kalen@jordan:~/writing$ cat astra-uses-more-codex-quota-than-its-api-price-suggests.md

Astra Uses More Codex Quota Than Its API Price Suggests

2026-09-05

Astra seems to be eating more of my weekly Codex usage than its API price relative to the other models would suggest.

I’ve been tracking each 1% change in the usage meter and estimating the equivalent API cost underneath it.

The Sol-heavy periods are generally costing around $17–$19 per percentage point. The cleanest Astra-heavy periods were $12.71 and $13.37.

By my rough math, Astra is consuming about 38% more quota per API-equivalent dollar than Sol.

The API pricing says Astra is 2.5x the cost of Sol. The Codex usage meter looks closer to 3.4x.

There’s some rounding in the percentage meter, so I wouldn’t treat that as exact. But it definitely doesn’t look like Codex quota maps straight across to API cost.