Codex Pricing (2026): Plans vs Measured Spend Per Developer

Updated October 2026·6 min read

Codex is included with ChatGPT Plus ($20/month), Pro ($100–$500/month) and Business ($25/user/month, $20 billed annually), or billed per token with an API key. Measured across 458 developers who use Codex, the median burns $2,488/month at API prices.

Codex plans and prices

OpenAI doesn't sell Codex on its own. It comes with a ChatGPT plan, or runs on an API key and bills per token:

Plan	Price	Codex access
Free	$0	GPT-6 Luna, subject to rollout
Go	$8/mo	GPT-6 Luna, subject to rollout
Plus	$20/mo	GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Luna; 5-hour and weekly limits
Pro	$100, $200 or $500/mo	No five-hour limit currently
Business	$25/user/mo ($20 billed annually, 2+ users)	Standard seats get the same limits as Plus
Enterprise & Edu	Contact sales	Flexible pricing scales with credits
API key	Per token	Billed at API rates, no plan limits

Source: OpenAI Codex pricing, checked October 2026. Plans that hit their limit can buy credits to keep going. The per-model message allowances are in Codex usage limits.

Codex API pricing

With an API key, Codex bills at OpenAI's standard API rates, per million tokens:

Model	Input	Cached input	Output
GPT-6 Astra	$10.00	$1.00	$50.00
GPT-6.1 Sol	$2.00	$0.10	$10.00
GPT-6 Sol	$2.00	$0.20	$10.00
GPT-6 Luna	$0.10	$0.01	$0.50
GPT-5.3 Codex	$1.75	$0.175	$14.00

Source: OpenAI API pricing (Standard tier, prompts up to 272K tokens), checked October 2026.

What Codex developers really spend per month

A plan price caps what you pay; it says nothing about how much you use. This is measured monthly API-equivalent spend per developer, computed by ccusage from Codex's local session logs and submitted to Viberank, one row per person:

Percentile	Codex only (18 devs)	Codex + other agents (458 devs)
p10	—	$276
p25	—	$814
median	—	$2,488
p75	—	$6,487
p90	—	$14,090

The “Codex only” column is the clean one: those developers used no other agent, so every dollar is Codex. The second column includes people who also run Claude Code or other tools, and a submission's cost isn't split by agent, so it overstates Codex's share. Cohorts under 20 developers show “—”.

At the median, that is $2,488 of API-priced usage a month, against $20 for Plus. 91% of this cohort burn more than $250 a month at API rates, which is more than even the $200 Pro plan costs.

How to read these numbers

They are API-equivalent cost from local logs, not amounts billed. On a ChatGPT plan your marginal cost is $0 until you hit a limit; this is what the same usage would cost at API prices.
The population self-selects: developers who chose to measure and publish their usage skew heavier than the average Codex user.
One row per developer (their highest-cost submission), normalised to 30 days. Submissions under 7 days are excluded.

Check your own

Your plan's remaining limits are in the Codex usage dashboard or /status in the CLI (full walkthrough: how to check Codex usage). For dollars, run ccusage, then put the result on the Codex leaderboard to see where you land:

npx viberank-cli

Weighing Codex against Anthropic's agent? Same method, bigger cohort: Claude Code pricing vs real spend, and the head-to-head in Codex vs Claude Code vs Gemini CLI.

FAQ

How much does Codex cost?

Is Codex free?

ChatGPT Free and Go ($8/month) list GPT-6 Luna in Codex, subject to rollout. Plus at $20/month is the cheapest plan with the full Codex model lineup.

What does Codex cost through the API?

With an API key, Codex bills per token at API rates instead of plan limits. Per million tokens: GPT-6.1 Sol $2 input / $10 output, GPT-6 Astra $10 / $50, GPT-6 Luna $0.10 / $0.50, GPT-5.3 Codex $1.75 / $14.

Where do I see my Codex usage and limits?

In the Codex usage dashboard at chatgpt.com/codex/settings/usage, or with /status inside an active Codex CLI session.