What to do when Codex hits its usage limit
Understand the Codex CLI “You've hit your usage limit” variants, check the reset and credit options for your plan, and preserve unfinished work.
“You've hit your usage limit.” means the Codex allowance available to the signed-in account is exhausted. In a session, run /status; then check the usage dashboard for the limit, reset time, credits, upgrade, or admin request actually offered. Preserve the session and resume it after access returns instead of starting the task over.
What the message means
codex-cli 0.146.0 contains several versions of this notice. One points to Plus, one to Pro, one offers credits, and one tells a managed user to contact an administrator. The surrounding sentence matters because it identifies the remedy available to that account; there is no universal reset interval to guess from the short headline.
Fix it in this order
1. Read the complete notice
Capture the reset time and the sentence after the headline. In an active session, /status shows account and usage information. The exact plan or workspace named there is more useful than a generic search result.
/status2. Use the option attached to your account
Wait for the displayed reset, buy credits when the usage page offers them, choose an eligible upgrade, or ask the workspace administrator when the notice says access is controlled centrally. OpenAI says ordinary Support requests do not reset the allowance.
open https://chatgpt.com/codex/settings/usage3. Resume the saved session
Codex saves the conversation locally. Once access returns, continue the same thread by id or use --last when it is definitely the newest relevant session. Add --all if the picker is filtering to another directory.
codex resume --lastImportant distinctions
- The limit can cover a rolling window, weekly allowance, credits, or an administrator's control; quote the reset shown to you instead of relying on a fixed schedule from another plan.
- A fresh Codex installation or deleted session history does not restore server-side allowance.
- Creating extra accounts merely to evade a plan's restriction can violate provider terms; use only accounts and workspaces you are entitled to use.
Where Crowsnest fits
Crowsnest can continue a conversation on another separately entitled Codex account with a bounded handoff when that feature is enabled. The original account's quota remains unchanged, and every account keeps its own authentication and billing boundary.
Source and version
The exact text and flags on this page were checked against the installed codex-cli 0.146.0 binary on October 9, 2026. Version-specific behavior can change, so compare your own --help output before scripting around it. Official status or documentation →
Reviewed from first-party CLI output and the released Crowsnest product source. No command on this page bypasses provider limits, billing, authentication, or native history rules.