Codex CLI burns subscription tokens when only checking /status repeatedly
What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?
codex-cli 0.130.0
What subscription do you have?
Plus
What platform is your computer?
Linux 6.8.0-111-generic x86_64 x86_64
What issue are you seeing?
What happened:
Codex CLI appears to deplete usage limits even when no real work is done.
I checked /status a few consecutive times and saw my 5h limit drop significantly.
Example:
- 3 consecutive /status checks
- about 12% of my 5h limit gone
- no coding task, no file changes, no tool work
Environment:
- Codex CLI version: codex-cli 0.130.0
- OS: Linux 6.8.0-111-generic x86_64 x86_64
- Plan/subscription: Plus
- Model: gpt-5.5
- Install method: npm
Notes:
I also burned through my weekly limit in four ~5h sessions, so I’m trying to understand if idle/status usage is being counted unexpectedly.
What steps can reproduce the bug?
- Start Codex CLI
- Run /status
- Run /status again
- Run /status again
- Observe usage limit decrease
What is the expected behavior?
Checking /status should not consume meaningful usage, or at least the usage cost should be clearly explained.
Additional information
I burned through my weekly limit in four ~5h sessions, so I’m trying to understand if idle/status usage is being counted unexpectedly.
Additional Datapoint:
no file edits, no shell commands, no task execution between those checks.
<img width="758" height="910" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/05d27c46-1ed7-4eec-a5af-8d213fe65600" />
7 Comments
Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.
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The potential duplicates possibly could be the same bug on codex side, but I described different steps to reproduce the bug. That's why from my point of view this is not a duplicate.
I think this may just be that the status data doesn't actually seem to load every time you run /status. I seem to have to run /status 3 times to see an update, but further runs of /status don't deplete rate limits.
That’s what i thought at first too. But it took me a while to realize this also happens while idling.
In the example above, i did nothing in codex for about 10 minutes before the first /status check, and nothing during the three consecutive /status executions either.
10 minutes is a short span, their billing server could be down and so the proxy was sending some outdated status that was from 1 hour ago.
Yeah sure, we can speculate about stale status data, delayed billing sync, proxy caching, etc.
But that is exactly the problem from the user side: I have no way to ask someone to verify the actual usage events.
So i’m left trying to test and figure out the real cause myself.
This is a paid $20/month product, the limit is already very constrained, and the reported usage behavior is confusing. I would really appreciate an official way to check whether idle time or repeated /status calls are counted against the limit.
In the meantime, as said, I am convinced this is a bug and the /status command or idling alone burns the usage.