Codex resets were a marketing stunt. The problem was real

GPT-5.6 Sol was draining Codex limits faster than OpenAI expected [1]. While that was happening, OpenAI reset paid users five times in ten days. My read is that those resets were a marketing stunt that became a smokescreen, because they repeatedly interrupted the clean weekly comparisons needed to measure the underlying problem.

Did OpenAI remove banked resets? I found no evidence

I found no evidence that OpenAI removed banked resets. The claim began with Reddit reports that the resets had disappeared [2], but OpenAI’s help center still explains how to redeem one [3], and its referral terms still cover them [4]. Several users also saw their resets return within hours.

The report that triggered this article came from a user with two banked resets due on 12 and 13 August 2026. The option to use them had vanished from the interface, and neither updating the app nor signing out and back in brought it back. One reply described a larger loss with a support conversation to match: “They removed 3 of mine. I had 2 banked to expire on aug 11 and 1 on aug 12. I even contacted support and the agent verified that I had none in my account” [5].

Read further down, though, and the pattern breaks up. Other users still had their resets [6], while some could see one but got an error when they tried to apply it [7]. That is a different failure from having the benefit withdrawn.

One user provided the clearest comparison. They lost the reset on one account, got it back by signing out and in again, then checked a second account. The first account had also been globally reset to 100% earlier that day with a new weekly date, while the account that had not received the global reset still had its banked reset [8].

Other users reported their resets returning without doing anything [9]. A separate thread posted four minutes before the main one describes the panel failing to load the credits rather than showing zero of them [10].

All of that happened inside about three hours. A deliberate withdrawal of a paid benefit does not usually reverse itself on some accounts while a support agent tells another customer, in a line one user quoted, “We cannot disclose why we add or remove resets” [11].

The other popular explanation does not fit the timing. OpenAI’s status page records a ChatGPT incident that morning, titled “Increased errors for some ChatGPT users”, opened at 07:21 UTC and resolved at 08:09 UTC [12]. The first reset report went up at 08:44 UTC [10], about 35 minutes after the incident was marked resolved, and reports kept arriving past 11:00. The notice closed before the reports began, and it never mentions resets or usage limits.

A changelog entry, a help-center edit or the 30 days of notice promised by the referral terms would change this conclusion [4]. Until one appears, the most accurate description is a product failure, not a confirmed withdrawal.

Why did OpenAI reset Codex limits? User growth

OpenAI tied the Codex resets directly to user-growth milestones, which is why I call them a marketing stunt.

On 7 April 2026 Sam Altman wrote: “To celebrate 3 million weekly codex users, we are resetting usage limits. We will do this every million users up to 10 million” [13]. Two days later Tibo was already treating that promise as a running expense: “At the current codex growth pace, we will owe you all another reset in less than two weeks” [14]. The four-million reset followed on 21 April 2026 [15].

The banking mechanic arrived on 11 June 2026, and OpenAI’s changelog describes it as user acquisition without much decoration: “Added rate-limit reset banking for Plus and Pro users, including one free reset at launch and referral invitations for earning more during the current promotion” [16]. The referral offer ran from 11 to 24 June 2026 and paid both sides. OpenAI’s pricing page says that when an invitee sends their first Codex message, both accounts receive a banked reset [17]. OpenAI was buying new users with inference instead of discounts, which is cheaper for a company that owns the capacity and feels more generous than a coupon.

Then came July 2026. OpenAI launched GPT-5.6 on 9 July 2026 with Sol as the flagship [18], and ChatGPT Work launched alongside it. The milestone counter moved fast enough to fire five resets in ten days: six million on 12 July 2026 [19], seven million on 13 July 2026 [20], eight million on 14 July 2026 [21], nine million on 16 July 2026 [22], and ten million on 21 July 2026 [23].

One detail matters when reading that sequence. From six million onward the figure counts Codex and ChatGPT Work together, and ChatGPT Work was three days old when the six-million post went up, so the number that justified each reset quietly changed what it was counting.

The sequence matters: OpenAI promised rewards for growth first, launched a more usage-hungry model next, and admitted the usage problem only after the ten-million milestone reset had been issued.

1. Apr 7, 2026

   The promise

   Altman: one usage reset per million Codex users, up to ten million.

2. Jun 11, 2026

   Reset banking

   Banked resets ship as a Plus and Pro referral reward.

3. Jul 9, 2026

   GPT-5.6 Sol

   Sol becomes the flagship model in Codex.

4. Jul 12, 2026

   Five resets in ten days

   The five-hour limit comes off, milestones six to ten million follow.

5. Jul 29, 2026

   The admission

   Sol used limits faster than expected; usage to last about 18% longer.

6. Aug 10, 2026

   Banked resets fail

   Missing resets reported, some restored within hours.

Why did Sol use Codex limits so fast?

Sol used limits faster because a Codex task costs more when the model does more work, even if the per-token rate stays fixed.

Sol and GPT-5.5 bill at exactly the same credits per token [17], so switching to Sol looks free on the rate card. But Sol can run longer, call more tools and read more of the repository, and every one of those turns is billed.

Tibo confirmed the effect on 29 July 2026: “Over the past few weeks, many of you have told us that Sol was using your Codex limits faster than expected.” He added that “some issues only become clear once people are using the model at real-world scale. We should have recognized this sooner and been more upfront about it” [1].

The rate card explains why users could not predict this from the price list. Sol and GPT-5.5 both cost 125 credits per million input tokens, 12.5 for cached input and 750 for output [17]. The same page also says that model choice, context, reasoning, tool use, retrieval and caching affect usage, so prompt length is not a reliable estimate. It warns that similar-looking tasks can consume different amounts of an allowance [17]. OpenAI’s own average for one GPT-5.6 message spans nearly an order of magnitude, from 5 to 40 credits [17].

Sol’s behavior sits at the expensive end of that range, which is the part I had already run into. In an earlier piece on Sol’s over-engineering I described a model that keeps working after the task is solved, and it also delegates to subagents, which OpenAI’s own documentation flags as costly: “Subagent workflows consume more tokens than comparable single-agent runs” [24]. A model that does more work per instruction is more expensive per instruction, even when the per-token rate never moves.

Four Codex changes made the usage problem harder to see

Four changes landed around Sol’s launch, and together they made the usage problem harder to recognize: the five-hour gate disappeared, the context window shrank, the rate card stayed fixed, and the user count changed what it included.

The five-hour gate disappeared

Three days after Sol shipped, Tibo announced alongside the six-million milestone: “Temporarily removing the 5 hour usage limit restriction for all Plus, Business and Pro plans” [19]. That window stops a weekly allowance from being spent in one afternoon. Removing it during launch week made the product feel unrestricted, but it also let a model that consumed more per task drain a weekly pool much faster. On 14 July 2026 Tibo was still presenting this as a feature, telling users they could “explore the boundaries of GPT-5.6 Sol and discover how ambitious you can be” [21].

Sottiaux announced on 29 July 2026 that the gate would return, then postponed the change. It finally returned for Plus on 26 August 2026, while the $100 and $200 Pro plans remained exempt [1] [37]. As of 27 August 2026, OpenAI’s pricing page documents the five-hour window with a hedge on the weekly one: “The usage limits for local messages and cloud chats share a five-hour window. Additional weekly limits may apply” [17].

Sol’s Codex context window lost 100,000 tokens

OpenAI’s context-window announcement made the change especially easy to miss. On 13 July 2026 Tibo opened an update to Codex and ChatGPT Work users with the line “No nerfing, only good stuff” and then explained that OpenAI had reverted Sol’s context limit from 372,000 to 272,000 tokens because the larger window charged more usage than intended [25].

A GitHub issue filed on 21 July 2026 puts the effective numbers side by side: 353,400 usable tokens at launch against 258,400 after the server-profile change [26]. That is 95,000 fewer usable tokens, about 27% less. OpenAI’s changelog recorded 272,000 as a correction on 18 July 2026 [16], the promised return had not arrived by 1 September 2026, and the same model still accepted 1,050,000 tokens through the API [27].

Less context is not just a smaller number on a spec sheet. A shorter window means a long Codex thread compacts sooner, so the model re-reads files it has already read and re-establishes decisions it has already made, and each of those turns is billed. In practice, a smaller context window can lower usage per conversation while increasing the number of conversations a large job requires.

Pricing and user counts did not reveal the change

The rate card never moved, while the growth number started counting two products just as the resets accelerated. Neither change is suspicious by itself. Together with the missing five-hour gate and the smaller context window, however, they left users watching a usage panel, a price list and milestone posts that did not reveal how much work each task was consuming.

longer typical Sol usage

18 %

OpenAI's expectation after the July 2026 fixes

token context in Codex

272,000

down from 372,000 on 13 July 2026

token context through the API

1,050,000

same model, different product

credits per message

5-40

OpenAI's own average range for GPT-5.6

The important difference is between the API model and the subscription product. Codex gives the same model about a quarter of its API context and charges work against an allowance whose average cost OpenAI can only express as a range of 5 to 40 credits per message.

Can an unchanged Codex quota buy less work? Yes

Yes. OpenAI kept the allowance size unchanged, but Sol consumed more of it per task, so the same quota could buy less completed work.

On 30 July 2026 the company wrote that “ChatGPT and Codex subscription prices and quota budgets remain unchanged” [28], and Tibo had put it more bluntly the day before: “we have not reduced usage on any subscription plans” [1]. Both statements describe the size of the allowance, not what it buys.

OpenAI’s 18% estimate settles that narrower question. From the same 29 July 2026 post: “we expect your usage to last around 18% longer during typical use of Sol” [1]. If fixes make an unchanged budget last 18% longer, the same budget was buying less work before those fixes. OpenAI did not reduce the quota, but users still got less from it.

A small example makes the effect concrete. Suppose a weekly allowance covers 100 tasks under GPT-5.5, and the same task takes 50% more credits under Sol. The allowance now covers about 67 tasks, and an 18% improvement brings that to roughly 79. These are made-up numbers, but the ratio shows why “we did not reduce your quota” and “I get less done per week” can both be true.

OpenAI published two other percentages that belong to a different question. The company said Sol’s own kernel work reduced its end-to-end serving cost by 20%, while experiments increased token-generation efficiency by more than 15% [28]. Those are OpenAI’s costs, not the user’s allowance.

The same announcement did pass savings to customers by cutting Luna’s API price by 80%, Terra’s by 20%, and making both models consume fewer credits in Codex. Sol pricing remained unchanged [28]. Only the 18% estimate describes how much longer a Sol user’s allowance should last.

Did Codex resets hide Sol’s usage problem? In practice, yes

In practice, yes. A reset refills the allowance, but it also erases the uninterrupted weekly record needed to compare Sol with GPT-5.5. A useful comparison needs a known start, one model version, a stable effort setting and no top-ups in the middle. Between 12 and 21 July 2026, five resets made that record almost impossible to collect.

That is why the Reddit evidence from those weeks is so unsatisfying to read. Threads fill up with “I burned 40% in three hours” next to “I used 2% all day”, and nothing lines the two up: different model versions, different effort settings, different repositories, different cache states, and a reset landing in the middle of half of them. The reports were consistent enough that OpenAI acted on them [1]. They were never precise enough to quantify what had changed, and the resets are a large part of why.

The resets also created a reason to hurry. When a global reset is announced for later the same day, spending whatever remains becomes the rational move, and the campaign made that a regular event. The resulting burst of activity is useful for a growth campaign, but it is poor data for anyone trying to observe normal consumption.

The two kinds of reset are also not worth the same, which is where the 10 August 2026 panic gets its edge. A global reset is applied by OpenAI to every eligible account at a moment OpenAI chooses, so its value depends entirely on how much the user has already spent. A banked reset is redeemed by the user, which is why it is worth more and why it can be wasted. One Reddit user described exactly that: down to 10% with a weekly reset due on 11 August 2026, they redeemed their last banked reset, OpenAI reset everyone the same day, and their next weekly reset moved out to 15 August 2026 [29].

Property	Global reset	Banked reset
Who triggers it	OpenAI	You
Timing	Announced minutes to hours ahead	Whenever you choose
Expires if unused	Not applicable	30 days after it is granted
Moves the weekly reset date about seven days out	Not documented	✓ Yes
Can be made worthless by the other kind	✗ No	✓ Yes

A banked reset is more useful because the user controls its timing. A global reset can remove that advantage hours later, while the redeemed banked reset has already moved the weekly reset date.

Was the Codex reset campaign aimed at Claude? Not at first

Not at first. The reset schedule tracked OpenAI’s own user milestones and predated Claude Fable 5 by two months, so the campaign was not built as an answer to Anthropic. The competition became explicit later, in OpenAI’s Sol launch material and in one reset announced during a public argument with Claude’s team.

The tempting coincidence does not hold. Anthropic launched Fable 5 on 9 June 2026 [30], and OpenAI shipped reset banking on 11 June 2026, two days later [16]. Nobody designs and builds a referral program in 48 hours. Anthropic then suspended access to Fable 5 the day after that under a US export-control directive, and reopened it globally on 1 July 2026 with the model counting toward up to half of weekly usage limits on Pro, Max, Team and selected Enterprise plans through 7 July 2026 [31]. The reset campaign ran before, during and after all of it.

OpenAI made the competition unmistakable on the Sol launch page. Claude Fable 5 appears by name in table after table, and the prose highlights one result: “GPT-5.6 Sol with max reasoning sets a new state of the art at 80, 2.8 points above Fable 5, while using less than half the output tokens, taking less than half the time, and costing about one-third less” [18]. The same page includes a result it never discusses in prose, where SWE-Bench Pro puts Fable 5 at 80.0% against Sol’s 64.6% [18]. Choosing which benchmark leads is normal launch behavior. Readers still need to know which result produced the headline.

The 8 August 2026 reset is the clearest case of a reset used as a competitive gesture. A user claimed Anthropic had suspended his account for running Sol through Claude Code, and Anthropic’s Boris Cherny replied that they do not ban people for using their harness with other models, adding a recruiting jab at Tibo while he was there [32].

Tibo answered by quoting that post and resetting everyone: “That’s right, GPT-5.6 Sol is awesome and can be used pretty much anywhere, including in the CC harness. To celebrate this, together with the fact that I’m not going anywhere… I have reset usage limits for all paid users of ChatGPT Work and Codex” [33]. Minutes later a user told him the gesture was empty because the weekly reset had already happened the day before: “This is just performative at this point” [34]. Tibo took the word and kept it: “I’ll do another performative reset on Monday” [35]. When the person running the campaign adopts his critic’s word for it, the marketing question is settled.

Anthropic never answered the comparison in public. It did raise Claude Code’s weekly limits by 50% from 18 July through 19 August 2026, without naming OpenAI once [36].

What evidence would settle the Codex usage argument?

A clean weekly comparison would settle it: one plan, one model version, one effort setting, one repository and the same tasks across two complete periods, with no resets in either. Nobody has published that test. Until someone does, OpenAI’s quota numbers and users’ reports can both be accurate because they describe different quantities.

My read remains that the stunt became a smokescreen, whatever OpenAI intended. Codex went from three million to ten million users in 15 weeks, the loudest usage complaints were answered with free refills instead of comparable numbers, and the clean week of data that could have settled the argument never existed.

The practical move is simple. Screenshot the usage panel, including the reset count and expiry date, because that server-side panel is the only record available to you. Do not redeem a banked reset on a day when OpenAI has announced a global one. The help center says that using a full banked reset moves the weekly reset date to roughly seven days after redemption [3], so spending one shortly before a free refill gives up the timing control that made it valuable.