Going Broke with Sub Agents #12487

I’m seeing unexpectedly high costs whenever sub-agents are used in Codex CLI. The feature is useful, but the current cost behavior makes it hard to use safely in normal development workflows.

Main issues:

• Sub-agent usage can multiply spend very quickly.
• Cost impact is not clearly shown before launching sub-agents.
• It is hard to predict final cost from the prompt or plan.
• There are not enough guardrails to prevent accidental overspend.
• The cost for a plus-up is REDICULOUS for PRO USERS - like WTF!

What I need:

• A global session budget that hard-stops execution.
• A post-run cost breakdown by sub-agent and by tool call.
• A built-in cost control method so I can work throughout the week instead of burning tokens to 0 on day 2.

I want to keep building using sub-agents, but right now the pricing transparency and controls are not sufficient for practical day-to-day use. Please prioritize cost visibility and budget controls. Because, as much as I love what you have unleashed, it's obviously showing off want all this capability can do while charging my debit card for more.