Repository navigation
Codex app usage astronomically higher than CLI #44459
Description
What version of the Codex App are you using (From “About Codex” dialog)?
26.903.61454
What subscription do you have?
Pro
What platform is your computer?
Linux
What issue are you seeing?
I normally use the CLI. But I decided to give the app a whirl. I managed to drain my ENTIRE Pro plan in about 30 minutes. There is something seriously wrong with the token usage in the desktop app. Yes I was using subagents, but I've used subagents in the CLI plenty of times and it's never this bad.
What steps can reproduce the bug?
Compare usage across cli vs desktop app
What is the expected behavior?
No response
Additional information
No response
Activity
[-]Codex app usage[/-][+]Codex app usage astronomically higher than CLI[/+]github-actions commentedon Sep 10, 2026
Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.
Powered by Codex Action
digitdash commentedon Sep 10, 2026
What model / effort were you using at the time, and what exactly was the prompt used that caused the majority of the drain? If you were using Astra / Ultra, that can definitely explain it. Ultra gives the agent the option of spawning subworkers as needed, all on max effort. So if the orchestration agent decided to use, say, 5 sub workers for a task, you'd literally be paying around 5x in usage for the same amount of time compared to using a single agent.
nullbio commentedon Sep 11, 2026
I was using astra medium for my orchestrator, and the prompt specified to use astra light for the subagents. Prompt was create a refactor plan for my codebase using 3 subagents, and giving each its own area of the codebase to cover.
I know subagents can churn usage, but there's a massive difference between some expected additional churn and going through a Pro sub in about 30 minutes.
I was watching the agents work and nothing they were doing looked out of the ordinary.
I've also noticed a lot of other people on X, and in GH issues, mentioning the same problem. Far more than the usual.
To top it off, I used one of my banked resets and was hit by the usage bug with that as well, and never got a new reset. Hasn't been a good week at all :(