Over the past few days, I have been using the Codex extension in VS Code quite intensively, and I have noticed that Codex Ultra consumes an unusually large amount of my usage allowance.
When I was on the $100/month plan, a single moderately complex coding task could consume around 30% of my allowance. I later upgraded to the $200/month plan, which appears to provide roughly four times the usage allowance, but a similar task can still consume around 30–40%.
This makes me wonder: is the displayed usage percentage calculated relative to each user’s current balance or plan, rather than reflecting a fixed amount of compute or tokens? Otherwise, I would have expected the percentage consumed per comparable task to decrease significantly after upgrading.
I have also noticed several behavioural issues with Codex Ultra that seem to make the consumption much worse:
- It repeatedly audits or rechecks code that it has already reviewed.
- After completing the requested change, it often continues making unnecessary architectural changes.
- It sometimes expands a narrowly scoped task into a much larger refactor, even when explicitly instructed not to do so.
- Despite spending a lot of time on these extra steps, it still does not always follow the original instructions completely.
- It can repeatedly inspect, modify, and re-audit the same areas, causing the allowance to be consumed extremely quickly.
The problem is not simply that Ultra uses more compute. The issue is that a substantial part of the usage appears to come from repetitive or unnecessary work that I did not request.
Has anyone else experienced similar behaviour? Are there any effective prompts, VS Code settings, workflow patterns, or task-scoping methods that can prevent Codex Ultra from repeatedly auditing the repository or making unnecessary architectural changes?
I would also appreciate clarification on how the usage percentage is calculated across different subscription plans.