Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

help.openai.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 212 posts

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

#131

Post by lelanthran »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #26
adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #15

Sounds like a death knell to me. If I recall correctly, Ed Zitron noted in a recent article that one of the horsemen of his AI-pocalypse would be price hikes from providers.

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.

Those companies at least had somewhat of a moat.

As I see it, the only thing close to a moat is CC for Anthropic, and since it is a big ol' fucking mess that is a) apparently now beyond the ability of any current SOTA LLM to fix, and b) understood by absolutely no human, I'd say it's not much of a moat. The other agents will catch up sooner rather than later.

The other providers? I don't see a moat. We jump ship at the drop of a hat.

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

#132

Post by thejazzman »

SoftTalker wrote: post #70
thejazzman wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s kind of a rug pull to effectively raise the price like 10x. I can’t afford to finish some of my projects with this change

Sounds like saying my plan to get rich buying up $10 bills for $1 hit kind of a rug pull in that people aren't selling them for that price anymore.

The only catch is that you’ve spent many $1 and you don’t get any of those $10s unless you get over the finish line

In that sense your analogy is kinda good. I totally agree the current situation is like getting my solo start up funded and subsidized … but with only like 4 months runway now that the prices are skyrocketing, vs ~2+ for a typical YC venture

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

#133

Post by bethekind »

matt_heimer wrote: post #92
spijdar wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No? Isn't the article about Codex, which is roughly equivalent to "Gemini CLI" and Google's Antigravity? Google's subscriptions include quotas for both of those, albeit the $20 monthly "Pro" plan has had its "Pro" model quota slashed in the last few weeks. You still get a large number of "Gemini 3 Flash" queries, which has been good enough for the projects I've toyed with in Antigravity.

I guess that's true but I find Google's models better than their public tooling. The Pro subscription includes "Gemini Code Assist and Gemini CLI" but the Gemini Code Assist plugin for IntelliJ which is my daily driver is broken most of the time to the degree that it's completely unusable. Sometimes you can't even type in the input box. The only way I can do serious development with Gemini models is with other toolin…

I agree. Gemini models are held back by their segmentation of usage between multiple products, combined with their awful harnesses and tooling. Gemini cli, antigravity, Gemini code assist, Jules.... The list goes on. Each of these products has only a small limit and they must share usage.

It gets worse than that though. Most harnesses that are made to handle codex and Claude cannot handle Gemini 3.1 correctly. Google has trained Gemini 3.1 to return different json keys than most harnesses expect resulting in awful results and failure. (Based on me perusing multiple harness GitHub issues after Gemini 3.1 came out)

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

#134

Post by predkambrij »

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.

Taximeter effect

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

#135

Post by vidarh »

_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #58
m-hodges wrote: post #3

The days of subsidized access is rapidly coming to an end.

Although I have to say I am sometimes surprised how much people burn through their usage. I was briefly on a Claude Max plan and then switched to a pro plan and still almost never hit my limit.

I just hit my weekly Max limit 3 days in...

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

#136

Post by aurareturn »

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.

No moat --> It's basically OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic left at the SOTA. Maybe soon, we'll have 2 left.

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

#137

Post by [deleted] »

LeafItAlone wrote: post #90
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.

What is snarky about that? The answer is so that they can charge different prices per credit. If you buy low amounts, they can charge one price. If you buy in bulk, they can offer a discount. The usage is the same, but they can differentiate price per usage to give people more a favorable price if they are better customers. Is there anything wrong with that?

[deleted]

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

#138

Post by OptionOfT »

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 refuse to play games where you pay real money for consumables.

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

#139

Post by lelanthran »

aledalgrande wrote: post #118
mrtesthah wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

gpt-5.4 is unmatched. Claude is possibly better in web UI tasks, but not much else.

I'm really curious about how you use it, because for me it was braindead. I tried tasking it to update my personal workout app and it created so many bugs I had to clean up with Opus or be left with spaghetti. It also keeps asking for confirmation of doing basic things.

> I tried tasking it to update my personal workout app and it created so many bugs I had to clean up with Opus or be left with spaghetti.

I find it sad that some people are already at the point where "My only options are to leave it as spaghetti or pay for another LLM to fix it". Already their skills are atrophied.

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

#140

Post by BoggleOhYeah »

supliminal wrote: post #33
adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #15

Sounds like a death knell to me. If I recall correctly, Ed Zitron noted in a recent article that one of the horsemen of his AI-pocalypse would be price hikes from providers.

Every time an Ed Zitron article is posted on HN, it is met with a torrent of vitriol and personal attacks. The articles are okay if not overly wordy but I don’t see how the subject matter elicits that strong of a response. At any rate, this observation is not unique to Ed, lots of people have made the same conclusion that the math doesn’t add up from a business profitability perspective.

A lot of HN posters are fighting for their employer and/or investments.
Post reply on HN