OpenAI Reinstates 5-Hour Usage Caps for ChatGPT Plus Subscribers

Subscribers using OpenAI’s middle-tier subscription plan will soon need to pace their work sessions more carefully. Starting August 25, the company is bringing back five-hour usage restrictions on both ChatGPT Work and Codex for ChatGPT Plus accounts.

The move reverses a temporary grace period during which OpenAI had paused these hourly constraints following the release of its GPT-5.6 model.

Managing Resources and Pacing Usage

The announcement came directly from Thibault Sottiaux, OpenAI’s lead for Codex and ChatGPT, in a post on X. According to Sottiaux, reintroducing the five-hour window is necessary for managing the platform’s extensive compute demands while continuing to supply users with substantial weekly quotas.

Under the revived policy, ChatGPT Plus members will still receive their standard overall weekly allowances. However, those limits will be broken up into distinct five-hour operational windows. Once a user hits the threshold during a session, they must wait for the five-hour counter to reset before accessing the remainder of their weekly quota.

In addition to technical load management, Sottiaux explained that the restrictions serve as a safeguard for less experienced users. The company observed that newer and more casual Plus subscribers frequently consumed their entire weekly allocation too quickly by mistake, leaving them unable to use the service for days at a time. The five-hour boundary is intended to help these users balance their usage more effectively over the course of seven days.

Status of Higher-Tier Accounts

For now, the policy change applies strictly to standard ChatGPT Plus subscribers. Users enrolled in the top-tier ChatGPT Pro plans—which cost $100 and $200 per month—will remain exempt from the five-hour cap and will continue to operate solely under standard weekly limits.

However, that exemption may be short-lived. Sottiaux indicated that five-hour window restrictions are currently being considered for ChatGPT Pro accounts and could potentially be rolled out to those premium tiers in the coming months.