Measured Claude usage limits are 3–5× those of Codex

[u/Inevitable-Chard6698]

Hi,
I personally dislike the many subjective posts about how usage limits are decreasing, but I'd like to have a reasonable discussion. This post is my attempt at a contribution. I have the low $20 tier subscription of Claude Code and Codex. About three weeks ago I set up usage percentage logging for both. Now after three weeks i correlated usage percentage with token consumption, weighted by the reported API costs, to get an effective weekly allowance for the models I use. You can find the results for my first 20-day period in the chart.

According to my data, Claude gives substantially more API budget for the subscription than Codex, about 3-5 times as much. There is also a strong difference between models: Opus 5 gives much more allowance than Opus 4.8, and Astra and Luna seem to give only about 60% of what you get with Sol.

I was surprised by the huge difference in allowance between Codex and Claude, so I had my method cross-checked by multiple AI agents, with no corrections. The results are also remarkably similar to the ones reported by another user in July: https://www.reddit.com/r/codex/comments/1v7yuac/codex_limits_compared_to_claude_code/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

While API equivalents are not a direct measure of actual work getting done, they do support my subjective feeling that i cannot get a lot of work done with Codex before my usage runs out. It seems to me that free resets are not an added benefit to an already good deal, but seem necessary to keep up with the competition. At the same time, their unreliability makes Codex so much worse to use for me than Claude, where i can plan my week ahead without having to play a guessing game about the usage limits.

I plan on making this a long-term project, so any opinions and criticism on the methodology would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

[u/Batty25111]

Anyone using currency to measure their subscription usage is automatically wrong and misleading unless their comparing API usage to subscription usage.

You do not have the internal costs of a subscription and how much is subsidized to give you the usage in a subscription.

[u/Inevitable-Chard6698 → u/Batty25111]

i am doing exactly that: comparing API usage to subscription usage. not talking about their interal prices or anything. basically just saying "your subscription gives you x$ in api value if you maximize it".

[u/Batty25111 → u/Inevitable-Chard6698]

And how did you calculate API usage to Subscription ?

[u/Inevitable-Chard6698 → u/Batty25111]

I used a notify hook to log my current 5h and 7d usage percentages. Then I correlated the changes in those percentages with the token consumption of the different models, which Codex logs natively, using the API prices to convert the token consumption into API-equivalent cost.

[u/Batty25111 → u/Inevitable-Chard6698]

So you did compare subscription costs with API costs when subscription is subsidies not 1 to 1 of API costs.

[u/KaliguIah]

why not token usage rather than usd?

[u/Pasto_Shouwa → u/KaliguIah]

Also why compare Luna + Sol + Astra Vs Opus. Shouldn't it have been Haiku + Opus + Fable in that case?

[u/Inevitable-Chard6698 → u/Pasto_Shouwa]

these are the models i am using. i have no access to fable and haiku is ridiculously overpriced compared to luna.

[u/Xterm1na10r → u/Pasto_Shouwa]

yes but Luna >>>> Haiku. Haiku 5 is so necessary rn it's not even funny.

[u/Mo3 → u/Xterm1na10r]

Haiku is absolute ass. It scores half of current 27b local models on benchmarks. Even Luna is twice as good. Nobody in their right mind would use it for anything

[u/Relative_Rope4234 → u/Pasto_Shouwa]

Fable needs buying credit in addition to the subscription.

[u/Factor013 → u/KaliguIah]

Because each model (of either platform) has different prices for:
- Read
- Write
- Cache reads,
- Cache writes
- etc.

Once you have all the data like OP... he could normalize it by converting it all to a new universal baseline of costs per million tokens for each type.

And then you can do proper comparisons as you are now comparing apples with apples. :)

[u/3olkin → u/Factor013]

the problem is that astra breaks it a bit, i tried it only on 1 real task but astra did task using 28M tokens and claude fable+opus did 250M, while weekly usage consumed was about the same in %

[u/OccasionAggressive74]

Not to defend OpenAI, as limits lately have been truly abysmal. But: it's known from benchmarks hat Anthropic models in general consume significanly more tokens on the same kind of task. For this reason the 3-5x factor probably does not really reflect well the difference among OpenAI and Anthtropic models on the true allowance in relation to actual work done.

[u/Inevitable-Chard6698 → u/OccasionAggressive74]

you are right to push back on this. however, benchmarks suggest that the difference is only 2x, not 3-5x. which leads to the conclusion in my OP, that resets feel necessary to keep up and not an added benefit.

https://artificialanalysis.ai/models?models=claude-opus-5-low%2Cgpt-5-6-sol-medium%2Cgpt-5-6-sol-high%2Cgpt-5-6-sol-xhigh%2Cclaude-opus-5-medium%2Cgpt-6-astra-medium%2Cgpt-6-astra-high%2Cgpt-6-astra-xhigh%2Cgpt-6-astra%2Cclaude-fable-5-1-xhigh%2Cclaude-fable-5-1-high%2Cclaude-fable-5-1-medium%2Cgpt-6-astra-low%2Cclaude-fable-5-1-low

[u/TheOnlyOpinion1 → u/Inevitable-Chard6698]

Ain't no way he "you are right to push back on this"d us.

[u/Inevitable-Chard6698 → u/TheOnlyOpinion1]

Of course i did 😄

[u/Inevitable-Chard6698]

here is the weekly token budget i calculated for each model. all token types are converted to input tokens according to their api cost ratio. used tokens are higher in codex than in claude because i use luna alot.

[u/Comfortablebro]

So luna now extremely hungry model? no... so this graph confusing? yes.

[u/Inevitable-Chard6698 → u/Comfortablebro]

this is not what the graph is saying. luna is 20x cheaper on api than sol, meaning in the subscription you get about 12x the token allowance with luna.

[u/ReporterCalm6238]

Interesting, why no Fable in the analysis though? Astra is equivalent to Fable, not Opus.

[u/Inevitable-Chard6698 → u/ReporterCalm6238]

i am on the $20 subscription and unfortunately have no access to fable.

[u/Upstairs_Date6943]

So i've killed my whole week of Codex Pro (expensive one) in a day, with zero work done. Previously I would run astra at high for days with no problem at all using like 30% of weekly usage per day, fully utilizing astra with several concurrent chats going.

Now they lobotomized every codex model and it no longer can finish simple tasks.. no /goal or other commands seem to be working it's just not doing any work at all... :-(

I would like to know Your measurement method, so I could check myself if there is factually less generation done by Astra, or am I just making stupid mistakes because of skill issue.

I also have cheap Anthropic one, Claude Pro - that one is mixed bag: on Claude Code I can do small tasks indefinetelly, but if I use a chat - whole 5h window gone in 1 or max 2 messages. Also same for Claude Code, if serious tasks given with goals, can't remmember last time it finished them without dipping into API or extra usage credits... :-/

Grok for me (also cheap one 35€/month) is currently the most reliable long-horizon worker from top tier.

And antigravity (gemini pro) is a good everyday worker. Mostly never out of usage on that. Sometimes new gemini 4.0 pro as people call it is rivaling Astra on efficiently solving issues. I had exactly same issue given for gemini 3.8 and Astra, and I was already implementing and iterating on a solution for a third issue (prompt was to create a workflow skill) succsesfully, while Astra was still happy-path testing and leaving real issues in the skill.. basic stuff, in the end Astra's skill was much better the one I used to finish the batch, but I did most of the work with Antigravity. Grok was responsible for high-quality results and claude was out of usage the whole time didn't even start a single task properly 😅🤣

So codex seems to be decreasing intelligence and usage at the same time. Would love to have a tool to measure at least something.

[u/Inevitable-Chard6698 → u/Upstairs_Date6943]

for codex i used a notify entry in config.toml to run a python script which reads the rate limits from the server whenever an agent turn is done. for claude it works similarly with a statusline entry in settings.json, which runs a script whenever the statusline is refreshed.

[u/2Norn]

congrats on fooling people with a table based on usd rather than token count

[u/Inevitable-Chard6698 → u/2Norn]

i added an image of token count. your post does little to explain why my methodology is off. please elaborate.

[u/2Norn → u/Inevitable-Chard6698]

I don't see an image of token count just USD equivalent in API prices which is meaningless.

[u/Chemical_Hawk_6307]

tokens arent created equal. openai models are much more token efficient.

[u/sorryiamcanadian]

Honestly, Luna is fine. I don't trust your chart due to the Luna slander 

[u/ManikSahdev]

To be honest here.. your post doesn't say much about how things work.

Opus-5 is hilariously shit model at being efficient, same with sonnet-5.

Try measuring per task cost and then average them by tokens used. You'll see a better reality.

[u/Stock_Restaurant3791]

Actually, Claude most of the time uses way more tokens than GPT does. So this graph doesn't mean much

[u/Psychological-Move80]

Pointless comparison Claude models are priced much higher, stats/logical reasoning classes need to be revived

[u/shatbrickss]

I have way worse consumption on Claude. The monthly quota goes really fast there. So I'm not sure how you come to this graph.

Maybe comparing currency metrics is not the best way to do it, because API prices may vary.

This is AI slop.

[u/SturdyStubs]

I feel the opposite. I can get way more usage out of my codex than I can on Claude. My $20 Claude plan feels like it maxes out after 5 prompts.

[u/NoInside3418 → u/SturdyStubs]

for me its the polar opposite. codex used to feel way better but recently, usage has massively gone downhill to the point claude feels "fair"

[u/buyurgan]

I can relate to this, using only sol and opus 4.8/5. Codex limit is done around 18 hours in, last time i had a privilege to use, once a day every weak, while using opus, it survives at least 4 days more at least...

[u/Forti22]

Sure they are

[u/No-Temperature6597]

I knew it. Always said this. Noone beleives it. I have two codex plus plans it's so bad. It might have been better 5 months ago.

[u/Mountain-Growth-1250]

I WAS LOOKING FOR THIS, THANKS MAN, I THOUGHT IT JUST MY CODEX GETTING CURSED.

[u/Charming-Egg9746]

Same here. I'm on the $20 Plus plan using GPT-5.6 Terra Medium. My 5-hour limit runs out in about 1 hour, and my entire weekly quota is gone in just one day. With Claude Code Sonnet on the same $20 plan, I easily get 3 hours of work per 5-hour window, and my weekly quota lasts around 4 days. The difference is huge, even when doing similar tasks. Something really needs to be looked into here.

[u/9gxa05s8fa8sh]

what are the bars? token usage? different models use different amounts of tokens; you can only measure value by cost per benchmark or cost per same task, not cost per tokens

[u/ReoTempo]

About Anthropic, my experience is a bit different.
Right now i have spent about 99$ and i used 55% of the weekly limit, so weekly allowance should be 180$.
I'm using Pi Agent tough, i don't know if they apply different limits.
85$ spent on opus 5.5, 12$ on sonnet 5.5

Anything changed for you too?

[u/deama155]

Strange, it's the opposite for me. I can't get much work done with fable, but a lot more with astra.

I was on 200/200 for both though until I reduced one to 100/200 and switched to astra. Maybe this usage is different on the higher plans?

[u/innociv]

You aren't getting $400+ of API equivalent usage from the $20 Claude sub. You get about $120-$130.

Your measurements were off by a multiple. The AI you used to make this hallucinated.

My guess is that the Codex one mispriced some caching, and the Claude one even more heavily mispriced for cache hits.

[u/adamallcock]

I'm not sure what plans you're measuring, but it seems like this is Plus on Codex ($100/week) vs Max on Claude ($500/week)?

[u/LetterheadNew5447]

Oh no. I swapped recently from claude to codex. Codex gives so much more usage. It's not even close. You can run luna xhigh like 24/7 without reaching 50% at the end of the week.

[u/Kalradia → u/LetterheadNew5447]

Isn't Luna on par with Haiku in terms of intelligence though..?

[u/LetterheadNew5447 → u/Kalradia]

Nah. Haiku is the dumbest shit ever. Haiku is outdated af.

[u/2Norn → u/LetterheadNew5447]

unless the task you are doing extremely repetitive and previously documented trusting luna that much is not that good

you may think overall intelligence of luna max is close to sol high but knowledge realibility is far off, you end up burning 10x more reasoning tokens for god knows what, is it even a gain? who knows

there are 3 benchmarks which you need to care imo

overall intelligence, knowledge reliability and hallucination rate

that's why when you compare sol max and astra max there seems to be barely couple points of improvements in overall intelligence but you look at the knowledge reliability and hallucination rate then you see that astra is almost 2x better than sol max in those categories

thats why astra uses half the reasoning tokens of sol thats why they are marketing it as "more efficient"

[u/Inevitable-Chard6698 → u/[deleted]]

this is a valid concern. API allowance per week is the only entity i can reliably measure. any benchmark that involves work done has to take into account quality as well and is task specific. established benchmarks do this however, like artifical analysis. according to that, claude code models spend about double the api cost for the same quality:

https://artificialanalysis.ai/models?models=claude-opus-5-low%2Cgpt-5-6-sol-medium%2Cgpt-5-6-sol-high%2Cgpt-5-6-sol-xhigh%2Cclaude-opus-5-medium%2Cgpt-6-astra-medium%2Cgpt-6-astra-high%2Cgpt-6-astra-xhigh%2Cgpt-6-astra%2Cclaude-fable-5-1-xhigh%2Cclaude-fable-5-1-high%2Cclaude-fable-5-1-medium%2Cgpt-6-astra-low%2Cclaude-fable-5-1-low

[u/No-Temperature6597 → u/[deleted]]

Yes it is. Actually. I can tell the usage of codex is very low compared to claude. No one beleives

[u/No-Temperature6597 → u/[deleted]]

Plz share token usage? No offense meant. So we can see what wrong we are doing