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Codex pricing to align with API token usage, instead of per-message

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Re: Codex pricing to align with API token usage, instead of per-message

#101

Post by devmor »

toddmorey wrote: post #88
hmry wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay 100 Gold or 15 Gems to generate this feature

You joke but as a parent, I’m so sick of the gem packs, etc. they try to push on the kids to obfuscate your actual spend on games in real world money. And now it feels like the are gamifying the compute we use for work for all the same reasons.

I hate that pattern so much. It’s also not just to obfuscate the spending - it’s also to ensure you already have some amount left over in your account, so that it feels like you’re not spending as much to just “top up” and afford that one thing you want this time.

If you have some left over that you can’t spend, it feels like you’ve “wasted” them.

Re: Codex pricing to align with API token usage, instead of per-message

#102

Post by mickeyp »

scosman wrote: post #61
__mharrison__ wrote: post #11

For the past month, I've been claiming that $20/mo codex is the best deal in AI. Now I'm going to have to find the new best deal.

Check out z.ai coder plan. The $27/mo plan is roughly the same usage as the 20x $200 Claude plan. I have both and Claude is a little better, but GLM 5.1 is much better value.

If you're ok with a model provider that goes down all the time and has such a poor inference engine setup that once you get past 50k tokens you're going to get stuck in endless reasoning loops.

Re: Codex pricing to align with API token usage, instead of per-message

#103

Post by liuliu »

raincole wrote: post #65
liuliu wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does feel like also impact the usage meter for subscription plans?

Usage meter has always been completely opaque anyway. They could (and probably did) shrink the limit whenever they like.

It is a bit insidious that the price hike coincide with the end of 2x promotion, which makes the usage change a bit more obscure.

Re: Codex pricing to align with API token usage, instead of per-message

#104

Post by operatingthetan »

kingstnap wrote: post #100
operatingthetan wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is by far the best deal for AI, they give you so many 'buckets' of usage for a variety of products, and they seem to keep adding them.

If you aggressively use all buckets Google is incredibly generous. In theory for one AI pro subscription you can get what is a ridiculous return in investment in a family plan. You could probably be charging google literally thousands if all 6 members were spamming video and image generation and antigravity.

The family sharing is the real hack lol. I don't think any other provider does that.

Re: Codex pricing to align with API token usage, instead of per-message

#105

Post by cmrdporcupine »

piyh wrote: post #39
__mharrison__ wrote: post #11

For the past month, I've been claiming that $20/mo codex is the best deal in AI. Now I'm going to have to find the new best deal.

Already paying for Google photo storage, AI pro for an extra $7 is a steal with anti-gravity.

I bought one of the google AI packages that came with a pile of drive storage and Gemini access.

Unfortunately gemini as a coding agent is a steaming useless pile. They have no right selling it, cheap open weight Chinese models are better at this point.

It's not stupid it just is incompetent at tool use and makes bad mistakes. It constantly gets itself into weird dysfunctional loops when doing basic things like editing files.

I'm not sure what GOOG employees are using internally, but I hope they're not being saddled with Gemini 3.1. It's miles behind.

Re: Codex pricing to align with API token usage, instead of per-message

#106

Post by operatingthetan »

cyanydeez wrote: post #30
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally every VC funded consumer product has switched from a "growth at all costs" phase to a "Now we hike prices, make money, and generally enshittify" phase, and tons of those companies are still around (e.g. Uber), so I'm not sure why anyone thinks it would be much different for AI.

yes, but how many succeed without any kind of moat or having destroyed the existing companies? I'm still running local LLMs and finding perfectly acceptable code gen.

I think the situation we'll end up in is having closed models that are fast and near perfect but expensive, and a lot of cheap open-source models that are good enough for most people.

Re: Codex pricing to align with API token usage, instead of per-message

#109

Post by fauigerzigerk »

mrweasel wrote: post #63

Why not just attach a real dollar amount, rather than using "credits"? Well, I know why. I just wanted to be snarky. It's just that trying to hide the actual price is getting a bit old. Just tell me that generating this much code will cost me $10.

I can think of a few other reasons:

- Not everyone uses dollars.

- The price of credits in some currency could change after you bought them.

- The price of credits could be different for different customers (commercial, educational, partners, etc)

- They can ban trading of credits or let them expire

Re: Codex pricing to align with API token usage, instead of per-message

#110

Post by mike_hearn »

rvnx wrote: post #73
AstroBen wrote: post #28

Things must be bad if they're doing this before their IPO

Billions of USD in debt, a business model bleeding cash with no profit in perspective, high-competition environnement, a sub-par product, free-to-use offline models taking off, potential regulatory issues, some investor commitments pulling out... tricky. But let's not cry for the founders, they managed to get away with tons of money. The problem is for the fools holding the bag.

How is it a subpar product? I've been very happy with GPT 5.4 and the Codex CLI tooling, as well as ChatGPT web. I'd say product is one of their strengths.
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