OpenAI Codex pricing is a ChatGPT price: Codex comes inside every ChatGPT plan, from Free at $0 a month and Go at $8 to Plus at $20 and Pro at $100, $200 or $500. Each tier buys an allowance of agent work, and inside one plan the model you pick can move it from a handful of messages to thousands.
Codex plans and cost: OpenAI Codex pricing for every ChatGPT tier
Codex subscription plans are ChatGPT plans: Free at $0 a month, Go at $8, Plus at $20, Pro at $100, $200 or $500, and Business at $20 per user a month billed annually. Plus is the first tier with Codex in the CLI and the cloud integrations; above it, Pro adds usage, plus Ultrafast on Pro $500.
| Plan | Price and billing | What the tier adds | Models listed | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 a month | Quick coding tasks in the desktop app | GPT-6 Luna at Standard speed, subject to rollout | 2026-10-20 |
| Go | $8 a month | Lightweight coding tasks in the desktop app | Same as Free | 2026-10-20 |
| Plus | $20 a month | Codex on the web, in the CLI, in the IDE extension and on iOS; automatic code review and Slack integration; extra usage with ChatGPT credits | GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Luna | 2026-10-20 |
| Pro | $100, $200 or $500 a month | Everything in Plus; Ultrafast mode on Pro $500 only | As Plus; Ultrafast on Pro $500 | 2026-10-20 |
| Business | $20 per user a month billed annually, or $25 billed monthly; 2 users minimum | Larger virtual machines for cloud chats; SAML SSO and MFA; no training on business data by default; extra usage with credits | Not listed on the plan card | 2026-10-20 |
| Enterprise and Edu | Contact sales | Everything in Business, plus priority processing, SCIM, EKM, RBAC, audit logs and data residency controls | Not listed on the plan card | 2026-10-20 |
| API key | No plan fee; billed at API prices | Codex in the CLI, SDK or IDE extension; no cloud features such as GitHub code review or Slack | The API models your key can use | 2026-10-20 |
So the price of OpenAI Codex is the price of whichever ChatGPT plan you already hold or buy, and the Codex Plus plan costs as much as ChatGPT Plus, $20 a month, for what OpenAI’s plan card calls the room to “Power a few focused coding sessions each week.” For a live product the plan is only one line of a larger bill, and the whole monthly bill for a live app adds up the hosting and the other services around it. Every figure in the table comes from OpenAI’s Codex pricing documentation, read on 2026-10-20, because ChatGPT’s own pricing pages at chatgpt.com/pricing and chatgpt.com/codex/pricing refused an automated read that day. How much OpenAI Codex costs per month in practice depends less on the sticker price than on how fast you drain the allowance, which the next sections cover.
Is Codex free? What the Free and Go plans include
Codex from OpenAI is free on the ChatGPT Free plan, which the pricing documentation lists at $0 a month, and Go adds a paid step at $8. On both, OpenAI lists GPT-6 Luna at Standard speed in the desktop app, subject to rollout, so the free route is real but narrow.
Free appears there as a plan of its own, with no trial period stated. The Free and Go plan cards list only that one model in the desktop app; the web, the CLI, the IDE extension, iOS and the cloud integrations first appear on the Plus card. Image generation is not available on the Free plan. What OpenAI publishes about the free version stops at the model: its estimate table covers Plus and Standard Business only, and nothing on the pricing documentation read on 2026-10-20 states a message limit for Free or Go. The practical way to learn your free limit is to use it until it stops, and note which model you were on and how long the session ran.
Codex yearly subscription: annual billing and seats
A Codex yearly subscription for one person is not stated on OpenAI’s pricing documentation on 2026-10-20: Free, Go, Plus and Pro carry monthly prices only. The one Codex annual plan on that page is Business, at $20 per user a month billed annually against $25 billed monthly, with a minimum of two users. For a team of two that is 2 × $20 × 12 = $480 a year on annual billing, against 2 × $25 × 12 = $600 paid monthly, so the Codex plan billed by the year saves $120. A price for an annual Plus or Pro seat seen on a round-up is not one of OpenAI’s published plans until its own pricing page shows it.
Codex usage limits: what a five-hour window holds on each plan
Codex usage limits are estimates, not fixed counts. OpenAI publishes local messages per five-hour period for Plus and Standard Business by model, says Pro plans currently have no five-hour limit, and notes that weekly limits may also apply. Image generation uses the allowance about 3 to 5 times faster on average.
| Model | Plus (local messages per five hours) | Standard Business | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-6 Astra | 5-45 | 5-45 | Fast mode uses included limits at 2.5x; Ultrafast at 8x, on Pro $500 and eligible Enterprise and Edu plans |
| GPT-6.1 Sol | 15-160 | 15-160 | Fast mode at 2.5x; Ultrafast at 8x where Ultrafast is offered |
| GPT-6 Sol | 15-150 | 15-150 | Fast mode at 2.5x |
| GPT-6 Luna | 350-3,000 | 350-3,000 | Fast mode at 2.5x; the model the Free and Go cards list |
The Pro tiers sit outside that table, and OpenAI’s documentation describes them only this far:
| Pro tier | What OpenAI’s Codex docs say on 2026-10-20 |
|---|---|
| Pro $100 | Everything in Plus; exempt from the five-hour limit for now; its allowance is not stated in OpenAI’s pricing documentation |
| Pro $200 | Everything in Plus; the same exemption; how its allowance compares with Pro $100 is not given in the docs |
| Pro $500 | Everything in Plus; no five-hour limit; Ultrafast mode, which uses included usage first and then available credits |
If you know the Codex Pro plans by 5x and 20x labels, the documentation read on 2026-10-20 names them by price instead, $100, $200 and $500 a month, and prints no multiplier for any of them. OpenAI’s Codex docs suggest checking the usage dashboard every week or two to understand “your pace and remaining capacity”, while the Pro comparison they link lives on its Help Center site, help.openai.com, which refused an automated read on 2026-10-20.
The counts are ranges because, in OpenAI’s words, model choice, context, reasoning, tool use, retrieval and caching all affect usage, “so prompt length alone isn’t a reliable estimate.” Cloud tasks may use more of the allowance than local messages, and local messages and cloud chats share one allowance. ChatGPT Work shares it too, with the same pricing, credits and limits, and on Plus and Pro so does ChatGPT for Excel. Enterprise and Edu users with flexible pricing have no fixed rate limits and scale with credits, while those plans without flexible pricing get the same per-seat limits as Plus for most features. The older GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra and Luna models no longer appear in the estimate table; their credit rates still sit in the credits table further down.
What no Codex plan buys you
No Codex plan buys an app that stays up. A subscription pays for agent time; error tracking, a tested backup, a deploy gate and someone watching the app when it breaks at night are engineering work on the app itself, whichever agent wrote the code.
In our June and July 2026 audits, 17 of the 21 third-party apps we audited had no error tracking or alerting, so when a user hits an error, nothing records it.
Those 21 were apps we chose to look at, a selected set rather than a random sample, so the number says what that group lacked, not what every AI-built app lacks. More agent hours do not add the checks that tell you the app broke, nor the checks that stop an agent undoing fixes made in an earlier session. At some point the useful comparison stops being one plan against another and becomes another month of agent spend against paying people to fix what keeps breaking, which what a developer costs by hiring route prices out.
If the app is about to take paying customers and the same fault keeps coming back after each session, a free audit is where we go over with you what to fix first. In the full sprint, our engineers then work through all 13 areas and 123 checks in 10 working days.
Codex limit resets: the five-hour period, and what happens when you run out
Codex limit resets are tracked per account: the usage dashboard shows current limits and reset times, and /status shows what is left during a Codex CLI session. A limit reached mid-turn lets that turn finish; after that the choices are waiting, buying credits on Plus or Pro, or running extra local chats on an API key.
OpenAI’s documentation sends every user to that dashboard for reset times, and adds that weekly limits may also apply on top of the five-hour period. A one-off Codex reset on Sep 13, 2026 does not appear on any OpenAI page read on 2026-10-20: neither the pricing documentation nor the September entries of the Codex changelog mention one, so no such date or amount is given here. How many rate-limit resets a Codex account gets is not stated on the pricing documentation, but the changelog’s 11 June 2026 entry added reset banking for Plus and Pro users, “including one free reset at launch”, with referral invitations for earning more during the promotion running then. What a Codex reset costs beyond that free one is not stated in OpenAI’s pricing documentation, and neither is whether unused allowance carries over to the next period.
When you hit the limit, four moves follow from OpenAI’s documentation and its usage dashboard:
- 01 Let the active turn finish: the agent can keep working on a turn already in progress, subject to fair use limits.
- 02 Wait for the reset time the usage dashboard shows.
- 03 Buy credits on Plus or Pro to keep working without upgrading the plan; Business, Edu and Enterprise plans with flexible pricing buy workspace credits instead.
- 04 Run extra local chats with an API key, charged at standard API rates.
In our reading there is a fifth move, made before the limit arrives, and it adds no cost. OpenAI’s own advice when usage runs higher than expected is to consider whether a smaller model or a tighter task scope would still produce a useful result, and the limits table shows how far apart the models sit, so moving routine edits from GPT-6.1 Sol to GPT-6 Luna stretches what is left without paying more.
Codex credits: what a credit buys, per model
Codex credits are the unit OpenAI uses to pay for eligible usage on credit-based plans once the included limits run out, priced per million tokens by model: GPT-6 Luna costs 2.5 credits per million input tokens and 12.5 per million output tokens at Standard speed. What a credit costs in dollars depends on the plan or agreement.
| Model | Input | Cached input | Output | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-6 Astra | 250 | 25 | 1,250 | 2026-10-20 |
| GPT-6.1 Sol | 50 | 2.5 | 250 | 2026-10-20 |
| GPT-6 Sol | 50 | 5 | 250 | 2026-10-20 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 2.5 | 0.25 | 12.5 | 2026-10-20 |
| GPT-5.6 Sol (legacy) | 100 | 10 | 500 | 2026-10-20 |
| GPT-5.6 Terra (legacy) | 50 | 5 | 300 | 2026-10-20 |
| GPT-5.6 Luna (legacy) | 5 | 0.5 | 30 | 2026-10-20 |
All figures are credits per million tokens at Standard speed. The documentation prints five more rows: Daybreak Blue and Daybreak Red, which need Trusted Access for Cyber approval, GPT-Rosalind-Research, and the image and text rates of GPT-Image-2.
On what a credit costs, the documentation says: “Credit purchase prices and applicable discounts depend on your plan or agreement.” No dollar price per credit appears on the pricing documentation read on 2026-10-20, so none is printed here, and Codex credit billing has no separate cache-write charge. Speed changes the rate: OpenAI’s Codex speed documentation bills purchased credits at 2x the Standard rate in Fast mode and 6x in Ultrafast mode. Desktop voice costs 1.25 credits per minute on Business, Edu and Enterprise workspaces with credit-based billing, a rate that also applies when Plus and Pro users spend extra credits.
The Codex rates turn into token counts with simple division. How many tokens 1,000 Codex credits buy depends on the model: on GPT-6 Luna, 400 million input tokens or 80 million output tokens; on GPT-6.1 Sol, 20 million input or 4 million output. How much 250 credits buy in Codex also turns on the model: at the GPT-6.1 Sol output rate, they pay for 1 million output tokens. The legacy rows still matter if a saved setting points at them. GPT-5.6 Sol bills 500 credits per million output tokens, so 500 Codex credits cover 1 million output tokens there. GPT-5.6 Terra bills 50 credits per million input tokens in Codex, the same input rate as GPT-6.1 Sol. OpenAI adds that GPT-5.6 Sol’s promotional pricing runs at least through November 21, 2026. A bundle of 5,000 Codex credits on GPT-6 Astra, the costliest of the four GPT-6 rows, covers 4 million output tokens.
How long 1,000 credits last in Codex is not a figure OpenAI publishes, and its documentation notes that tasks that look similar can consume different amounts. The only per-task number on the page is for a legacy model: a typical GPT-5.6 Sol task may use 2 to 15 credits, which would put 1,000 credits somewhere between about 67 and 500 such tasks.
Codex CLI cost and the API key route
Codex CLI cost is the cost of whatever you sign in with. The CLI runs on your ChatGPT plan, or on an API key, where there is no plan fee, usage is billed at API token prices, and cloud features such as GitHub code review and Slack are not available.
| Route | What you pay | What limits it | Models | Cloud features |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT sign-in | The plan’s monthly price, plus credits if you buy them | The plan’s usage limits and any weekly limit | The models your plan lists | Plus and above: code review, Slack and other cloud integrations |
| API key | API prices per million tokens, for example gpt-6.1-sol at $2.00 input and $10.00 output (short context) | Your own API spending; ChatGPT credit multipliers don’t apply | The API models available to your key | None (no GitHub code review, Slack, etc.) |
OpenAI’s API pricing listed gpt-6-luna at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens, and gpt-6-astra at $10.00 and $50.00, at Standard short-context rates on 2026-10-20; long context, above 272K input tokens, costs more. OpenAI warns that API token prices are separate from subscription usage and should not be used to estimate included tasks. A model retirement can also differ by route: OpenAI’s note that GPT-5.5 retires from Codex with ChatGPT sign-in on October 14, 2026 adds that the OpenAI API and Codex sessions authenticated with an API key aren’t affected.
Which route fits is a question of rhythm: steady weekly work fits a plan, while spiky or automated work, such as Codex running in CI, fits a key, which OpenAI itself describes as “Great for automation in shared environments like CI.” If your app itself calls OpenAI with a key, that is a separate cost again, and what the app’s API calls cost per customer is worth working out before launch.
Codex vs Claude Code pricing: what actually differs
Codex vs Claude Code pricing differs first at the entry point. Codex is included in every ChatGPT plan, the free one too, while Claude Code requires a Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise or Console account, and the free Claude plan does not include it. Past that, compare your own month on each, model by model.
So the first payment buys different things. On Codex it buys more room, since the free plan already runs the agent; on Claude Code it buys access, because the free plan does not include Claude Code at all. On the Codex side, the allowance drains at very different speeds by model: on Plus, GPT-6 Astra is estimated at 5 to 45 local messages per five hours and GPT-6 Luna at 350 to 3,000. A fair Claude Code vs Codex pricing comparison therefore holds the model and the workload fixed before it compares price lists. Anthropic’s plans, prices and limits are covered in Anthropic’s ladder for Claude Code, and which agent writes the better code is not a pricing question but the subject of how the coding agents differ beyond price.
Which ChatGPT plan is right for Codex
Pick the plan by the allowance you keep running out of, not by the feature list; the prices are in the plan table above. Whichever tier you choose, an agent changing a live app needs the engineering standards an AI-built app needs, and no tier supplies them.
When Free or Go is enough
Free or Go fits before you know your ceiling. Start there and, for about two weeks, note which model you used and when the window stopped you; that record answers the upgrade question better than any estimate table. It stops fitting as soon as you need the CLI, the IDE extension or cloud code review, which start on Plus.
When Plus is the right tier
Plus fits the few focused sessions a week that OpenAI’s plan card describes, in the words quoted under the plan table. If Plus stops you once or twice a week in the middle of a task, Plus with occasional credits may cost less than an upgrade; compare the credit price shown when you buy against the next tier’s price before you decide. It does not fit if you hit the five-hour limit most working days.
When a Pro tier pays for itself
A Pro tier earns its price when you are stopped daily on the costliest model. Before you upgrade, we’d spend about a week running routine edits on a cheaper model and keeping the strongest one for the hard steps, since the limits table shows how far apart they sit. Move to the higher Pro tiers only once the lower one runs out; on the documentation read on 2026-10-20, the only difference that documentation lists among them is Ultrafast mode on Pro $500.
When Business or an API key fits
Business is a seat and administration decision for two or more people: a shared workspace, SAML SSO and MFA, larger virtual machines for cloud chats, and credits that extend usage. On credit-based workspaces, OpenAI’s workspace usage and cost guide explains that activity draws from a shared pool of workspace credits, and that usage alerts notify without stopping spending. An API key fits automated or spiky work and has no allowance at all, only the per-token prices covered in the CLI section.
How the sprint handles this choice
Once Codex is changing an app with paying users, the subscription is a known monthly line, and the cost worth watching is the fix that comes undone between sessions. In the Production Hardening Sprint, we provide CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, Cursor rules, or equivalents describing conventions and protected patterns, and add CI checks for the rules that can be enforced. Codex reads AGENTS.md for custom instructions, and what an AGENTS.md file holds is a subject of its own. Hosting, paid tools and API usage are paid through your accounts, so the ChatGPT plan stays your bill.
Common questions about Codex credits and plans
How much are 1000 Codex credits?
OpenAI prints no purchase price per Codex credit in its pricing documentation, which says credit prices and discounts depend on your plan or agreement (read 2026-10-20). In tokens, 1,000 credits buy 400 million input or 80 million output tokens on GPT-6 Luna at Standard speed, or 20 million input or 4 million output tokens on GPT-6.1 Sol. One dollar ratio does appear on OpenAI’s Codex for Students page, for verified university students in the United States and Canada: their grant shows as “2,500 credits, which is equivalent to $100”, or $40 per 1,000 credits of that grant, not a purchase price.
What are the differences between the Codex $100 and $200 plans?
OpenAI’s Codex pricing documentation, read on 2026-10-20, separates the $100 and $200 Pro plans only by price: both include everything in Plus, neither carries a five-hour limit at present, and only the $500 tier adds Ultrafast mode. How much more usage the $200 plan holds is set out in OpenAI’s Help Center comparison of Pro plans, which the documentation links and which refused an automated read that day, so check that page before you pay.
How to get Codex premium for free?
OpenAI’s pricing documentation lists no free trial of a paid Codex plan on 2026-10-20; the free route it offers is the ChatGPT Free plan itself, with Codex at $0 a month on GPT-6 Luna in the desktop app, subject to rollout. Verified university students in the United States and Canada can claim $100 in ChatGPT credits for Codex, which expire 12 months after the grant, and eligible users can send Codex invitations for referral rewards from the app’s profile menu.
When is it time to get help instead of buying more Codex usage?
It is time when the same fault survives several agent sessions, or when the app is about to take paying customers and nobody has tested signup, payments and recovery. At AxonBuild, we go over with you what to fix first in a free audit, before more money goes into usage.
Will your Codex plan run out before the app is done?
Usage limits matter less than what the work still needs, and an app that looks finished often has gaps no plan can close. In an audit, we look at what you have built with Codex and point out the parts that still need a person, so you know what to spend on next.
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