OpenAI will merge ChatGPT and Codex into one shared allowance in December

OpenAI will put ChatGPT and Codex on one shared usage allowance for Plus, Pro and Business plans starting in December, according to a Help Center page titled "Understanding ChatGPT and Codex usage limits". It is exact about the mechanism and silent about the size.

A meter, not a quantity

The operative sentence reads: "Starting in December, Plus, Pro, and Business plans' usage allowance will be shared across ChatGPT and Codex as we bring the agentic capabilities of Work into the main ChatGPT experience." The final clause is the reason: Work's agentic features are moving into the main product, and two surfaces billed together get one meter.

Usage "will be measured in tokens", and advanced models and complex tasks "generally use more of your allowance"; instant chat "will not draw from your usage". No tier is given a token figure, and no plan price appears.

An afternoon of Codex, paid from the same pool

An agent run is not one exchange: it reads files, retries a failing test, writes a diff, tries again, and every turn is a request. OpenAI's warning about complex tasks describes Codex's workload.

An afternoon of that work draws from the same balance as ordinary chat. The page points to "combined remaining usage and reset times" in Settings. What it should look like for a working developer is unstated.

Three exits and one missing number

OpenAI names three responses to exhaustion: "you can wait for it to reset, upgrade your plan, or buy credits". It expects "most users won't need to wait for their usage to reset more often than they do now", a forecast with no figure.

The gap is arithmetic. Without an allowance per tier, no one can compute a plan's effective price after December, or judge whether upgrading beats credits.

A checkout notice, then a petition

Windows Report traced the change to a checkout notice AI product researcher Tibor Blaho spotted in the web app: "Starting in December, plan usage will have a shared limit across all of ChatGPT and Codex". His screenshot showed a subscription at EUR 23 a month including tax, apparently Plus. ChatGPT and Codex head Thibault Sottiaux replied that the team is bringing the best capabilities of ChatGPT and Work together, and that the integration is not live.

Reaction was organised rather than resigned. A developer forum thread opened on 31 October had 441 views, 68 likes and 16 replies. Its author, Smalikou, argued that people who develop in the browser "should not have to sacrifice their ability to fully use Codex". Two sibling requests filed within a day drew 391 and 165 views.

Nothing on OpenAI's page says the combined allowance is smaller. The objection is not the meter; it is that the meter is all anyone has been shown.