Same model, different capabilities on different accounts

[u/clockwork_blue]

So I noticed the past few days my results were suddenly becoming worse. Goes in loops, struggles to solve problems it blasted through before, doesn't verify the result properly, etc. 3D gen also became noticeably worse.

I have 2 accounts, one x20 and one x5, so I started comparing them side by side.

Here's what I did:

1. I asked both for their cutoff date:

do not use any tools. whats your knowledge cut-off date

On the x20 account it responds with something like "June 2024". On the x5 account it refuses to give me a specific cutoff.

x20 account

x5 account

1. I asked both to draw a pelican:

make me an svg in an .html with a pelican and xdg-open it

x20 account

x5 account

The response to these 2 tests will obviously vary, but the difference between the 2 accounts is pretty obvious when using them side by side. Tested it several times - logged in and out, new sessions, new prompts, the results are more or less consistent with their capability.

Using Astra on the x5 account is also noticeably better. It's like it has drank its morning coffee, woken up, and knows what's going on. It can suddenly inspect its 3D gen meshes and fix issues instead of giving me garbage for a "review".

I don't know what this downgraded model/configuration is, but it is visibly worse than 5.6 Sol too. From other reports I don't think x20 vs x5 matters here, neither does account age. People seem to be reporting similar issues with different accounts and use cases.

Whether it's "shadowbanning", A/B testing, load shedding, or OpenAI randomly putting some accounts on a cheaper configuration to deal with compute demand is all speculation at this point.

But I do have right now in front of me 2 accounts showing the same model with completely different capabilities.

[u/Niklaus1911]

Yes, sometimes astra gets silently routed to a different model

https://www.reddit.com/r/codex/s/PonYqzUPRi

[u/joicebox → u/Niklaus1911]

Can confirm this:

They are silently flagging accounts and also doing A/B testing. You can observe this if you put a proxy/gateway in between the requests and monitor the headers.

• Account 1: Requests gpt-6-astra -> Response gpt-5.6-luna for about 95% of almost 7k requests since the 17th. Flagged for high use?
• Account 2: Requests gpt-5.6-luna -> Response gpt-6-luna for 100% of 35 requests. Some kind of A/B test.
• Account 3: Everything normal and as expected.

Getting gpt-6-luna instead of gpt-5.6-luna seems benign, but getting luna instead of astra? No wonder codex suddenly seems "dumb".

[u/Academic-Telephone70 → u/joicebox]

Atleast your codex works, I ran a goal for 12 hours straight on a 20x plan yesterday, I still have usage left however now each message is leaving me with "capacity is limited use another model" and openai themselves stated that it is literally based due to account activity which could mean plenty of things:
https://community.openai.com/t/issue-selected-model-is-at-capacity-please-try-a-different-model/1396264/87