In a festive gift for the developer community, leading artificial intelligence firms OpenAI and Anthropic have announced a temporary but significant increase in usage limits for their flagship AI-powered coding assistants. This move is set to provide software developers and tech professionals, especially those in India's vibrant tech sector, with much-needed extra capacity during the busy holiday period.
OpenAI Doubles Codex Limits as a Holiday Thank You
OpenAI has reset and doubled the standard rate limits for users of its AI coding agent, Codex. This enhanced capacity will be available to users until the 1st of January, 2026. The announcement was made on social media platform X by Thibault Sottiaux, a Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI, who framed the upgrade as a 'holiday thank you' to the user base for their active engagement and feedback over past months.
Codex is engineered to assist with end-to-end software development. The powerful tool can generate and modify programming code based on simple text prompts or even images. It is accessible through various channels popular with Indian developers, including the command line, ChatGPT, and integrated development environments like Visual Studio Code and Cursor.
Anthropic's Festive Promotion for Claude Subscribers
Not to be left behind, Anthropic has rolled out a parallel limited-time promotion for its Claude AI platform. From December 25th through December 31st, individual subscribers on the Pro and Max plans will receive double their normal usage limits. This boost applies across mobile, desktop, and web versions of the Claude service.
The company has clarified that this special offer is exclusively for individual subscribers. Team and Enterprise plan customers are not included in this promotion. Both existing users and new subscribers who sign up during the promotional window are eligible for the increased limits. Once the promotion concludes on December 31st, all accounts will automatically revert to the standard usage allowances defined by their subscription tier.
Targeting High-Demand Developers and Power Users
These seasonal offers arrive at a time when AI providers are meticulously managing usage caps, rate limits, and metering systems across their paid plans. Such controls usually function on rolling time windows or weekly thresholds to ensure system stability and fair access.
By temporarily relaxing these restrictions, OpenAI and Anthropic are directly addressing the needs of developers and power users who heavily rely on AI tools for demanding workloads. These are the professionals most likely to hit existing limits during intensive work cycles or peak project periods, such as year-end deadlines.
For India's vast community of software engineers and tech professionals, this holiday boost presents a valuable opportunity to leverage advanced AI coding assistance for complex projects without the immediate worry of hitting a usage wall, potentially accelerating development timelines as the year closes.
