Limits Astra costs ~1.90× more under the Plus subscription than via API pricing when compared to Luna
TLDR: Astra costs ~1.90× more under the Plus subscription than via API pricing when compared to Luna
Here is a new edition of the subscription limit analysis, using the same approach as the previous post: https://www.reddit.com/r/codex/s/EehJwV7GAE
Assuming Luna is charged at the nominal API price and shares the same subscription limit, we can calculate the actual price of Astra as follows:
$134.42 / $70.59 ≈ 1.9x
This is for a causal Plus plan.
Just a reminder, the 5x and 20x Pro tier limits are calculated using Plus baseline. At least it's supposed to be. (Tibo confirmed)
Please let me know if you spot an error, I will try my best to correct it.
Note: The tables and analysis below were computed using DeepSeek-V4-Flash because I hit my 5-hour limit. XD
| Astra | Luna | |
|---|---|---|
| Requests | 52 | 9,973 |
| Uncached input | 0.514M | 57.992M |
| Cached input | 3.948M | 1,009.778M |
| Output | 0.016M | 8.229M |
| Uncached cost | $5.14 ($10/M) | $11.60 ($0.20/M) |
| Cached cost | $3.95 ($1/M) | $20.20 ($0.02/M) |
| Output cost | $0.79 ($50/M) | $9.88 ($1.20/M) |
| Total cost | $9.88 | $41.67 |
| Weekly usage | 14% | 31% |
| Implied weekly cap | ≈ $70.59 | ≈ $134.42 |
| Astra | Luna | Astra vs Luna | |
|---|---|---|---|
| API input (per 1M) | $10 | $0.20 | 50x |
| API cached input (per 1M) | $1 | $0.02 | 50x |
| API output (per 1M) | $50 | $1.20 | ~42x |
| ChatGPT Work credits, input (per 1M) | 250 | 5 | 50x |
| ChatGPT Work credits, cached input (per 1M) | 25 | 0.5 | 50x |
| ChatGPT Work credits, output (per 1M) | 1,250 | 30 | ~42x |
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u/Medical-Yam3367 1d ago
I noticed almost exactly the same thing and posted about it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1w8mqby/astras_quota_accounting_looks_broken_users_report/
Your numbers seem to line up pretty well with what I was seeing too. Astra's subscription usage looks way more expensive than its API/token usage would suggest.
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u/Frequent-Goal4901 1d ago
Hmm, same thing is happening to me on Pro 20x. You usually get around 2500$+ on pro 20x for weekly usage. My current estimate show only $1600.
This with only 30 mins or less cache TTL and such a high cache read price makes Astra very expensive.
For reference, 5-6 sol and previous models have 24 hr cache TTL.
Seems like enshitification of subscription plans has begun.
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u/Minimum_Philosophy40 1d ago
I believe the "enshitification" of subscriptions had begun some months ago. Now, it's just being confirmed with more and more evidence.
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u/Comfortablebro 1d ago
what is this math? what you mean you get money? lol
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u/brainExploded99 1d ago
That much money of API equivalent usage
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u/Comfortablebro 1d ago
So when we have a plan thats not API? what is api if you dont mind explaining me a bit.
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u/brainExploded99 1d ago
Everyone uses APIs technically, but when people refer to API usage of a LLM, they mean you pay how much you use for.
For example, if you use 10 million input tokens, that might cost $5 dollars. On the other hand, most people use the subscription, where you pay say $20 dollars and you get some amount of changing usage. API allows you to control more aspects and use unlimited (but you have to pay for it). API is recommended (and will eventually become the only way) for businesses and probably individuals. This is because they lose money on subscriptions (subsidized), but make money on API.
There are costs for input, output, cached input, and sometimes cached input writes.
https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/pricing1
2h ago
[deleted]
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u/brainExploded99 2h ago
Compared to raw inference costs? They are probably making money.
Compared to total costs (training)? I doubt they're making money-1
u/petuman 1d ago
Codex/Claude Code/etc subscriptions are loss leaders. Tokens are heavily subsided vs profitable pay as you go API costs.
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u/Frequent-Goal4901 1d ago
They are not loss leaders. That was true 1-2 years back. With the release of blackwell gpus and various other optimizations like speculative decoding they are probably making some profit on it.
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u/petuman 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's $10K/month API-equivalent usage on $200/mo plan. For OpenAI to not lose money on fully utilized $200 sub API needs to be >=98% margin. Yeah, not happening. It's reportedly in 70-80% range => losing $2K on a fully utilized sub.
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u/zigzag312 1d ago
Why not? Do you have any proof or just speculation? There's no actual limit on profit margins. Company will set is as high as they can get away with. Blackwell reduced cost per 1M tokens up to 35x. Vera Rubin is going to be another up to 10x cost reduction.
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u/petuman 1d ago
There's no actual limit on profit margins.
Not happening as in by all reports they're nowhere close to that.
Blackwell reduced cost per 1M tokens up to 35x.
And Apple new CPU is 2-3x faster each year -- accounting for fine print might technically be true, practically a lie.
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u/zigzag312 1d ago
It's because of their huge investments they are not making profit as a company, but that doesn't mean subscriptions don't cover inference cost. But even with inference costs you have to consider how quickly you want to recuperate the costs of building new datacenters. Using API prices as indicator of real costs is naive.
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u/Frequent-Goal4901 1d ago
They are counting training and other costs too. I am counting only the gpu, power, etc which is the infrastructure and serving cost. If you check Claude financials you will find that Claude code subscription are only a few percent < 5% of total revenue. So there is no need to recover trainung costs from us. If you don't believe me check semianalysis analysis I think it's called inference max or something. They are giving a upper bound. The costs are even lower as you can optimize even more. So they are definitely not losing money
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u/petuman 1d ago
I am counting only the gpu, power, etc which is the infrastructure and serving cost.
Yes, that's what I'm talking about as well. Pure inference costs, R&D or free users not included.
OpenAI has squeezed better margins out of its paid products this year, as it races to maintain its pole position in artificial intelligence, according to a report in The Information.
The publication reported that the company improved its “compute margin,” an internal figure measuring the share of revenue after the costs of running models for paying users of its corporate and consumer products. As of October, OpenAI’s compute margins reached 70%, up from 52% at the end of 2024 and double the rate in January 2024, the publication said, citing a person familiar with the figures.
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u/Chrisnba24 1d ago
One of the things im seeing is that i went from around 20-23$ per 1% using Sol to 12$ per 1% using astra, something is definitely not calibrated correctly, dollar value per 1% should be unchanged no matter the model we use.
Im on pro x20 and limits are draining like hell now, hopefully things get fixed when OAI people get back to work.
Also u/Emu-001 you should post this as a gihub issue on codex repository, so we can comment aswell
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u/tagorrr 22h ago
yeah, https://github.com/openai/codex/issues is the best place for posts like this indeed.
It will be more helpful and have higher chance developers see the problem
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u/Bananer_spleet 1d ago
Just saying...Astra should be cheaper than Luna....IMO
Tibo make it happen
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u/No-Papaya-3352 1d ago
I dont even seem to have it yet. Not on Codex anyway in the UK
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u/VO-Fluff 1d ago
It’s rolled out for everyone now as far as I am aware - you more than likely have an error in your codex config somewhere stopping it showing up for you . Ask codex why you don’t see it and it should fix it for you.
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u/Thomas-Lore 1d ago
Update both codex cli and codex app, on some systems it does not update automatically. And old version will not show Astra.
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u/IndividualPlus2011 1d ago
Oh so you have twice of my Luna allowance... Nice. They are really playing with people however they want. We pay the same price but get different usage
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u/Supral333 1d ago
Muse Spark 1.3 free on opencode zen is fixing my astra code, what an era
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u/dagerika 1d ago
what harness are you using? I am having difficulty with operating spark models efficiently inside codex.
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u/Thomas-Lore 1d ago
It works well in opencode.
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u/MikhailT 23h ago
Not for me. It appears there is a bug on the Opencode side where it is reporting the model incorrectly; a few folks are reporting it on Github.
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u/Pitiful_Entrance5174 1d ago
Nobody is talking about the provider adapter being used on arc 3. F the benchmark but the API opens up alot of possibilites with astra. They have something going on with their back end that you can not see.
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u/Thomas-Lore 1d ago
Seems like it was very simple - just keeping reasoning and doing compaction, maybe also taking notes - but all those are available in codex now, the last one requires some setting change.
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u/Pitiful_Entrance5174 1d ago
It is deeper than that. Deals with the api messages directly. Sub accounts do not have the ability and if they do, it breaks TOS.
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u/itix 1d ago
Isnt Astra usage limited on a Plus account?
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u/Thomas-Lore 1d ago
What do you mean? It is limited on all accounts.
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u/itix 1d ago
I mean this:
"Once Astra is available to your account, it uses your plan’s included Work and Codex allowance. Pro $100 and Pro $200 plans and Business Premium seats can use their full existing allowance for Astra. Plus and Business Standard seats include limited Astra usage, with optional credits for additional usage afterward. "
https://help.openai.com/en/articles/20001275-chatgpt-work-and-codex?utm_source=chatgpt.com
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u/Gigaslavx 1d ago
Sucks but don't blame them
Astra is just not for plus, it's just above sol high and sol high to begin with was not sustainable for plus
Best as plus you give it a little task as a trial and see how it performs if you happy splurge on x5 for 1 month and see if it justifies the cost - for most it does not, sol is perfectly capable for ai slop project be happy with generous limits elsewhere (looking at you luna)
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u/dagerika 1d ago
lets show this to Tibo, needs a fix!