Rate Limits Draining Faster
Resolved 💬 14 comments Opened Feb 25, 2026 by human-bee Closed Mar 1, 2026
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (github-actions[bot], contributor)
responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.
I'm surprised, my usage style hasnt changed, but it seems that i have used 22% of weekly allotment in one day???? never has happened before, even on my biggest multi-threads + subagents days.
14 Comments
019c922e-b020-7a60-8e12-28a2e7b004ba
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We haven't made any changes to usage tracking or rate limits, so you must have used more tokens than you usually do.
I had exactly the same feeling today. Yesterday evening I had more than 90%, today I had little use (I was expecting to be not lower than 70%) and find out to be at ~30%
I certainly believe this, but is there anyway to know if something has changed (no codex app changelogs is nerve-racking) and now my config, or tool calls or something is 'leaking' or maybe consuming duplicate, or unnecessary tokens?? how can i even investigate myself to see what the burn is coming from, so i can decide how to manage myself. that observability would be helpful, especially considering no insight into subagents, and where they at and what theyre doing in the background.
019c9791-29fd-74f2-b4d7-e004cc5636e5 (just ate another 7% of weekly in 30 minutes, 4 active sessions, no subagents that im aware of)
and overnight (in Europe) without any use at all, other 5% disappeared. I do not use any subagents, only one single session of codex cli. And I find rather strange that there are three independent issues opened here in the same time span of people complaining of the same unexpectedly fast token consumption. If you @etraut-openai say that you have not made any change, I totally trust you (1), but maybe there is a real issue affecting the measuring system.
(1) to be clear, I am very satisfied by open-ai service and very thankful for the great service. I am just reporting what I am convinced is a problem requiring attention from your side.
My guess is that it could be due to a recently introduced background terminal feature that the agent can monitor in real time. The agent wakes up about every 30 seconds to track the progress of running commands. Each time it wakes up, it probably sends the full session context, which could be draining the limits. However, I’ve been using this feature since it was experimental and haven’t seen any increase in recent usage.
I have updated to version v0.104.0 yesterday before I noticed this effect and I do not use anything experimental. In general I am never closing the session and do not have background running commands started by the agent, at least not that I know. And just now updated to v0.105.0, let's hope that it won't use all my remaining tokens :)
I've also noticed that the limits are being consumed faster than they were a few days ago. For example, a five-hour limit was almost depleted after five requests. Previously, it would have taken about 15% of the five-hour limit.
I've also encountered the same issue in recent days. Using codex cli & codex vscode extension, around 10k tokens can take up to 10% 5h usage limit. There might be a bug in the backend counting system somewhere.
Feedback has been sent, 019ca53d-ac3d-77a1-bcfc-6ff070a1b5c3
Also noticing my usage appears to be dropping faster than usual with similar ot lighter workload this weekend. CLI version 0.106.0. Pro plan. Weekly usage interestingly is also bouncing around, e.g. initially it's 62%, then a moment later it's 59%, then it's 62% again.
We haven't changed anything in terms of usage accounting or rate limits. We have rolled out various performance improvements that may result in faster usage of tokens, but the most likely explanation here is that your usage patterns have changed.
where can i go to see and verify my increased token usage? -BenOn Mar 1, 2026, at 9:57 AM, Eric Traut @.***> wrote:etraut-openai left a comment (openai/codex#12728)
We haven't changed anything in terms of usage accounting or rate limits. We have rolled out various performance improvements that may result in faster usage of tokens, but the most likely explanation here is that your usage patterns have changed.
—Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: @.***>
Same issue here and am just using the codex app, not terminal. Using it for fairly basic work and at medium or low reasoning and it is chewing through the usage. I am using it less than a week ago but consuming much faster. Either the models are setup to consume more (more sub agents) or there is a bug, nothing has changed from my side. Concerning if OAI does not know what is going on.