OpenAI’s platforms, including ChatGPT, Codex, and the API, suffered a considerable disruption over the weekend. The issues prevented many users from working and caused desperation, especially in the coding community. The company offered a “reset” on user tokens as an apology, and drew a mixed response.

A major outage occurred on Saturday, July 25th, leaving thousands of users unable to load previous conversations with their chatbot for almost 2 hours.

And as OpenAI acknowledged the issue by restoring servers, frustrations persisted, as many had lost valuable work time.

The company acknowledged the issues and restored services, but user disapproval continued after systems came back online.

While ChatGPT is a popular tool for everyday advice and general queries, more advanced versions of the chatbot are used for tasks such as coding, data analysis, and processing lengthy documents.

Lots of work can be lost during such an outage, with users often feeling hard done by if conversations are lost and tasks disrupted.

The company's response of issuing additional usage “bank resets” to affected users as compensation was intended to help people who had lost valuable working time.

What are bank resets?

Even on the ChatGPT free version, there is a limited number of prompts you can ask the chatbot before it either downgrades you to a more basic GPT or requires you to open a new chat thread.

This also applies to users of the Pro model (which is a step above the most basic paid model, Plus), with various limits explained in the FAQ.

After the outages, OpenAI gave many affected users a free usage reset, essentially restoring their remaining ChatGPT allowance back to full so they could keep working immediately.

We have reset usage limits for all Codex and ChatGPT Work users.

Last night around 2am to 4am we suffered an almost global outage. All well and recovered, but you know what comes next.

We learn. We reset. Enjoy. https://t.co/rAPzefTyaa

undefined Tibo (@thsottiaux) July 25, 2026

The biggest complaint came from users who had already used one of their resets shortly before OpenAI handed out another, meaning the compensation arrived too late to help them.

As expected, a chaotic flurry of comments ensued, with some users regretful that they had used the banked reset shortly before the outage.

From the comments, it seemed as if some users had banked resets (meaning you can decide when to use them), whereas others were forced by the system.

One user expressed his disapproval by articulating:

"Please stop doing this, this actually works against people as you change the date too. If a person is more than half through their week but has more than half remaining, your reset is worse off. Please do banking, or make it optional."

The confusion between a banked and forced reset is epitomized by the mixed reaction, with some AI users commiserating and others celebrating.

One commenter noted they had used their last reset shortly before, and “this just pissed me off,” referring to the OpenAI reset. @thegeneralist, however, affirmed, “Thank you man, I was at like 10%, and I see now 100%.”

This was the stuff of mixed fortunes:

It has been a turbulent time for OpenAI recently, with the company suffering 4 incidents in 4 days, according to tech news outlet The Next Web.

It seems as if promising a vague “We learn. We reset. Enjoy” message creates mayhem in the community, especially when users are mid-task and don’t seem clear what they’re getting.

(Should I insert the tiered plan info here?)

Banked resets appear to be more of a promotional offer for Pro users than the remedial forced reset. Plus, ambiguity among users clearly doesn’t work in the company's favor.

OpenAI has also been embroiled in a hacking fiasco, as the AI app store Hugging Face was, by all accounts, hacked by one of OpenAI’s experimental agents, raising security concerns.