People should realize by now that they aren't giving out thousands of dollars worth of compute in a $20 subscription out of the goodness of their hearts. The base level plans aren't meant for any kind of serious work beyond the equivalent of Google searches. At best treat it like a trial.
Once they capature enough marketshare prices and restrictions are both going to skyrocket. The difference between the subscription usage and API pricing are stark.
This would need to be a collusion across most of the providers (which I think is likely to happen) otherwise OpenAI would get ditched for Anthropic or vice versa, depending on who raises the prices more. If it happens across the board then enterprises that can use Chinese models won’t have that many options but to pay up.
Session limits are obnoxious and make Codex much less useful for me. I tend to code in spurts when I find some time and the $20 weekly limit was reasonable for my side projects.
I'm now hitting the session limits which means I can either purchase another plan, upgrade, or move off of Codex.
The equivalent alternative is not "no hourly limits", it's simply less overall weekly allowance for Plus users, or higher prices overall. It's a way to balance a scarce resource, and maybe the least frustrating one?
People have a fair chance to learn resource management in 5 hour chunks, while not being limited to silly models, and burning through all tokens in the first hour of the week. Seems mostly good.
Can you talk more about what changed in the last two months? I use open router for when I run out of limits, and I’ve done better than buying an additional sub for my uses. I thought about looking at a more niche player, but it’s not a priority for me yet.
First of all, it still has the 5 hour limits, which is what this thread is about and what I think what most in this thread want to avoid.
Second, the offerings are subject to change at random. They advertised $60 of usage for $10/month (knowing most users wouldn't reach that). This was consistently the case up until early August, when the per-model "usage multipliers" started taking over. Some models give $15 of usage per month, others $30, still others remain at $60, and apparently one at $100 now?[0] Either way, I don't want to expend the mental effort to track which model is the best deal for capability and usage.
Right now I use Hyper[1] and give $100/month to OpenAI. Not OpenAI's biggest fan, but the value is good right now, and that's what matters.
This is one of the reasons I’ve built a resident daemon on top a local CC/codex. 5h sessions is a [lazy] way to shift the scaling responsibility onto a user, so they are staying with us for a while
In all of them I've seen it's a window that starts when you haven't been using it in a while and begin work OR when your previous window expired. The window starts with a set number of tokens and cuts you off when they're used, it is fully reset at the end of the window (it's not a sliding window).
When you haven't used any tokens for an extended amount of time it reverts to the point where whenever you send your first token is when the window begins.
Clearly, the prices and limitations will increase with time if they don't find an efficient way to perform training and inference of LLMs. It would be great to see those issues being seriously addressed and, eventually, being fixed for good. THAT would definitely make an important and practical difference. Not only economically but also scientifically.
I dislike this approach. In my opinion it is much useful a 1x/2x billing based on hour like Deepseek does. Being unable to use it at the hours I need it makes me want to remove the service, not upgrading it.
People should realize by now that they aren't giving out thousands of dollars worth of compute in a $20 subscription out of the goodness of their hearts. The base level plans aren't meant for any kind of serious work beyond the equivalent of Google searches. At best treat it like a trial.
I hope everyone recognized the cheap tokens as a transparent ploy to gain more users before jacking up prices. This was obvious from day one.
They won’t be able to. Open models exist and run on a Mac you can buy now or in October.
It is really about data. The endgame is not hoping devs give them money.
As long as there is no path to profitability going from subsidized to fully paid tokens we are making them lose money.
Once they capature enough marketshare prices and restrictions are both going to skyrocket. The difference between the subscription usage and API pricing are stark.
This would need to be a collusion across most of the providers (which I think is likely to happen) otherwise OpenAI would get ditched for Anthropic or vice versa, depending on who raises the prices more. If it happens across the board then enterprises that can use Chinese models won’t have that many options but to pay up.
That's the fever-dream that OpenAI et al is fraudulently marketing to their investors I suspect, yes.
Session limits are obnoxious and make Codex much less useful for me. I tend to code in spurts when I find some time and the $20 weekly limit was reasonable for my side projects.
I'm now hitting the session limits which means I can either purchase another plan, upgrade, or move off of Codex.
The equivalent alternative is not "no hourly limits", it's simply less overall weekly allowance for Plus users, or higher prices overall. It's a way to balance a scarce resource, and maybe the least frustrating one?
People have a fair chance to learn resource management in 5 hour chunks, while not being limited to silly models, and burning through all tokens in the first hour of the week. Seems mostly good.
> Seems mostly good
What's not good for the customer is the constant change of rules. It is bait & switch.
This is very fair. Compared to Claude the Codex limits are much better and smarter model.
In hindsight, this makes more sense with the release of Astra. The $100/mo is now a more compelling upsell.
Yep, worked on me...
I went another way and signed up for a opencode go subscription on the side.
Opencode Go's value is pretty poor these days. It was better a month or two ago.
Can you talk more about what changed in the last two months? I use open router for when I run out of limits, and I’ve done better than buying an additional sub for my uses. I thought about looking at a more niche player, but it’s not a priority for me yet.
First of all, it still has the 5 hour limits, which is what this thread is about and what I think what most in this thread want to avoid.
Second, the offerings are subject to change at random. They advertised $60 of usage for $10/month (knowing most users wouldn't reach that). This was consistently the case up until early August, when the per-model "usage multipliers" started taking over. Some models give $15 of usage per month, others $30, still others remain at $60, and apparently one at $100 now?[0] Either way, I don't want to expend the mental effort to track which model is the best deal for capability and usage.
Right now I use Hyper[1] and give $100/month to OpenAI. Not OpenAI's biggest fan, but the value is good right now, and that's what matters.
[0] https://opencode.ai/docs/go/
[1] https://hyper.charm.land
What changed, increased quantization and reduced context windows?
This is one of the reasons I’ve built a resident daemon on top a local CC/codex. 5h sessions is a [lazy] way to shift the scaling responsibility onto a user, so they are staying with us for a while
How is 5 hrs being measured and over what time period?
when you send your first message, the timer will start.
In all of them I've seen it's a window that starts when you haven't been using it in a while and begin work OR when your previous window expired. The window starts with a set number of tokens and cuts you off when they're used, it is fully reset at the end of the window (it's not a sliding window).
When you haven't used any tokens for an extended amount of time it reverts to the point where whenever you send your first token is when the window begins.
Clearly, the prices and limitations will increase with time if they don't find an efficient way to perform training and inference of LLMs. It would be great to see those issues being seriously addressed and, eventually, being fixed for good. THAT would definitely make an important and practical difference. Not only economically but also scientifically.
I always wonder where the people are who continually claim that this whole thing is already profitable are when prices are increased or services cut.
I dislike this approach. In my opinion it is much useful a 1x/2x billing based on hour like Deepseek does. Being unable to use it at the hours I need it makes me want to remove the service, not upgrading it.
Previous discussion (from 13 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49432879
Codex pharming on X should take a dip…
KARIBIK
This allows users to pace their subscription usage to last the whole week.
I've had few weekends where I spend the full week credits over night then have nothing to do for a week
It might be good to have at least two hobbies.
They could make this opt-in or opt-out