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70 points by Zariel 10 hours ago | 26 comments

In reality this is a non-issue because average chat conversations use 1/1000th the tokens of agentic coding usage (given they aren't reading their 1 million lines of generated code for every change), but at the same time... it should be a non-issue for OpenAI too. They talk about developing "intelligence too cheap to meter" and then go on to meter an absolutely trivial amount of usage for people already paying $100-$200 a month, embarrassing. The PR hit and psychological aversion to using ChatGPT this will instill in users will hurt them more than covering this usage could ever possibly do.

I say this working in an LLM startup where we serve literally unlimited usage (with the only caveat being that usage is serialized) via subscription and, unlike OpenAI, are actually profitable. I guess when you're hundreds of billions in the hole you're desperate to try anything to save the sinking ship, even if it clearly won't work.

throw93938383 48 minutes ago

Chat can download and analyze webpages, or multi hour conversation with dosens pages to fetch. It can be pretty significant part of usage!

runjake 2 hours ago

If it's a non-issue then why are they doing it?

jasongi 2 hours ago

Just a guess - MCP Tunnel loophole has been widely abused by the same types who kept their final session after hitting their limit open using a "fake" tool call (which unfortunately means we now all get cut off when reaching limits).

Others building harnesses around chat or simply falling back to manual copy/paste mode once hitting limits. Ironically AI makes it easy to automate the tiniest loophole to make it a problem as soon as word gets out.

It's a non-issue for everyone not trying to tokenmaxx and sticking to the spirit of subscriptions, but theoretically these folks SHOULD be on a higher tier that reflects their actual usage.

Edit: I feel like I'm coming off as a corpo sycophant defending OpenAI here... not my intention. Both big AI companies encourage this behaviour by creating complex and inconsistent rules around their plans such that it is impossible to know what a subscription is buying, a large chunk of the value coming from discretionary but quite predictably regular resets. As much as they have every right to change their plans... they got what they asked for with all the folks exploiting the loopholes. I just wonder if we'll ever get any sort of consumer law around these "mystery box" subscriptions with meaningless tiers so everyone can stop wasting energy on finding, exploiting and then fixing pricing loopholes.

yurimo 3 hours ago

I'm not going to lie, one big reason I as a researcher have been a customer of OpenAI is that on their Pro plan Pro-tier model in chat and codex are decoupled in terms of billing. Anthropic instead billed you fully. This was very useful for long mathematical reasoning for me and I could attach outputs of my simulations in the context.

I also recall reading the following: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/anthropic-subscription...

I will see once this transition actually happens but if another provider offers more for less and a cost of switching is inherently low as most of project lives on the disk and not in cloud, then why not move? For my workflow pro astra has been very helpful, likely will be less so if it becomes far too expensive.

jarenmf 42 minutes ago

Same for me, I have Claude and codex. And usage limits in codex are hit more often. what was keeping me from switching was only the chat was virtually not limited. I guess it's time to switch.

stelonix 2 hours ago

That also has been my mode of operation. Plan + review on GPT web and implement with Codex. Bugs, logs, diffs etc are frequently sent to chat to find bugs etc. Seems they're going full agentic and also trying to close that profit gap.

furyofantares 4 hours ago

It kills me to run out of claude code usage then my much more mundane usage, queries or web searches, is also cut off. Not doing that has been a big plus of chatgpt/codex in my mind.

LilBytes 2 hours ago

Started using my other AI services for conversational work, I lean on my AI subscription with kagi.com a lot more now when it's not related (in whole, or in part) with my dev work.

1123581321 3 hours ago

You can tell Claude Code to detect and watch its usage. Have it refuse to work at 90-95%.

spike021 2 hours ago

I just recently tried this exact thing with GPT in Codex for my Plus plan. It said it would keep an eye on usage and note down checkpoints, but it totally forgot to.

cush 3 hours ago

I imagine they’ll keep a buffer of usage for mundane queries and just block deep research tasks/image generation/etc

behringer 45 minutes ago

I wonder if it makes more sense to cancel chatgpt pro, use the free version and stick with Claude code for development.

mkozlows 27 minutes ago

No, because the free-tier chat is much worse than the paid-tier chat. For personal use, I only use Claude right now (I've flipped in the past as models have gotten better at different rates), but I still keep OpenAI around because paid ChatGPT is worth it as a product to me.

naniwaduni 2 hours ago

Frankly, they could take a slice of the current quota and reserve it for non-code use and it would simultaneously be a objective downgrade but still improve the user experience.

modeless 56 minutes ago

They ought to reserve a very small amount of quota exclusively for chatgpt so it doesn't just shut off if you exhaust your quota using codex. If they don't it would make more sense to keep codex and chatgpt usage on different accounts, which I'm sure OpenAI doesn't intend to incentivize.

epsteingpt 5 hours ago

This will hurt people who use GPT-6-Pro which isn't easily available in codex and deep research.

Those were 2 flagship projects that will now make ChatGPT a lot less useful to people who pay.

We're in trouble. OAI wanted to raise $30B and raise $11B they are cutting costs.

GordonS 9 hours ago

I just got an email stating that "Chat and Work are coming together in one experience". Then, half way through it's the real headline: "A shared allowance for ChatGPT and Codex". Figured it was coming at some point...

sjs382 7 hours ago

I got it, too. Not surprising but this was definitely one of the deciding factors keeping me with ChatGPT. Much more willing to change providers now.

aigenos 2 hours ago

it should have been only one always, as in the end its model rate limits, so doesn't matter whats the client.

minimaxir 10 hours ago

Not surprising: Claude has behaved like this for awhile and it was only a matter of time.

At the least, it deters people from spinning up Astra Pro requests via the ChatGPT interface willy-nilly.

egeozcan 2 hours ago

Claude Max x20 became x10 and now this? I think the demo period is ending.

So happy to have the open models!

brianjking 2 hours ago

I've been using ChatGPT since release and Codex since before ChatGPT was a thing (with the original Codex model). Am I the only one who didn't realize these limits weren't already merged since the current Codex app was released?

anukin 2 hours ago

I think only people who used fClaude made that mistake. ChatGPT always used limits different from their other offerings.

m3kw9 4 hours ago

i wouldn't knock it till i see how it affects usage.

mattstir 3 hours ago

Are they likely to be feeling generous and improve usage limits? I think it's easy to see what they're hoping to achieve with this.