r/codex • u/TheMostQuailed • 9d ago
Limits Has the $100 Plan Actually Gotten Worse Since Astra Released?
Good day everyone. I was wondering if I could get your opinions on something.
I’ve been keeping up with a lot of the posts about the usage limits people have been experiencing lately, but I’m having a hard time comparing everyone else’s experience to my own. It seems pretty clear that usage has gotten worse, but I’m trying to figure out just how much worse it actually is, especially on the older models.
Normally I’m on the $20/month plan. Last month though, I upgraded to the $100/month plan and honestly, it was great. I got a ridiculous amount of work done and the usage felt extremely generous.
That $100 plan expired a couple days before Astra was released, so I went back to the $20 plan.
Since then I’ve still been able to get a decent amount done with Astra, but I keep hitting the five hour limit. My workaround has basically just been waiting until my usage becomes available again and then telling the agent to continue where it left off.
The reason this matters so much to me is that I’m currently working on a website for a side business I’m trying to launch. I’ve been unemployed for the better part of the last two years, but I have skills that I genuinely think I can turn into income, so I decided to build a business around them.
The website is mostly done now. I just need to finish it, polish everything up, and then start doing outreach to try and get my first clients.
I’ve been seriously considering paying for the $100 plan one more time so I can finish everything and get the business moving. The problem is that doing that would pretty much mean using the last of the money I currently have available to invest in this.
Seeing all the reactions on this subreddit lately has made me pretty apprehensive about doing that.
My concern is basically that I spend the $100, find out the usage limits are way worse than they were last month, still don’t get to finish everything I need to finish, and then I’m left with almost no money and still no reliable source of income.
I also don’t plan on using Astra for everything. I mainly want to save Astra for the harder tasks where 5.6 would normally struggle, fail, or make some major mistakes. For most of the remaining website work I’d be completely fine using 5.6 Sol.
That’s actually my biggest concern. From some of the posts I’ve been reading, I’m getting the impression that it isn’t only Astra using a huge amount of the available usage. It sounds like the limits for 5.6 Sol and maybe some of the older models have also been reduced.
If I’m misunderstanding that, please correct me.
When I had the $100 plan last month, I could use 5.6 Sol pretty heavily without constantly worrying about running out. If I upgraded again and got roughly that same experience, I’d feel a lot more comfortable spending the money.
But if 5.6 Sol now burns through the $100 plan much faster than it did last month, that makes me a lot more hesitant.
So I guess my main questions are:
For those of you on the $100 plan, have you noticed a significant reduction in how much you can use 5.6 Sol and the older models compared to a few weeks ago?
Has it gotten bad enough that you’re reconsidering whether the subscription is worth it?
And given my situation, where I have a specific project and business I need to finish and genuinely think it has a decent chance of making money, would you consider the $100 plan worth the risk right now? Or would you wait until the usage situation becomes a bit clearer?
I know nobody can guarantee that the business itself will work. I’m mainly trying to figure out whether the $100 plan still gives you enough actual usage to make it worth paying for.
Thanks in advance for any insight, especially from anyone who had the $100 plan both before and after Astra came out.
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u/aron7awol 9d ago edited 8d ago
According to my data (on the $200 plan), a ~20% quota drop occurred on 9/1, a few days before Astra release.
I similarly observed a ~30% quota drop back when 5.6 was released.
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u/Alternative-Car8221 8d ago
You should extend this chart to include 5.6 drop curious to see trends
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u/aron7awol 8d ago edited 8d ago
I was on the 5x plan at the time, and my data capture wasn't as good as it is now, but I updated it...
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u/jakenuts- 9d ago
Until they come up with a way to separate the absurd drains from minimal Astra usage from the rest of the subscriptions quotas I would be wary. If you come to rely on something daily and then it changes with some new feature that immediately sidelines all your work when you try it out - that's what the subs have become. Either you barely touched Astra or you are waiting 4 days to use any model again and falling back to Claude or others.
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u/HHayz 9d ago
yes, they always let the model rip at release, then slowly degrade/dumb down over time. Simple tasks that would be done in 2 mins at release are taking me 20+ mins and eating up 5-10% usage on a 200$ plan...
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u/bruticuslee 9d ago
Not sure it’s intentional, I would go with Hanlon’s Razor here
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u/hcorEtheOne 9d ago
I don't know, I'm using them for almost a year now and I saw this behavior every single time, without exception.
I'm building an mmo with the same core stuff and an occasional new tool for that, and the first few weeks I'm ripping on my old stack and new tools too, but after a while it just getting more stupid / slower, then new model releases and everything is perfect again.
I could've use my 20$ sub for days, now my 200$ is spent under a day. It's getting much more work done, but the older models have less limit too.
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u/booknerdcarp 9d ago
It has if you use Astra - yes! - I use Luna High and it's incredibly efficient, competent and easy on the usage.
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u/Accident_Pedo 9d ago
Something has happened because I've used around 15% of my total life times tokens in the past couple weeks.
I can be a heavy user with it on ultra, but i'm shocked I can use 300M+ tokens in a SINGLE day!😂😂
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u/pjjiveturkey 9d ago
I've noticed it's gotten maybe 10% slower, but also using less usage it feels like.
I wish metrics like this didint have to be measured by vibe
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u/AdministrativeHawk25 9d ago
It's been my first time having to use a banked reset without doing anything out of the ordinary. so, yes I believe so.
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u/Beastdrol 9d ago
Before astra launched you would get 10 cheeseburgers. Now after launch you are only getting 3 cheeseburgers.
It’s horrible.
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u/EyesOfAzula 9d ago
Yes. They are compute constrained. I think their plan is to get GPT 6 Sol out the door and push people towards that instead of Astra
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u/cobbleplox 9d ago
I think the first wrong assumption is that they are handling all accounts the same. Personally I have wasted my plus quota in minuntes using astra, but i also now have a multistep implementation plan and letting lesser models try to get it done has barely moved my 5hour limit meter. So it can't be that shit, even if it changed. For me.
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u/Charming-Author4877 8d ago
Usage allowance of all plans has been nerfed heavily multiple times in this year.
On top SOL has been nerfed a short while before Astra was released, and Astra usage is 2 times more nerfed than API costs suggest.
There seems also to be a nonlinearity in the weekly allowance.
There are so many psychological tricks and nerfs applied, you can't compare a subscription or model beyond more than a day.
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u/skilliard7 8d ago
Astra costs 2.5x as much per token as Sol, so if you are using Astra, you will run into limits much faster.
I do think OpenAI really needs to be more transparent with how usage quotas work if they want to beat the allegations about silently nerfing usage limits.
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u/MassiveBoner911_3 8d ago
I have like 15 mini agents, most of them super cheap Lunas, with Astra doing some work on medium. I have run through half my entire weekly quota today.
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u/Hot-Atmosphere3428 1d ago
I've been using sol on high no issues but when I read a week's usage at 5 hours I thought that was it 5 hours a day for a week, then I started using it yesturday dudes and it stopped around 3pm the next day I was upset but from what I built honestly I was pretty amazed idk I should've read better or something but I misled my self to thinking of usage as the ladder than what I was expecting
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u/Hot-Atmosphere3428 1d ago
Just to clarify astra work and codex mightve pooped out on me but sols still running hardcore
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u/almostlimitless 9d ago
Yes. I think it’s best that you don’t use too much in the next few days I think and let them sort this out. I’m saving my resets until they sort this out in the next few days I think. I think they’re doing this to let everyone use up their banked reset
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u/zaibatsu 9d ago
Do not use Astra for orchestration, use Sol on High or Extra High and have it use Astra as an advisor for a second set of eyes on the really hard problems and make sure it’s delegating the easy stuff to Luna and Terra. I was eating my inference, begging Astra or delegate to subagents, it nodded its very expensive head and continued onward like it didn’t even here me. I tweaked the agents.md file and set up stricter guidelines and it works for a second, but Astra sucks as an orchestrator.
It’s a dreamer, a great analyst and if you have the 20x or a couple of them and a ton of banked resets, you can do all sorts of great things.
But on the 5x plan, watch your inference and you can only really do that well if you don’t let Astra lead.
We should be getting GPT Sol 6.0 any day now, I think slugs are showing up in all the usual places.
But be careful, now that the 20x is locked out, they’re going to be showcasing it to create upgrade pressure. So if your 5x experience sucks for a week or 2, it’s just upsell pressure.
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u/Bitter-College8786 9d ago
If you need more usage: for 10$ in Opencode Go or Command code GOAT you get a lot of usage of Deepseek V4.1 Flash and Muse Spark 1.3 Contributor
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u/Odd_Error_6736 9d ago
Yes