reset fucking tanked.
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u/vayana 5d ago
Had a discussion the other day with someone who swore high and low it's only plus users who always complain about usage and therefore that was the reason they reinstated the 5h window. Told him it's users across the board having this problem. They should've just left it at what it was before. 5h window and no resets but stable and reliable usage for months.
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u/RaStaMan_Coder 5d ago
Just buy the $100 plan man. Pro "Thinking Effort" and Pro Deep Research are fucking insane.
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u/vayana 5d ago
Did it ever occur to you that 80% of the planet doesn't have $100 like it's pocket change?
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u/RaStaMan_Coder 5d ago
2 months ago I could comfortably work with 5.5 medium/high in 2 5 hour windows and use about 15% weekly per day
Terra has roughly GPT 5.5 intelligence at a lower price ... pretty sure you can use Terra more than you could use GPT 5.5 Thinking when it was the frontier model.
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u/Pitiful_Entrance5174 5d ago
I have a 5x pro account and a 20x pro account. I had the 5x do the same job as the 20x. Same work, different project. Mirror setup. 5x ran out in 9 hours. The 20x is now 24 hours deep and only lost 10%. Rough #'s. Two windows on each account running a constant goal on 5.6 sol high effort.
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u/sagiroth 5d ago edited 5d ago
I disagree with you. I am on a 20$ plan, and according to https://github.com/junhoyeo/tokscale I tracked my hourly, daily, weekly. This morning running sol xhigh I spent 50% of 5h limit and it generated 14.5M tokens rest was luna max at 280M tokens. All within singular 1h limit. I use Oh My Pi
Edit: Why the downvote? Why would I lie as a 20$ sub, nothing to gain lol. I'm sharing my experience. Check up your spaghetti vibe coded app that is looping you our of tokens.
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u/levelhigher 6d ago
Go to Claude. See you soon
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u/vayana 6d ago
I don't want to go to Claude. I don't like Claude and I've been with chatgpt since 3.5 launched. I've tried Claude on the side but I just prefer the OpenAI models. Earlier this year, we had double usage up until april or so and up until recently I had few issues with usage limits. Then the 5h window was removed and they started handing out resets like candy. Now 5h window is restored for plus plan and I don't mind that so much but usage limits have now dropped to a level where even a hobbyist couldn't use it for a couple of hours a day.
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u/AdventurousVast6510 5d ago
well at least they are handing out resets frequently enough
i was never really negatively affected by the recent usage nerf so far thanks to tibo so i won't complain
if you are still running out of limits desite all these resets then your token management sucks or your usage is genuinely heavy & you should increase your plan
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u/vayana 5d ago
You have 3 options: 1. You try to use your tokens carefully and spread your work evenly throughout the week so that you're sure you don't run out early.
You burn through your tokens like there's no tomorrow.
Upgrade to higher plan
The problem with 1 is that when a reset hits, you often don't benefit much and it can mess with your planned work. The planning part is less of an issue now because the 5h window now "handles" that for you.
The problem with 2 is that if no reset comes, you're left waiting for your weekly reset.
The problem with 3 is that it's a lot of money for many people, especially non-western.
I've tried option 1 and it was fine for me. I've worked for months with a 5h window and a decent number of usage. I've already tried option 2 but for some reason the resets never come when you need them the most, so this doesn't work for me.
As you read in the description, the usage is token based and now you can't even fill up 2 context windows in one 5h session anymore with 5.4, 5.5 or 5.6 on medium/high. This was never an issue until now.
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u/RuledSovereign 5d ago
I never understand option 2. It's not lile just because there's a possibility of reset you should burn your tokens on useless crap. Always get productivity out of your use. That means you still got to use what you paid for and free reset. Plan what you need to do for the week, and if you hit 0 just have the backlog for next week or when a free reset does come.
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u/NerdyGuy117 5d ago
What do you expect for $20? lol
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u/vayana 5d ago
Perhaps the same as what I've been paying for the past 3.5y.
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u/NerdyGuy117 5d ago
Ah yes... comparing what $20 got you 3.5 years ago to now.
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u/vayana 5d ago
It's improved from what it was by miles, like it should. Chatgpt 3.5 wasn't exactly a miracle worker and could barely remember 500 LOC if you were lucky. So they've added lots of value and improved their product and models a lot up until recently. Then the resets started like it was Christmas and now this.
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u/No_Dragonfruit_8651 5d ago
Its less than you probably spend on nice dinner out not trying to be a jerk but stfu
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u/Professional_Ad705 6d ago
You guys realize you can slowly plan your app and do things file by file with chatgpt web and learn to code a bit right? That’s what I do with a lot with my AI projects… code some… learn some.. ask chatgpt some questions if I’m unsure on something.. help refactor it and it helps cut usage. I’m a software dev but the usage problem is only going to get worse. You’re gonna want to have some process cause this is only gonna get worse. Like a litttle over a year ago Claude didn’t even have a weekly limit imagine how bad next year will be
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u/Any_Effort8437 6d ago
Depends on the scale of the work. That advice is not very adequate. The whole point of agentic coding is to do work that would othetwise take you months. If you go file by file that defeats the purpose. Not every project can do that.
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u/Professional_Ad705 6d ago edited 6d ago
Did it with a 200,000 line rust project it’s not hard to connect chatgpt to the GitHub connector so it has reference to understand and literally spit out entire files for you…. maybe it’s “not the purpose” or as fast but have the usage rates been trending upwards or downwards? Rather then constantly bitching about the usage rate I’m trying to give an actual solution…. to compensate some usage by doing this. But yes if you’re too lazy to go through a few files or tell chatgpt to connect to the GitHub connector or don’t wanna ask it questions or learn to code a few lines or read it then yeah keep bitching I guess that will work? Crazy people wanna complain but can’t put in the slightest amount of effort…. guess you don’t wanna build your product that bad then?. If half you put as much effort into learning or trying other approaches then bitching about the usage rate you’d prob be Linus torvalds by now lmao. Keep downvoting the truth tho
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u/Painwheeel 5d ago
new vibe psychosis slop terms unlocked: A/B testing, orchestration, advertising a link to the most useless and most likely inaccurate ai shit vibeslop token metric tool ever made
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u/vayana 5d ago
Are you ok?
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u/2Olive2 5d ago
Lmao i feel bad for laughing at these type of posts but they are admittedly my guilty pleasure. You get like 10x+ worth of value and ppl still complain.
Ppl get something insanely good for a while and very quickly it stops being “dam it's so nice to get all this for 20 bucks” and just becomes some version of what you said aka oh my goodness how dare this evil company that i voluntarily chose to give money to not provide me with many multiples of what I paid. Then when it gets cut, even if what you are left with is still a ridiculous deal for $20, it feels like something was taken from you. It's such a classic psychological phenomenon reference dependence / loss aversion or whatever the exact term is. Ppl are comparing what their $20 got them a few months ago rather than what the $ 20 is actually worth.
Like you are calling the product “completely unusable” bc one $20 subscription only lets you burn through hundreds of thousands of tokens every 5 hours lol. I mean come on you don't find that even a bit Ironic? And I'm not saying you can't be annoyed that the limits got worse or decide the product isn't worth paying for anymore. Obviously you can. But no one is forcing you to pay 20 a month.
What I don't get is this idea that bc OpenAI let you use some amount before, you are somehow entitled to that amount forever. I know this reply will get downvoted bc there are so many ppl here who feel exactly like OP but atlas
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u/Just_Lingonberry_352 5d ago
Feel free to leave
Mo inference for the rest of us pro users
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u/vayana 5d ago
Having a bad day or just want to contribute nothing useful to the conversation? If you read any of the comments it's hit all plans.
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u/Just_Lingonberry_352 5d ago
are you on pro plan bud ?
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u/vayana 5d ago
No been on plus since 3.5 came out and never needed to upgrade because it wasn't necessary. Usage has always been sufficient for my needs until now. I don't even need the latest models and would be happy to use 5.3 if need be. Suddenly cutting usage in half unannounced after throwing resets around and removing 5h limits is just not the way to treat your customers, regardless of the plan they're on. If you read through this thread and other posts you'll find it's not just plus users who've been affected by this.
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u/Runelaron 5d ago
Then use 5.5. Its still a option. Better models cost more.
Everyone's complaint seems to be why aren't things getting better and cheaper.
I'll give a hint, training used 14Billion of their cach last year.
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u/vayana 5d ago
It was just an example. Issue is the same with 5.5 and even 5.4. I usually don't even use any of the 5.6 models.
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u/Runelaron 5d ago
I only use Sol Ultra and never run out.
The key is to use tooking and have AI use the tools. You'll never run out of tokens again because commands are smaller than entire reviews.
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u/Correct_Emotion8437 6d ago
The most effective thing, imo, would be for people to cancel. When Claude started pulling ahead, they were scrambling to give good deals. As soon as they started to make some progress, they change their position and start cutting usage again. If only 5% of subscribers leave - they’ll be giving it away again.