Guide

How much does Codex cost?

Updated August 2026 5 min read

There's no standalone Codex subscription — it comes bundled with your ChatGPT plan, and the plan tier decides how much Codex you get before the meter says stop. Here's how the pricing actually works, as of August 2026.

The short answer

As of August 2026

Codex is included with ChatGPT plans: Plus at $20/month covers regular use, and Pro tiers up to $200/month multiply the budget for heavy agentic work. Past the included budget, extra usage can be billed as credits that map to token consumption.

Like its main rival, Codex meters usage on a rolling window of a few hours plus a weekly cap, both scaling with your tier — the mechanics are in our Codex rate limits guide. The price buys headroom, not features: every tier runs the same Codex.

ChatGPT plans, and what more money buys

Plus — $20/month

The practical entry point for Codex: a working budget on the rolling window and weekly cap. Fine for focused sessions and moderate daily use; long autonomous runs are what drain it.

Pro tiers — $100 to $200/month

The Pro tiers multiply the included budget (5× and 20× the Plus window at the $100 and $200 levels). This is the territory for daily agentic work — parallel sessions, big refactors, overnight runs.

Business and Enterprise

Per-seat team plans exist with their own budgets and admin controls. If you're paying for a team, the same rule applies: the tier sets each seat's headroom, and the meter still runs per rolling window.

Tiers and caps get revised over time — treat the multipliers as the durable fact and any exact message-count table you find as a snapshot. Your own week of usage is the only benchmark that matters.

Credits: what happens when you run out

When you exhaust the included budget, you don't have to wait for the reset or upgrade the whole plan — additional usage can be billed as credits, which map to the tokens you consume. That's genuinely useful for an occasional deadline week, and genuinely expensive as a routine: if you're buying credits every week, the next tier is almost always cheaper.

The credit meter is exactly why visibility matters: the difference between "credits saved the deadline" and "credits doubled my bill" is knowing where your window stands before you start the big run.

What actually determines your cost

The tier sets the ceiling; your working style sets the burn rate. Autonomous sessions consume budget far faster than chat — every file read, every test run, every retry counts. Two developers on the same $20 plan can have completely different Fridays: one never sees a limit, the other hits the window twice a week. The practical question isn't "which tier is cheapest" but "how fast am I burning the one I have."

See what you're spending as you go

Vibe Island reads your existing Codex login and shows each usage window live in your Mac's notch — percentage used and time until reset, updating as you work. No command, no browser tab. A week of real numbers tells you whether Plus is enough or Pro pays for itself — and if you run Claude Code too, both budgets sit side by side in the same panel.

5h 11% 4h1m 7d 2% 6h1m

A real crop of the Vibe Island notch — each provider's windows as live, color-coded numbers, so you always know how much budget is left.

Common questions

Is Codex free to use?

Codex ships with ChatGPT plans rather than as a separate product, and paid tiers are where real work happens: the $20 Plus plan includes a working budget, and Pro tiers multiply it. Whatever tier you're on, usage is metered on a rolling window plus a weekly cap.

Do Codex and ChatGPT share the same limit?

Codex has its own usage metering — a rolling multi-hour window and a weekly cap tied to your plan tier. Hitting a Codex limit is about your Codex usage, and the /usage command inside the CLI shows exactly where you stand.

What are Codex credits?

Credits are the overflow meter: when you use more than your plan includes, additional usage can be billed as credits that map to token consumption. They're a way to keep working past the included budget without upgrading tiers — useful for occasional spikes, expensive as a lifestyle.

How do I know how much of my Codex limit I've used?

Inside the Codex CLI, /usage shows your remaining window and weekly budget. If you'd rather not ask a CLI every time, Vibe Island shows each window's live percentage and reset countdown in your Mac's notch, next to your other agents' budgets.