OpenAI restores the 5-hour Plus cap on Codex and ChatGPT Work

OpenAI is putting a five-hour usage limit back on ChatGPT Plus for Codex and ChatGPT Work. After several weeks in which those products ran against a weekly cap only, Plus subscribers will again hit a short time window before they have to stop, wait, or pay for more.

Thibault “Tibo” Sottiaux, OpenAI’s engineering lead for Codex and ChatGPT, posted the change on X on the evening of August 24, 2026 Pacific time. “Tomorrow we will bring back the 5h limit for Plus accounts across ChatGPT Work and Codex,” he wrote. He said he had flagged the return earlier and then postponed it. 9to5Mac, which recapped the post the same night, dated the restore as August 25.

This is a confirmed product-policy change from the person who runs those surfaces, not a leak and not a rumor. Weekly limits are not going away. Pro is not being recapped. The five-hour rule is coming back for Plus, on both ChatGPT Work and Codex, after a pause that lasted weeks.

Why the short window is returning

Sottiaux gave two reasons, and he numbered them.

First, compute. “The 5h limit allows us to smoothen the load on our compute, allowing to keep the plan generous in terms of weekly usage,” he wrote. In that framing, the short cap is what makes a larger weekly allowance possible. Flatten the peaks, keep the weekly number high. Techmeme’s pickup the same night put the same point in the headline: OpenAI is restoring the limit and saying it would smoothen the load on its compute.

Second, Plus behavior. Sottiaux described Plus users as “relatively casual and new users” who can “accidentally eat through their whole weeks usage and then are confused, making it not a great experience.” The five-hour wall is meant to stop a single sitting from burning the whole week, then leaving someone staring at an empty allowance and wondering what happened.

Those two arguments sit next to each other on purpose. The five-hour limit is how OpenAI says it keeps weekly usage generous, and how it keeps casual and new Plus users from accidentally eating through the week and then getting confused.

Who is exempt, and who was not mentioned

Pro stays open. “We are for the upcoming months keeping the 5h limit not enabled for Pro $100 and Pro $200 subscriptions,” Sottiaux wrote. That is an exemption with a clock on it — upcoming months, not forever — but it is an exemption. If you are on either Pro tier, the five-hour restore does not apply to you right now.

Enterprise and Edu were not in the post. 9to5Mac noted that Tibo did not mention any changes for those accounts, which it said currently use a separate credit-based usage system. Whether those plans ever had, or will get, a five-hour window is unknown from this announcement.

If you are on Plus and you use Codex or ChatGPT Work, you are in the group that gets the window back. If you are on Pro $100 or Pro $200, you are in the group that does not, for now. Everyone else should treat the policy as unstated.

What happens when you hit the wall

9to5Mac’s recap is the source for the reset mechanics. After users reach either the five-hour or weekly limit, they can wait for usage to reset for the next cycle or purchase additional credits. OpenAI also occasionally resets limits for free. Banked resets can be earned through certain promotions and referral offers.

That pairing matters. The five-hour cap is not a replacement for the weekly cap. It is a second gate in front of it. Hit the short window and you wait or buy credits. Hit the weekly number and you wait or buy credits. The pause only removed the first gate. Both gates are back for Plus.

For anyone who used the pause to run long Codex or ChatGPT Work sessions in one stretch, the shape of a workday changes. A session that could previously chew through a large share of the week in a single block will now stop at five hours unless you wait out the cycle or add credits. That is the practical point of Sottiaux’s “accidentally eat through their whole weeks usage” line: the short window is there to interrupt that pattern.

The weeks without the restriction

9to5Mac says that over the past few weeks OpenAI temporarily lifted the five-hour usage limit for Codex and ChatGPT Work and left only the weekly cap in place. Techmeme described the same stretch as “weeks without the restriction.”

During that period, 9to5Mac reports, the company also reset users’ weekly usage early on several occasions to celebrate milestones, including adding another million active users across the two platforms, which it described as now unified. Those early weekly resets were a separate kindness on top of the lifted five-hour rule. The announcement does not say those milestone resets will continue, stop, or change when the five-hour limit returns.

Sottiaux’s own wording is that he had mentioned the restore “a while ago, but then postponed it.” The pause was deliberate, not an accident, and the postponement is now over.

The reaction was not subtle

Replies under the announcement were blunt. One asked how casual new Plus users are more of a compute strain than Pro users. Another wrote, “I am not a casual user I’m just poor.” A third offered, “one reset per million users lost.” Those comments are not policy. They are the mood in the thread: people who treat Plus as their working tier hear “casual and new” and do not recognize themselves.

OpenAI did not answer those objections in the post. The stated trade is still the one Sottiaux wrote down: a five-hour Plus limit in exchange for a weekly allowance the company is willing to keep generous, plus fewer people who blow the week in one sitting and then get lost.

What to do next

If you are on Plus and you run Codex or ChatGPT Work, assume the five-hour window is back as of August 25 and plan sessions around a reset cycle instead of a single long sit. If you are on Pro $100 or Pro $200, you can keep working through the short window for the upcoming months, but do not assume that exemption is permanent. Read Sottiaux’s post for the exact Plus-versus-Pro wording, then the 9to5Mac recap for the reset-and-credits rules and the note that Enterprise and Edu were left unaddressed.