Many AI tools design marketing mechanisms like “refer a friend for credits” to acquire new users, which is probably familiar to everyone. Who would’ve thought this tactic could also be applied to rate limit resets—major props to OpenAI. They recently announced that Codex users can earn rate limit reset benefits simply by inviting friends to use it. On top of that, they’ve also launched a brand new Codex rate limit reset storage feature, allowing users to save their rate limit resets for later use when they actually need them.
OpenAI Codex launches a refer-a-friend reward: both parties receive 1 extra usage reset after a friend joins and sends their first Codex message
Earlier, OpenAI announced two new updates about Codex in their official community. The first one appears to be a permanent new feature: “save one free rate limit reset for later use.” This feature will be available to all Go, Plus, Pro, and Business users. The second is the benefit of “invite a friend to get one rate limit reset (for both parties),” limited to Plus and Pro users only. The official statement also specifically noted it’s for “the next two weeks,” so it doesn’t appear to be permanent.
After updating Codex to the latest version and opening it again, the new “Invite Friends” feature should appear. Enter an email address to invite friends:
If it doesn’t pop up for you, no worries—you can also find “Invite Friends” in the settings menu in the bottom left corner:
Additionally, this friend invitation feature has a quantity limit—it’s not unlimited. You can send a maximum of 3 invitation links, meaning you can only invite up to 3 friends. Furthermore, the friend must not have used Codex in the past 2 months, and must not have been invited by anyone else.
As for the save reset feature, my account hasn’t been pushed yet, so I’m not sure how it actually works in practice.
It’s a bit of a shame that the invite-a-friend event only lasts two weeks, but the fact that Codex now has a free one-time save reset feature is still pretty nice.
Everyone’s peak Codex usage time is different—I’m usually on it more in the morning and less in the afternoon and evening. Before, I’d often hit the usage limit after just a bit of morning use. Even though it would auto-reset after 5 hours, by then I’d usually have other things to do, so I’d rarely go back to it. Now with the reset storage feature, I can reset right after using up my morning quota and keep working with Codex.
Additionally, Codex only offers one free save. If this feature remains permanent, it feels like in the future they might turn it into a paid service—for example, pay extra to get a certain number of storage credits. Of course, this is just speculation.
After Codex adopted this approach, it will be worth watching whether Claude and Gemini follow with similar mechanisms, especially since all AI services are now competing for more users.
Source: KOCPC Chinese