--- title: OpenAI rolls out usage-based pricing for Codex on... description: OpenAI introduced a new $100/month ChatGPT tier offering 5x more Codex usage than Plus (temporarily 10x through May 31), sitting between the $20 Plus and $200... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/openai-rolls-out-usage-based-pricing-for-codex-on-business-and-enterprise-plans-ger6iid4m twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: OpenAI rolls out usage-based pricing for Codex on Business and Enterprise plans | daily.dev og:description: OpenAI introduced a new $100/month ChatGPT tier offering 5x more Codex usage than Plus (temporarily 10x through May 31), sitting between the $20 Plus and $200... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/openai-rolls-out-usage-based-pricing-for-codex-on-business-and-enterprise-plans-ger6iid4m og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/gER6iId4M.png og:image:alt: OpenAI rolls out usage-based pricing for Codex on Business and Enterprise plans og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # OpenAI rolls out usage-based pricing for Codex on Business and Enterprise plans **[Collections](https://daily.dev/sources/collections)** · 4 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary OpenAI introduced a new $100/month ChatGPT tier offering 5x more Codex usage than Plus (temporarily 10x through May 31), sitting between the $20 Plus and $200 Pro plans. Business and Enterprise customers moved to token-based billing for Codex, covering models like GPT-5.3-Codex and GPT-5.1-Codex-Max. Real-world agentic costs are steep: running 100 Codex instances simultaneously for 30 days cost $1.3M (603B tokens). A hands-on comparison with Claude Code finds Codex better for experienced developers who know what they want, while Claude Code produces better first drafts but hits usage limits faster. Across the industry, AI coding costs are rising — GitHub Copilot serving costs nearly doubled since January 2025, and Cursor and Windsurf have also shifted to token-based billing. Engineering managers now face a real ROI challenge as autonomous agent fleets scale. ## Content ## What changed OpenAI launched a new $100/month ChatGPT Pro tier on April 9, 2026, sitting between the existing $20 Plus and $200 Pro plans. The pitch is straightforward: 5x more Codex usage than Plus, temporarily bumped to 10x through May 31. The $200 tier stays put as the highest-usage option, and existing $200 subscribers got a 2x Codex promo extension plus a rate limit reset. Sam Altman called the $20 plan "a really good deal" for Codex, and OpenAI confirmed Codex will remain available on both free and Plus tiers. One OpenAI team member was explicit about it: "Transparency and trust are two principles we will not break, even if it means momentarily earning less." For teams, OpenAI also rolled out usage-based pricing for Codex on Business and Enterprise plans, with $0 seat fees through end of June. Instead of fixed per-seat costs, teams pay based on actual token consumption. ## The token-based rate card As of April 2, 2026, Business and new Enterprise customers moved from per-message credits to token-based pricing. Models covered include GPT-5.4, GPT-5.3-Codex, GPT-5.2-Codex, GPT-5.1-Codex-Max, and GPT-5.1-Codex-mini, each with separate rates for input, cached input, and output tokens. Plus, Pro, and existing Enterprise customers stay on the legacy per-message rate card until migrated. OpenAI estimates average costs at $100–$200 per developer per month, though that varies significantly based on model choice, whether Fast Mode is enabled, and task type. GPT-5.3-Codex also replaced GPT-4.1 as the base model for GitHub Copilot Business and Enterprise as of May 17, 2026, with a 12-month LTS guarantee. GPT-4.1 deprecates June 1, 2026. ## What autonomous coding actually costs The most concrete data point on real-world Codex costs comes from Peter Steinberger, who ran 100 Codex instances simultaneously for 30 days building OpenClaw. The bill: $1.3 million, covering 603 billion tokens across 7.6 million requests. OpenAI covered it as a research investment. His three-person team used the agents to review PRs, scan for security vulnerabilities, deduplicate issues, write fixes, and attend meetings. Disabling Fast Mode would have dropped costs to roughly $300,000/month. That works out to about $13,000 per agent per month at full speed, or around $3,000 optimized. This is the uncomfortable math behind flat-rate subscription pricing. Agentic workflows consume orders of magnitude more tokens than chat interactions, and the gap between what subscribers pay and what compute actually costs is only sustainable if most users stay well below their limits. ## How Codex compares to Claude Code in practice A week-long hands-on comparison found real trade-offs. Codex is free to try and offers more generous usage limits on the Pro tier, but it tends to make assumptions and build autonomously without asking clarifying questions, which means more post-build fixes. Claude Code asks upfront questions that produce better first drafts, but requires a paid subscription to even try and hits usage limits frequently even on the Max 5x tier. Claude Code also has a broader ecosystem, including Cowork for non-coding automation. For experienced developers who know exactly what they want, Codex works well. For beginners or anyone who wants fewer surprises, Claude Code is probably the better starting point. On the model side, GPT-5.5 has generated genuine enthusiasm. Some developers who previously relied on Claude Code have switched, citing Codex's tendency to follow instructions precisely without making unsolicited changes. Claude Code still has advantages in native worktrees and the agents view, and both are roughly equivalent on complex tasks. ## The broader pricing picture AI coding costs are rising across the board. GitHub Copilot's serving costs have reportedly nearly doubled since January 2025. Cursor, Windsurf, and others have moved from flat subscriptions to token-based billing and tightened rate limits. There are also reports of Codex usage limits being cut by 50% for some users, which fits the pattern: generous limits to attract users, then adjustments as costs become clearer. For casual users doing moderate-complexity tasks, free tiers of Claude or Perplexity can cover most needs. ChatGPT Plus has a real but small edge on tasks like scripting where handling edge cases gracefully matters. Free tiers break down quickly in real workflows, though, especially for anyone running multiple sessions daily. Engineering managers now face a genuine budgeting problem: justify AI spend with concrete ROI, or absorb rising cloud AI costs, or shift to local LLM inference. The $100/month tier is a reasonable middle ground for individual developers who've outgrown Plus, but the economics of autonomous agent fleets are still being worked out in public. ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [OpenAI’s new $100 tier targets developers hitting Codex \(and Claude Code\) limits](https://daily.dev/posts/openai-s-new-100-tier-targets-developers-hitting-codex-and-claude-code-limits-a63cw44kk) · The New Stack · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#openai](https://daily.dev/tags/openai), [#ai-assisted-development](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-assisted-development), [#codex](https://daily.dev/tags/codex) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/openai-rolls-out-usage-based-pricing-for-codex-on-business-and-enterprise-plans-ger6iid4m) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"OpenAI rolls out usage-based pricing for Codex on Business and Enterprise plans","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/openai-rolls-out-usage-based-pricing-for-codex-on-business-and-enterprise-plans-ger6iid4m","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/openai-rolls-out-usage-based-pricing-for-codex-on-business-and-enterprise-plans-ger6iid4m"},"datePublished":"2026-04-02T21:37:12.874Z","dateModified":"2026-05-22T09:52:30.743Z","description":"OpenAI introduced a new $100/month ChatGPT tier offering 5x more Codex usage than Plus (temporarily 10x through May 31), sitting between the $20 Plus and $200...","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Collections","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Collections","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--fk_6ycEi--/f_auto,q_auto/v1780996001/logos/collections?_a=BAMAMiWQ0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/collections"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/openai-rolls-out-usage-based-pricing-for-codex-on-business-and-enterprise-plans-ger6iid4m","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"openai,ai-assisted-development,codex","timeRequired":"PT4M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Collections","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/collections"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"OpenAI rolls out usage-based pricing for Codex on Business and Enterprise plans"}]} ```