OpenAI is temporarily removing the 5-hour usage-limit restriction for ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Business users working with Codex and ChatGPT Work.

The change follows a sharp demand spike around GPT-5.6 Sol, Codex, and ChatGPT Work. OpenAI product lead Tibo Sottiaux said on X that the previous 48 hours for Codex and ChatGPT Work had been intense, then outlined three changes: temporarily removing the 5-hour restriction, making GPT-5.6 Sol more efficient, and landing a usage reset.

This is not an unlimited-use announcement. The practical change is that the short rolling usage window is being relaxed for eligible paid plans. Weekly usage limits can still apply.

What changed

Before this temporary change, OpenAI's Codex pricing page described local messages and cloud tasks as sharing a five-hour window, with additional weekly limits possible. That meant a user could hit the short-window gate even if they had not fully exhausted their longer weekly allowance.

The temporary update removes that shorter interruption for Plus, Pro, and Business users, according to Sottiaux's post and multiple reports covering the announcement.

For heavy users, the effect is simple: Codex and ChatGPT Work sessions should be less likely to stop because the rolling 5-hour bucket has run out. Users can still run into weekly limits, plan-specific allowances, credit limits, or other fair-use controls.

Why OpenAI is doing this now

The timing matters. OpenAI recently expanded GPT-5.6 Sol across ChatGPT Work and Codex, and the new model is aimed squarely at higher-effort agent work: coding, research, computer use, and long-running workflows.

Those are exactly the tasks that burn usage quickly. A single ambitious Codex task or ChatGPT Work run can involve large context windows, tool calls, file reads, browser work, generated assets, and long reasoning traces. Users do not experience that as a neat number of messages. They experience it as "I asked the agent to keep working, and the limit arrived before the job was done."

The temporary removal is OpenAI's short-term answer to that friction.

Sottiaux also said OpenAI is rolling out changes to make GPT-5.6 Sol more efficient, so the model should consume less usage for the same kind of work. OpenAI has not yet quantified the exact impact.

What still applies

The important caveat is that the 5-hour gate is not the only limit.

OpenAI's Codex pricing page says usage depends on model choice, task complexity, local versus cloud execution, context size, reasoning, tool use, retrieval, and caching. It also says tasks that look similar can consume different amounts of allowance.

The same page still describes plan-based usage limits and additional weekly limits. It also notes that users approaching limits can switch to a smaller model to stretch remaining allowance.

So the safer reading is:

  • the short 5-hour restriction is temporarily removed for Plus, Pro, and Business;
  • weekly limits remain relevant;
  • GPT-5.6 Sol is being made more efficient;
  • OpenAI has not said this is permanent.

Why this matters for agent work

For ordinary chat, a 5-hour window is inconvenient. For agentic work, it can break the rhythm of the job.

Codex and ChatGPT Work are built around longer tasks: reviewing code, making changes across a repository, writing reports, creating deliverables, using desktop apps, and continuing in the background. Those workflows do not map cleanly to a fixed short-window counter.

That is why this update matters more than a simple quota tweak. It suggests OpenAI is still tuning the subscription model around how people actually use agents. The more OpenAI pushes ChatGPT into real work, the more important it becomes for limits to match project flow rather than chat-message habits.

It also comes during a competitive moment. Anthropic has been extending access to Claude Fable 5 for paid users while it manages demand and capacity. OpenAI's move looks like the same kind of subscriber-relief strategy: keep users working during a high-demand launch week instead of making them stop right when they are testing the new model hardest.

Our take

This is good news for heavy Codex and ChatGPT Work users, but it should be treated as a temporary relief valve, not a new permanent entitlement.

The most useful immediate change is fewer interruptions during long GPT-5.6 Sol sessions. The bigger long-term question is whether OpenAI replaces the 5-hour window with a clearer usage model that feels less surprising to people doing real work.

For now, Plus, Pro, and Business users should have more room to run ambitious Codex and ChatGPT Work tasks, but they still need to watch the weekly allowance and understand that high-context agent work can consume usage quickly.

Sources: Tibo Sottiaux on X, BleepingComputer, OpenAI Codex pricing, Using Codex with your ChatGPT plan, Simon Willison