SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - Starting in December, ChatGPT and Codex will draw on one shared usage allowance on Plus, Pro, and Business plans, OpenAI says in an update to its help page on usage limits.
Until now, chat and coding work have been metered separately. From December, both will be measured in tokens, the units of information a model processes and generates, under a single allowance. How much of the allowance a request uses will depend on the model chosen and the task: more advanced models and complex tasks generally use more of it.
One part of the product stays outside the meter. Instant chat will not draw from the usage allowance, OpenAI says. Combined remaining usage and reset times will be visible in Settings, under Usage, so subscribers can see one balance instead of two.
When the shared allowance runs out, OpenAI lists three options: wait for the reset, upgrade the plan, or buy credits to continue using eligible features. OpenAI says it expects most users will not need to wait for their usage to reset more often than they do now, framing that as an expectation rather than a guarantee.
The change arrives as OpenAI folds the agentic capabilities of Work into the main ChatGPT experience. What it does not do is change what Codex can do: it changes what agent work costs against a plan, putting coding runs and chat questions on the same meter.
Two limits of the announcement matter for planning. OpenAI gives no exact December start date in the help page, and it publishes no per-plan allowance sizes, so subscribers cannot yet calculate whether their combined chat and coding load will fit their tier. Anyone planning December capacity should baseline November usage in both products and re-check Settings after the cutover.
(Source: OpenAI Help Center, “Understanding ChatGPT and Codex usage limits”)
