Breaking

OpenAI Restores Five-Hour Codex Cap for Plus After Compute-Load Squeeze

September 3, 2026 at 22:03 EDT

Software Dev & Coding
Infra & Chips

OpenAI has restored a five-hour usage window on Codex and ChatGPT Work for ChatGPT Plus subscribers, ending a stretch when only a weekly quota applied. The company said the rolling cap is needed to spread computing demand—an about-face from a public assurance, days earlier, that it had ample compute while a rival warned coding capacity would be tight.

Aug 25, 2026 · OpenAI Codex

The 5-hour cap is back

ChatGPT Plus users of Codex and ChatGPT Work again face a rolling five-hour usage window. OpenAI said the cap spreads compute load. Pro $100 and $200 plans stay exempt for now.

Claude Code weekly headroom (relative)

100

Old standard

150

+50% promo now

125

Permanent from Sept 14

Ending the 50% promo is about a 17% cut from the weekly Claude Code cap users have today.

Plus rolling window restored Aug 25

20M

Codex active users, week of Aug 21

10–50%

More Codex usage after late-Aug bug fixes

$100 / $200

Pro tiers keep the 5-hour cap off

Codex user scale (millions)

10M

July

20M

Aug 21

Active users doubled in about a month—then Plus got a short-window cap to smooth load.

What still holds

Weekly Plus pools stay relatively generous. Pro $100 and $200 keep no five-hour cap for months. OpenAI says bug fixes should stretch Codex usage 10% to 50%.

What users flag

A long coding session can exhaust the five-hour window while weekly quota remains. Developers have said allowances still drain faster than expected on paid plans.

The bind

OpenAI said it had compute. Plus users still got a five-hour meter.

Anthropic warned capacity may be tight, then scheduled a ~17% weekly step-down from the promo. Both labs are metering coding agents against chips and power, not unlimited tokens.

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