Tibo (@thsottiaux)

Hi, Tomorrow we are re-opening the Pro $200 subscriptions to new subscribers, but together with it we are also changing how we calculate the usage for it. In effect, if you do the math, it will net out at half the dollar in API spend compared to the old Pro $200 plan. Now that it's said, let me explain why this is happening and why you will still get more work done than if you were on the Pro $200 subscription one month ago. (a) We didn't want to compromise in other ways and are committing to not reintroducing the 5h limit, so that you can fully use the weekly usage when you want. (b) On the subscription, we guarantee that over time you always get more work done and with an increasing level of quality. This means that you will continue to get more value per dollar spent as a result of models getting more efficient and us passing down the improvements in the form of API price reductions. (c) We don't want to put an incentive on ourselves to artificially inflate the API list prices to make it look like you are getting a lot (and workaround it through discounts, etc). Instead we want to continue to both rapidly reduce prices and increase capabilities of models on the API. This week we introduced GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna at 50% of their previous price. Over time, we see prices go low enough that it makes sense for most to buy usage as needed without there being a significant gap between what you get in a subscription and what you get in the API for a dollar spent. (d) Tomorrow, we are adding more things to the subscription that won't draw on the usage, I won't reveal what that is yet. I wanted to be transparent before all the big announcements tomorrow. Lots of new exciting things are coming to the subscriptions that will make it super compelling, but I wanted to make sure to share this change ahead of time so you can all understand it before we shower you with good news. Codexingly, Tibo

o yes… we’re back in action and we’ll reset usage limits for all paid users across codex and ChatGPT work sorry about the brief disruption! (and yes we have a special spare codex when things are down to help us out)

To make sure our current users have an incredible experience and continued access to Astra, we are going to pause subscriptions to our $200 Pro plan. These put the most strain on our systems and we wanted to take the smallest step that allows us to continue giving the broadest access possible. All other plans and the api remain available. There is no impact to existing accounts and we are working on adding more capacity as fast as we can. Thanks!

There was a bit of a kerfuffle this morning with some banked resets not fully applying when used in ChatGPT Work and Codex. Everyone who used one in the affected time window is getting another one and an email to apologize.

Demand for Astra is really unprecedented. We're pulling all the levers possible to sustain the demand, but I've not seen anything like it until now and we went through very steep growth before. Priority will always be to keep excellent service for existing users, but we might have to pause new Pro subscriptions for a bit if this continues.

Tomorrow we will bring back the 5h limit for Plus accounts across ChatGPT Work and Codex. I had mentioned this a while ago, but then postponed it. This is necessary as (a) the 5h limit allows us to smoothen the load on our compute, allowing to keep the plan generous in terms of weekly usage and (b) users on the Plus plan are relatively casual and new users, but then also just accidentally eat through their whole weeks usage and then are confused, making it not a great experience. We are for the upcoming months keeping the 5h limit not enabled for Pro $100 and Pro $200 subscriptions.

It's me again. I come bearing great news. First of all, we have hit 20M active users for Codex some time this week. Second of all, this is cause for celebration and during the day we will credit every Codex and ChatGPT Work user with a BANKED reset that you can use at your own leisure. And we will have some other good news later too! Now, on usage limits draining faster, while we're not seeing anything abnormal, we do take it incredibly seriously and there is an ongoing investigation. I will share if we do find anything and my below post is really a clarification on a specific pattern that we did see that I wanted to call out. Go do something amazing today.

We've investigated a few messages about codex usage limits being different. That's not something we change without engaging the community and being transparent. What we did see is that when talking to affected users many were using sub2api. Converting a subscription into api traffic to then re-serve or share across many users is not something we support and this type of usage gets flagged by our fraud-prevention systems. You are completely fine if you use your subscription through Sign in With ChatGPT, either through the official clients or through one of the many OSS clients (Pi, OpenCode, ...) that support signing in with your account and using your included usage.

Hi! Recapping some changes we have rolled out over the last couple of weeks that have further reduced the risk associated to potentially destructive actions being performed by Codex during its work. A few weeks ago, we started investigating a small number of reports where GPT-5.6 in Codex took destructive actions outside what the user asked for. The most serious pattern we found was a command meant to clean up temporary work that could instead delete the user files. This should obviously not happen. Here’s what we found: - Codex sometimes creates temporary folders while working and cleans them up afterward. In rare cases, GPT-5.6 got that cleanup wrong. One pattern involved reusing a system environment variable like $HOME for temporary work. A malformed cleanup command could then point at the actual home directory instead of the temporary folder. - There were cases where the model tried to delete or overwrite a temporary path without checking what was already there. We’ve added protections at several layers: - Codex is now explicitly instructed to check deletion targets before acting, create fresh temporary directories, avoid repurposing system environment variables, prefer recoverable actions, and stop when the scope is unclear. - We strengthened the execution checks that identify high-risk deletion commands and escalate them for review. If a command is rejected, the model is directed to take a safer approach. - We made Full access harder to enable accidentally, added clearer warnings, and further restricted especially risky permission combinations. - We updated Auto-review to better identify destructive actions. - We built targeted evaluations that replay the failures we observed. We’re also adding reinforcement-learning tasks and graders focused on these risks, and filtering destructive actions from training data. In those replay evaluations, the changes substantially reduced the behavior while preserving Codex’s ability to complete normal coding work. Two things to do on your end: - Keep the Codex app up to date. We are always improving safety, performance and many other things. - Use one of the sandbox modes: "Ask for approval" or "Approve for me". Only use Full access for environments you trust and can recover. Thanks and happy Codexing out there!

Here is how to enable a 1M-token context window in Codex for GPT-5.6 Sol. Even though we have tuned the context limit in Codex to be set optimally when it comes to performance and cost, this is a common ask, so here it is documented. A larger context window lets Codex retain more code, tool output, and conversation history before summarizing older material. You need a model that supports it. And GPT-5.6 Sol, for example, has a documented 1,050,000-token window. Open ~/.codex/config.toml and add or update these settings at the top level, before any [section] headers: ``` model = "gpt-5.6-sol" model_context_window = 1000000 model_auto_compact_token_limit = 900000 ``` The first setting selects the model. The second tells Codex to use a one-million-token context budget. The third starts automatic history compaction around 900,000 tokens, leaving some headroom. Restart Codex client and start a new session after saving. To try the configuration for a single CLI session without changing your defaults: ``` codex -m gpt-5.6-sol \ -c model_context_window=1000000 \ -c model_auto_compact_token_limit=900000 ``` Have fun, but also know that we tuned the default carefully!

On tokens and prices per token. I said I’d write more about this, so here goes: an OpenAI token != another model’s token. We compare AI prices in dollars per million tokens as if a token were a standardized unit, like a gram or a kilowatt-hour. It isn’t. Different models use and produce the exact same text using different numbers of tokens, which means a lower price per token does not necessarily mean a lower bill. Imagine two identical pizzas. One is cut into 8 slices at $2 each. The other is cut into 16 slices at $1.25 each. The second place advertises cheaper slices, but the whole pizza costs $20 instead of $16. Bummer ... your stomach doesn't actually care about the number of slices you just ate. I know you are hungry now, but back to tokens. In one small comparison spanning English, technical, multilingual, and numerical text, the tokenizer we use for GPT-5.6 Sol used 766 tokens versus an estimated 1,170 for Claude Opus 5. That's a very significant difference of about 34.5% fewer tokens. You can get the same exact text, but pay for all those extra tokens. The price per token doesn't really tell this story. Even correcting for tokenizer differences misses the bigger point. What actually matters is price per successful outcome, and for that you can use benchmarks as a starting point, but really you have to try it and measure on your own use cases. That's all. May the tokens flow.