Keep one productive subscription, evaluate Astra Low for planning, and test DeepSeek V4.1 Flash for API value. Existing OpenAI Pro 20x is our preferred premium option for sustained Codex use when utilization justifies $200/month. New Pro 20x subscriptions and upgrades are currently unavailable. This is a retention recommendation for existing subscribers, not a purchase route for new users.
The August guide remains a historical snapshot. September adds a planning candidate, a new DeepSeek revision, and short-lived coding offers. None supplies a universal monthly task capacity or a site-owned Cost per Accepted Result result.
Workload router
| Workload | First candidate | Change when |
|---|---|---|
| Planning, orchestration, ambiguous requirements | Astra Low | Raise effort after a failed acceptance check; retain Sol where existing results justify it |
| Defined implementation, extraction, transformation | GPT-5.6 Luna | Errors, ambiguity, or review effort erase the saving |
| Metered coding/research or native-vision evaluation | DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | Tool reliability, grounding, or correction cost fails your threshold |
| Sustained premium Codex work | Existing Pro 20x | Retain only when useful utilization warrants the renewal |
| Occasional coding through a compatible client | Command Code GOAT or OpenCode Go | Compare ordinary allowances and actual total charge before subscribing |
These are AIHackers recommendations. A release benchmark can put a model on the shortlist; your acceptance criteria decide whether it stays. Preserve model, effort, provider, harness version, and task identity when comparing runs. September Artificial Analysis v4.3 scores cannot be directly compared with August v4.1 scores.
Subscription comparison
Dollar allowances below are provider-defined usage values, not cash or portable API credit. Prices are monthly USD before account-specific tax. Command Code discloses an additional processing fee without a verified amount in the reviewed page, so its all-in total remains unresolved. OpenCode lists $10; no separate fee was established in the reviewed Go pages. Check the displayed total before payment.
| Plan | Price and availability | V4.1 allowance: ordinary → promotion | Five-hour / weekly / monthly constraint |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI Pro 20x | $200; existing renewals only, new subscriptions/upgrades paused | No DeepSeek allowance | Codex included allowance; workload-dependent windows, possible weekly limits; no guaranteed monthly task count |
| Command Code GOAT | $10 plus processing fee; total unresolved | $40 → $60 through September 20 | Shared 14 / 35 / 70 credits; per-model usage consumes proportional fractions |
| Command Code Pro | $20 plus processing fee; total unresolved | $50 → $70 through September 20 | Shared 16 / 40 / 80 credits; premium models also draw from the plan |
| OpenCode Go | $10 listed; final checkout total unverified | $15 → $60 through September 20 | V4.1 $12 / $30 / $60 during boost; ordinary $3 / $7.50 / $15 |
Sources: OpenAI Pro terms, Command Code prices, GOAT, Pro, shared-window accounting, V4.1 offer terms, and OpenCode Go. Checked September 14, 2026.
Do not add Command Code’s model allowances together. Its usage guide describes one shared plan: lower-allowance models consume proportionally more credits per dollar. During the boost, an all-V4.1 GOAT workload therefore has $12/$30/$60 of model usage across the three windows, not $14/$35/$70. Pro’s equivalent is $14/$35/$70. Mixing models spends fractions of the same budget.
OpenCode documents model limits and 20%/50%/100% windows. This review did not establish whether switching models supplies independent additive balances; do not sum its catalog into a promised monthly entitlement. Advertised request counts assume particular cache-heavy requests, not complete coding tasks.
Clients, overflow, and expiry
Command Code documents CLI and API access for GOAT/Pro through OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible clients. Extra credits pay for overflow at regular model rates; without credits, paid use pauses at a limit. Its included budget refreshes with the billing cycle. OpenCode supports coding-agent traffic with client identification and session headers; Codex and Claude Code are listed with version/proxy caveats. Its optional Use balance setting spends Zen credit after Go limits.
Those are attractive temporary coding-access offers, not unlimited use or unrestricted general API credit. Exact account eligibility, concurrency guarantees, and treatment of an in-progress billing cycle when the boost ends remain unresolved. Neither reviewed promotion establishes a durable renewal benefit or a precise expiry time zone. Plan on the ordinary allowance after September 20, unless fresh terms explicitly extend it.
The promotion improves capacity economics only while you can use the capacity. If the ordinary plan would be poor value for your workflow, a few boosted days are a weak reason to start a recurring subscription. Compare correction time and supported-client behavior as well as the headline allowance.
Pro retention and our Claude correction
OpenAI’s pause notice dates the Pro 20x pause to September 10. Existing subscriptions continue renewing; Pro $100 remains available. Once Pro $200 ends, repurchase is blocked during the pause. For current access evidence, see Codex claims. Our preference depends on sustained useful work, not a proven universal capacity advantage over every competitor.
Our earlier Claude wording was too broad. Anthropic’s Max documentation says 5x/20x describes session capacity versus Pro, with separate weekly limits. It does not establish the same weekly multipliers or a universal “roughly double” weekly ratio between Max tiers. Any reported weekly ratio needs a dated, account-specific observation. See the Claude Max correction; this release makes no legal inference.
The author also reports verifying the Pro 20x purchase pause on September 14; this is account-level corroboration, separate from the provider notice. NVIDIA now lists Kimi K3, but that listing does not establish free or production access.
Measure useful work
Track API dollars, subscription consumption, output tokens, latency, and accepted-result cost separately. Count review time and retries, and divide attributable spend by accepted results. Avoid assigning a full seat price to one tiny experiment or treating unused allowance as savings. AIHackers has conducted no paid experiments for this release: CAR remains not-run.
Use the cost playbook for the method. Source archives remain archive-pending until validated. A September 20–21 offer recheck is pending editorial work; no automatic monitor is implied.