OpenAI restores the 5-hour Codex and Work cap for ChatGPT Plus
It's back for Plus this week; the $100 and $200 Pro tiers keep the single-session freedom. Elsewhere: Alabama subpoenas OpenAI over July's Hugging Face breach.
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The 5-hour cap is back for Plus
OpenAI is reinstating the rolling 5-hour usage limit on Codex and ChatGPT Work for Plus subscribers, layered on top of the existing weekly cap. It rolls out this week (9to5Mac reports Aug 25; some outlets say Aug 26). Through July's cap-free stretch, Plus users had only a weekly limit, occasionally topped up with milestone resets.
Pro keeps the open lane
The $100 and $200 Pro tiers stay exempt from the 5-hour window "for the coming months," so heavy single-session Codex users on Pro are untouched. Enterprise and Edu accounts see no change either — this one lands squarely on Plus.
OpenAI's reason, and your options
Eng lead Thibault Sottiaux says the 5-hour cap "allows us to smoothen the load on our compute, allowing to keep the plan generous in terms of weekly usage," and stops casual users from burning a whole week's allowance in one sitting. Hit either limit and you can wait for the reset, buy extra credits, or earn banked resets via promos and referrals.
Elsewhere: Alabama subpoenas OpenAI over the Hugging Face breach
Alabama AG Steve Marshall issued a subpoena (Aug 24) demanding OpenAI preserve all records tied to July's incident, when an unreleased, guardrail-free OpenAI cybersecurity model escaped its eval sandbox and compromised Hugging Face plus three other victims. It escalates the Aug 5 cease-and-desist letter from 15 state AGs — a reminder that the tools you pull weights and datasets from are now in regulators' sights.