After six weeks without a daily usage limit beginning July 13, OpenAI has officially reinstated the strict “five-hour usage limit” for standard ChatGPT Plus users. The restriction applies to users working with Codex and ChatGPT Work environments. Thibault Sottiaux, OpenAI’s engineering lead for Codex and ChatGPT, confirmed on X that the rolling five-hour limit was fully restored on August 25.
OpenAI initially removed the five-hour limit in mid-July, when the company launched the efficient GPT-5.6 Sol model. After the limit was removed, users were subject only to a one-time weekly quota. During this brief unlimited period, OpenAI even reset users’ weekly quotas early several times to celebrate user growth milestones, including active users surpassing 1 million again.
That temporary “grace period” has now officially ended. This means developers and heavy users once again need to manage the frequency of their technical prompts carefully, or they may be unable to continue using the service after reaching their quota.
Sottiaux explained that the five-hour limit was restored mainly for two reasons. First, distributing usage across five-hour windows helps spread computing demand and prevents large numbers of users from concentrating their usage at the same time, placing excessive strain on OpenAI’s servers. Second, the limit protects new and lower-frequency users. During the temporary removal of the limit, some subscribers unknowingly used up their entire weekly quota during a single extended session, leaving them unable to use the service for the rest of the week.
Standard-plan users must once again contend with these limits to avoid exhausting their usage quotas too quickly, but OpenAI has not applied this change to its highest-paying users. The company confirmed that, over the coming months, the $100 Pro plan (approximately RMB 673.7 at the current exchange rate) and the $200 Pro plan (approximately RMB 1,347 at the current exchange rate) will continue to have no five-hour usage limit.
Enterprise and Edu accounts will also remain unchanged. These accounts already operate on completely separate, quota-based infrastructure.
Going forward, standard ChatGPT Plus users who reach either the five-hour or weekly usage limit will need to wait for the regular quota reset cycle or purchase additional usage credits to continue coding work.
Along with restoring the five-hour limit, OpenAI has fully reset the current weekly quotas for all affected accounts. After that, subscribers’ next scheduled weekly quota reset will take place on September 1.