When does the 5-hour limit reset?
Five hours after your first message. For the exact time, check /usage or Settings › Usage on Claude, and the usage page or /status in the CLI on Codex. Codex removed its 5-hour limit in July 2026 and brought it back for Plus only in late August; Pro has none for now.
Codex
Five hours after your first message. Plus has this limit today; Pro does not.
Once the previous 5 hours end, your next message starts a new 5 hours, and the limit resets when they are up. Send nothing and the clock does not start. The exact time is at chatgpt.com/codex/settings/usage, or type /status in the CLI. The limit was removed for Plus, Business and Pro on July 12, 2026, and came back for Plus around August 25. Pro ($100 and $200) stays without it for the coming months and is held only by the weekly limit. Both changes were announced on X by Tibo, who leads Codex; the official pricing page has not caught up.
What the official docs say
The five-hour limit determines how much usage is included in each window. A new window starts when you send your first message in Work or Codex after the previous window ends.You may reach the five-hour limit before five hours have passed, even if you still have weekly usage remaining. Check Settings → Usage for your current allowance and reset times. Limits vary by plan.Temporarily removing the 5 hour usage limit restriction for all Plus, Business and Pro plansTomorrow we will bring back the 5h limit for Plus accounts across ChatGPT Work and Codex.We are for the upcoming months keeping the 5h limit not enabled for Pro $100 and Pro $200 subscriptions.And we also don't have 5h limits for both Pro plans.Claude
Five hours after your first message, then it resets. Every plan has always had this limit.
You can read the exact time directly. In Claude Code, type /usage: the first bar, Current session, is followed by Resets, a time and a time zone. On claude.ai, open Settings › Usage, where Current session shows how much time is left. The message you get at the limit carries the time too: Claude Code says “You've hit your session limit · resets 3:45pm”, and the web and apps say “5-hour limit reached - resets [time]”. The product calls it the session limit; it is the same thing people call the 5-hour limit.
What the official docs say
Your session-based usage limit will reset every five hours.Every plan has usage limits that reset on a rolling five-hour session window, and paid plans add weekly limits on top.Current session: How much of your plan's five-hour session limit you've used thus far, plus the amount of time remaining in the session.Usage counts against the session and weekly allowances at the same time. A single burst of heavy activity, such as a large workflow fanout, can exhaust the weekly allowance before the session window resets.Common misconceptions
- Codex no longer has a 5-hour limit
Not for everyone. It was removed for Plus, Business and Pro on July 12, 2026, but came back for Plus around August 25. The plans without it today are Pro ($100 and $200). If you are on Plus with plenty of weekly allowance left and Codex suddenly stops, you have most likely hit the restored 5-hour limit.
- The 5-hour limit resets on the hour, or at fixed times of day
No. It runs for 5 hours from the moment you send your first message, so the reset time differs from person to person and from day to day. Go by the time on your usage page.
- Use up the 5 hours before they reset, or weekly allowance is wasted
Nothing is wasted. The 5-hour limit and the weekly limit are two separate lines, and whatever you leave unused in the 5 hours is not taken from the weekly allowance. Rushing to use it up only spends more of the weekly allowance too.
In practice
- To make the 5 hours end sooner, send your first message sooner. The clock starts with that message and not before. Send one before lunch, and when you hit the limit in the afternoon the reset is much closer.
- If you hit the 5-hour limit, wait it out; your weekly allowance is not charged extra for that. If you hit the weekly limit, waiting 5 hours does nothing: look at your weekly reset time.
- Codex Pro has no 5-hour limit right now, so one long task can take a large share of the week. Keep an eye on the weekly bar yourself.
- whenreset records the resets a vendor gives everyone. When your own 5 hours end is on the usage page in your account.