I would say it's definitely useful for side projects. You have to manage your context windows a bit more but it's still definitely worth the money

I’ve found that I hit the limit just around the end of the 5-hour window, so it’s definitely been usable for me.

But I’ve mostly been using it for gitops infrastructure in my homelab. I wonder if the token usage is lighter than if I were developing an application.

It was for about the first 6 months after I subscribed, then the rate limits were tightened to the point of uselessness and pushed me to cancel and go for the Codex plan instead.