ChatGPT and Codex will share one usage limit starting in December

OpenAI is changing how usage limits work in ChatGPT. According to an OpenAI Help Center article updated on November 2, the usage allowance on Plus, Pro and Business plans "will be shared across ChatGPT and Codex" starting in December. OpenAI says the change comes "as we bring the agentic capabilities of Work into the main ChatGPT experience." The company has not named a specific start date.

One allowance, measured in tokens

Usage will be counted in tokens, the units of text a model reads and writes. How much you use depends on the model you pick and the task you give it, and OpenAI says more advanced models and complex tasks generally use more. A long Codex coding session in the evening therefore leaves less room for demanding requests in the chat, and the reverse is also true. So far, Chat, Work and Codex each had their own limits, with separate caps for images, voice and file uploads, as Trending Topics notes. Since late August, Plus users have again faced five-hour limits for Codex and Work on top of a weekly quota.

There is one important exception. In OpenAI's words, "Instant chat will not draw from your usage." People who mostly use ChatGPT for everyday questions are unlikely to notice much, and OpenAI expects that "most users won't need to wait for their usage to reset more often than they do now."

What OpenAI has not said yet

The help article does not say how large the shared allowance is on each plan. It also leaves open how often the allowance resets and what happens to Free and Go, which it does not mention at all. Once you run out, you can wait for the reset, upgrade your plan or buy credits for eligible features. Our comparison of AI subscription prices lists what the plans cost. On the OpenAI forum, a thread asking the company to keep the two limits separate has passed 100 posts. The Decoder reads the move as the end of flat-rate prompting, which in its view only ever existed on paper.

Anthropic made the same choice earlier. Chat, Cowork and Claude Code all count toward the same Claude limits, and heavy users can now get Claude Ultra without the five-hour limit.

How to keep track of your usage

ChatGPT will show the combined remaining usage and reset times under Settings, then Usage. If you use Codex regularly, check that page for a few days after the December switch before you buy credits. For quick questions, picking Instant on purpose saves your allowance. The change matters most for people who rely on the larger models, some of which OpenAI initially made available to Plus users only in Work and Codex.