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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

#51
post #39

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.

Good luck sticking within limits, I have been burning up my baseline limits insanely fast within a few prompts, a marked change from a few weeks ago.

There's a few complaints online about the same happening to multiple users.

Otherwise anti-gravity has been great.

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

#53
post #40
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is writing it by hand the old-fashioned way not on the table?

It's really not. As a one-person IT department I'm now able to build things in hours or days that it previously would have taken my weeks or even months to build (and thus they didn't get done). Things people have wanted for years that I didn't ever have the time for, I can now say "yes" to.

Then I would say they judged the situation correctly when they decided to raise prices.

That said: competition will soon kick in.

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

#54
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is writing it by hand the old-fashioned way not on the table?

Absolutely not. I took on some thins that would normally take 5-10 people and many months. Some people are turn out slop. I was really excited to try and make some impressive shit. My whole life has been dedicated to trying to embody what Apple preached in the early days. I knew this was coming, but I thought I had a little more time to try and get them over the finish line, ya know? Maintenance by hand might be achi…

> I took on some thins that would normally take 5-10 people and many months.

Based on what, exactly?

It's very easy to claim some software would've taken you months to make, but this is ridiculous. Estimating project duration is well known to be impossible in this field. A few years ago you'd get laughed out the room for making such predictions.

> I’ve only got so much savings left to live on.

Respectfully, what are you doing here?

Yeah sure, the Apple dream. But supposing AI did in fact make you this legendary 100x developer, so it would to everyone else including those with significantly more resources. You'd still be run out of the market by those with bigger budgets or more marketing, and end up penniless all the same.

I would strongly recommend you not put all your proverbial eggs in this basket.

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

#55

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.

We are exiting a hype cycle, well into the adoption curve. Subscriptions were never going to last. My next step is going to be evaluating open and local models to see if they are sufficiently close to par with frontier models. My hope is that the end of seat based pricing comes with this tech cycle. I was looking for document signing provider that doesn't charge a monthly, I only need a few docs a year.

I recently experimented creating a Python library from scratch with Codex. After I was done, I took the PRD and Task list that was generated and fed them to opencode with Qwen 3.5 running locally.

Opencode was able to create the library as well. It just took about 2x longer.

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

#56
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good!

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

If my math is right, assuming a mix of around 70% cached tokens, 20% input tokens, and 10% output tokens, it breaks even with the old pricing at around 130k tokens per message, or about 13k output tokens per message.

With the hidden reasoning tokens and tool calls, I have no idea how many tokens I typically use per message. I would guess maybe a quarter of that, which would make the new pricing cheaper.

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

#57

Is this not just about extra credit? So what's included in the subscription doesn't change - just extra credits are now token based instead of message based? (For Plus/Pro)

Yes. > This format replaces average per-message estimates with a direct mapping between token usage and credits. It's to replace the opaque, per-message calculation, not the subscription plan.

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

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

#58
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.

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

#60

Is this something that is likely to also change the way Github Copilot bills? Right now the billing is message-based, not token-based. And OpenAI and Microsoft are rather opaquely intertwined in the AI space.

Hard to say, but GitHub Copilot also allows access to Anthropic, Google and Grok models, so I don't know that a change from a single provider would necessarily change how they bill
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