What happens when you hit your GPT-6 Astra limit on ChatGPT Plus or Pro?
Your plan's included usage goes first, then usage draws from your credit balance. Credits are valid for 12 months from purchase, and GPT-6 Astra costs 250 credits per million input tokens in Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Checked against the lab's own pages on September 20, 2026. Limits change often, so the date matters.
Hitting a usage limit on ChatGPT Plus or Pro doesn't stop you dead. OpenAI's help article on credits for personal plans says your plan's included usage is spent first, and after that the usage draws from a credit balance you've bought.
Credits are a pay-as-you-go add-on, so nothing about the plan itself changes when you buy them. Buying them on Free or Go (where purchases are open to a limited group) doesn't raise the included limit either.
- What runs out first
- Your plan's included usage is used first
- Then
- Usage draws from your credit balance
- Credits expire
- Valid for 12 months from purchase
- GPT-6 Astra input
- 250 credits per 1M tokens
Where the option to pay shows up
Hit a usage limit in Codex on Plus or Pro and you'll see an option to add credits. Balances and purchases live under Settings and then Usage in ChatGPT, or Usage and Billing in the Codex app.
Watch the wallet, which is a different pot of money. Your usage-credit balance is separate from your ChatGPT wallet balance, the wallet is a balance in US dollars that can include redeemed gift-card funds, and redeeming a gift card doesn't add usage credits on its own.
After you hit plan limits, usage draws from your credit balance.
What the credits get spent on
On Plus and Pro, Codex, ChatGPT Work, Excel and PowerPoint can share one agentic usage allowance, and Word draws on it too.
Word, Excel and PowerPoint bill by the token at API model rates. GPT-6 Astra runs 250 credits per million input tokens, 25 per million cached input and 1,250 per million output, which is the priciest of the four models listed. A typical Excel or Sheets task may use 5 to 20 credits a message, and a PowerPoint task 10 to 50.
Automatic reload, and going negative
Turn on automatic reload, where it's available, and you pick a minimum balance and a target balance. OpenAI then buys only the amount needed to get back to the target, up to a maximum monthly spend you set, and that cap applies to reloads rather than to one-time purchases.
A balance can go below zero. Start a task while you're in credit and finish it after concurrent usage has drained the balance, and the next purchase or reload offsets the negative first before it adds anything usable.
How long credits last
Credits are valid for 12 months from purchase, and unused ones expire instead of rolling over. They're non-refundable unless the law or a contract requires it, or an approved exception applies, and they can't be resold or gifted.
Read on September 20, 2026, when the page said it had been updated 3 days earlier. Rates and rules move.