alt Hacker NewsThe limits for the $20/month plan can be reached in 10-20 minutes when having it explore large codebases with directed. It’s also easy to blow right through the quota if you’re not managing content well (waiting until it fills up and then auto-compacting, or even using /compact frequently instead of /clear or the equivalent in different tools).
For most of my work I only need the LLM to perform a structured search of the codebase or to refactor something faster than I can type, so the $20/month plan is fine for me.
But for someone trying to get the LLM to write code for them, I could see the $20/month plans being exhausted very quickly. My experience with trying “vibecoding” style app development, even with highly detailed design documents and even providing test case expected output, has felt like lighting tokens on fire at a phenomenal rate. If I don’t interrupt every couple of commands and point out some mistake or wrong direction it can spin seemingly for hours trying to deal with one little problem after another. This is less obvious when doing something basic like a simple React app, but becomes extremely obvious once you deviate from material that’s represented a lot in training materials.
Not for Codex. Not even for Gemini/Antigravity! I am truly shocked by how much mileage I can get out of them. I recently bought the $200/mo OpenAI subscription but could barely use 10% of it. Now for over a month, I use codex for at least 2 hrs every day and have yet to reach the quota.
With Gemini/Antigravity, there’s the added benefit of switching to Claude Code Opus 4.5 once you hit your Gemini quota, and Google is waaaay more generous than Claude. I can use Opus alone for the entire coding session. It is bonkers.
So having subscribed to all three at their lowest subscriptions (for $60/mo) I get the best of each one and never run out of quota. I’ve also got a couple of open-source model subscriptions but I’ve barely had the chance to use them since Codex and Gemini got so good (and generous).
The fact that OpenAI is only spending 30% of their revenue on servers and inference despite being so generous is just mind boggling to me. I think the good times are likely going to last.
My advise - get Gemini + Codex lowest tier subscriptions. Add some credits to your codex subscription in case you hit the quota and can’t wait. You’ll never be spending over $100 even if you’re building complex apps like me.