OpenAI Lifts the Five-Hour Cap on ChatGPT and Codex After a Weekend of Overloaded Demand

Key points

• OpenAI temporarily removed the five-hour usage limit on ChatGPT Plus, Pro and Business plans on Sunday after two days of intense demand.
• The company also reset every user's current usage counter, giving paying subscribers a clean slate for the week.
• Product lead Tibo said GPT-5.6 Sol is being retuned to consume less of each user's allowance per task.
• Codex, OpenAI's coding tool, and ChatGPT share the same usage pool, which is what caused many users to hit the wall so quickly.

OpenAI has pulled back one of its most unpopular restrictions, at least for now.

On Sunday the company confirmed it is temporarily removing the rolling five-hour usage limit for paying subscribers on the Plus, Pro and Business tiers. Everyone's current usage counter has also been reset to zero. The change was first reported by BleepingComputer.

The trigger was a surge in demand over the previous 48 hours. Both ChatGPT and Codex, OpenAI's tool for writing and running code, draw from the same pool of allowed messages and tasks. When one side of the house gets busy, the other side runs out of room too.

"The last 48 hours of Codex and ChatGPT Work have been intense," OpenAI product lead Tibo wrote in a post announcing the change. "[We're] temporarily removing the 5 hour usage limit restriction for all Plus, Business and Pro plans."

What does the five-hour limit actually do?

It stops you working once you have sent too many messages in a short window.

ChatGPT normally counts everything you do inside a rolling five-hour window. Send too many prompts, run too many Codex jobs, and the service quietly tells you to come back later. Weekly caps sit on top of that, and they vary by plan and by which model you are using.

For developers running Codex agents, which can chew through dozens of prompts on a single task, the five-hour ceiling has been a persistent complaint. Removing it, even temporarily, means a long coding session no longer ends abruptly because a timer expired.

GPT-5.6 Sol is being made lighter

OpenAI is also changing how much of your allowance each request eats.

"[We are] rolling out changes that will make GPT-5.6 Sol more efficient across the board and that will be reflected in less usage being used so that it can take you further," Tibo said. GPT-5.6 Sol is the current flagship model, the one most subscribers reach for when they want the best answers on hard problems.

OpenAI has not spelled out the mechanics. The most likely explanation is lower token consumption per request, meaning the model processes the same question using fewer of the small text chunks, called tokens, that the company uses to meter usage. Fewer tokens per task means more tasks before you hit the cap.

The one-time reset also matters. Anyone who had already burned through their weekly allowance before Sunday now has fresh headroom, without having to wait for the normal cycle to tick over.

What this is not

It is not unlimited access.

The weekly caps still exist on plans that have them. The five-hour rule has been suspended, not deleted, and OpenAI has been clear this is temporary. If demand cools, the limit is likely to return in some form. Free-tier users are not mentioned in the announcement and appear unaffected by the reset.

For paying customers, the practical takeaway is simple. You have more room to work this week than you did on Friday, and each GPT-5.6 Sol prompt should cost you less of that room going forward. If you were putting off a long Codex session because you knew you would hit the wall, now is the moment.