This Megathread is to discuss your thoughts, concerns and suggestions about the changes involving the Weekly Usage Limits. Please help us keep them all in one place so we can prepare a report for Anthropic's consideration about readers' feedback. This also helps us to free the feed for other discussion.

Announcement details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1mbo1sb/updating_rate_limits_for_claude_subscription/

UPDATE (August 6): Usage Limits Discussion Report now available : https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1mj0eyf/usage_limits_megathread_discussion_report_july_28/

In late August, we're introducing weekly rate limits for Claude subscribers, affecting less than 5% of users based on current usage patterns.

While Pro and Max plans offer generous Claude access, some advanced users have been running Claude continuously 24/7—consuming resources far beyond typical usage. One user consumed tens of thousands in model usage on a $200 plan. Though we're developing solutions for these advanced use cases, our new rate limits will ensure a more equitable experience for all users while also preventing policy violations like account sharing and reselling access.

We take these decisions seriously. We're committed to supporting long-running use cases through other options in the future, but until then, weekly limits will help us maintain reliable service for everyone. Max 20x subscribers can purchase additional usage at standard API rates if needed.

We also recognize that during this same period, users have encountered several reliability and performance issues. We've been working to fix these as quickly as possible and will continue addressing any remaining issues over the coming days and weeks.

We've just reset weekly limits for all Claude users on paid plans.

We've seen members of this community hitting their weekly usage limits more quickly than they might have expected. This is driven by usage of Opus 4.1, which can cause you to hit the limits much faster than Sonnet 4.5.

To help during this transition, we've reset weekly limits for all paid Claude users.

Our latest model, Sonnet 4.5 is now our best coding model and comes with much higher limits than Opus 4.1. We recommend switching your usage over from Opus, if you want more usage. You will also get even better performance from Sonnet 4.5 by turning on "extended thinking" mode. In Claude Code, just use the tab key to toggle this mode on.

We appreciate that some of you have a strong affinity for our Opus models (we do too!). So we've added the ability to purchase extra usage if you're subscribed to the Max 20x plan. We’ll put together more guidance on choosing between our models in the coming weeks.

We value this community’s feedback. Please keep it coming – we want our models and products to work well for you.

This Megathread is a continuation of the discussion of your thoughts, concerns and suggestions about the changes involving the Weekly Usage Limits implemented alongside the recent Claude 4.5 release. Please help us keep all your feedback in one place so we can prepare a report for Anthropic's consideration about readers' suggestions, complaints and feedback. This also helps us to free the feed for other discussion. For discussion about recent Claude performance and bug reports, please use the Weekly Performance Megathread instead.

Please try to be as constructive as possible and include as much evidence as possible. Be sure to include what plan you are on. Feel free to link out to images.

Recent related Anthropic announcement : https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1ntq8tv/introducing_claude_usage_limit_meter/

Original Anthropic announcement here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1mbo1sb/updating_rate_limits_for_claude_subscription/

Anthropic's update on usage limits post here : https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1nvnafs/update_on_usage_limits/

Last week's Megathread: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1nu9wew/usage_limits_discussion_megathread_beginning_sep/

Megathread's response to Anthropic's usage limits update post here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1o1wn34/megathreads_response_to_anthropics_post_update_on/

I was recently invited to participate in a brief AI-moderated interview by Apthropic which I completed because they were offering a $250 Amazon gift card.

I was invited because I am supposedly "one of our most engaged Max 20x users" which was surprising to me. I log some pretty long hours and hit limits almost daily with CC but I wouldn't consider myself a power user at all. I don't even use mcp servers... Just a vibe coder building ai slop projects I probably have no business trying to build.

Anyways, the reason I am posting is because I was disappointed to learn that they are strongly considering or have already decided they will be implementing weekly limits.

Meaning you could, depending on your usage, max out your limits by Monday or Tuesday, even on the 20x plan and then be locked out for a week or need to upgrade or purchase additional utilization.

I voiced my concerns in the interview and let them know how I felt about that. But I haven't seen anyone else talk about this and I feel like more of you should be able to let Anthropic know if you support this or not.

I do apologize for not screenshoting some of the questions it was super early morning when I did it and wasn't really expecting them to talk about changing the limits in this manner. I can share screenshot of the email if anyone doesn't believe but I don't think it's that serious.

Since completing the interview I've felt uneasy thinking about how much higher the pricing could get and how it would be really disappointing if I have to limit the amount of development I can do because of the price. For me in my "self-learning" developer journey I am currently the bottleneck. I can learn experiment and develop all day. I think it would suck to max out your usage and literally not be able to use it even for little things throughout your week. Although I might get more sleep if I'm not trying to max out my daily limits lol.

Also some people can't use CC everyday. At least one or two weeks a month I get busy, and I don't have time to work on my projects for 3 or 4 days at a time. Maybe weekly limits will help give back lost usage in that manner but I have a feeling they will be in addition to the daily and monthly limits.

They also asked my thoughts about a truly "unlimited" plan and how much I would pay.

Then asked if they implemented the weekly minimums and I was hitting my 20x usage limits what I would do. Purchase additional utilization or upgrade to a higher monthly tier.

Just sharing so you can make your own opinions on the matter.

Claude has this 45 messages limit per 5 hours for pro subs as well. Is there any way to get around it?

Claude has 3 models and I have been mostly using sonet. From my initial observations, these limits apply for all the models at once.

I.e., if I exhaust limit with sonet, does that even restrict me from using opus and haiku ? Is there anyway to get around it?

I can also use API keys if there’s a really trusted integrator but help?

Update on documentation: From what I’ve seen till now this doesn’t give us very stood out notice about the limitations, they mentioned that there is a limit but there is a very vague mention of dynamic nature of limitations.

Edit (18 July, 2025):

Claude has tightened the limits of Claude Code silently, people are repeatedly facing this issue :: "Invalid model. Claude Pro users are not currently able to use Opus 4 in Claude Code" and also https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/3566

Make no mistake, I love claude to the core. I was probably in the mid-early adopters of Claude. I love the Artifact generation more than anything. But this limitations are really bad. Some power users are really happy on claude Max plan because they were able to get it to work precisely. I think this is more to do with Prompt engineering, and context engineering. I hope sooner or later, claude can really work like how ChatGPT is accessible now-a-days.

Edit ( 7 sept, 2025):

The fact that this post is still getting so much attention is a testament to Claude not listening to the users. I love Claude and Claude Code too much, and I am a fan of Anthropic adding new features. Unfortunately, this Claude code also hits the “Compacting conversation” too quick - for me atleast, and the limits are a little better honestly. But the cool down period is painful.

Hey everyone,

Not sure what’s going on, but starting today, I’m suddenly hitting my usage limits after only a few non coding related prompts (like 3–4). This has never happened before.

I didn’t change my plan, my workflow, or the size of my prompts. I’m using Claude Code normally, and out of nowhere it tells me I’m at my limit and blocks further use.

A couple things I’m trying to figure out:

• Is this happening to anyone else today specifically?

• Did Anthropic quietly change the quota calculations?

• Could it be a bug or rate-limit miscount?

• Is there any workaround people found? Logging out, switching networks, switching country, etc.?

It’s super frustrating because I literally can’t work with only a few prompts before getting locked out.

If anyone has info or experienced the same thing today, please let me know.

Thanks!

New Claude code limits are ridiculous... I've paid max plan 100$ for 6 months, sometimes with bugs and fails but at least with fair limits. now is unacceptable today I cancel my subscription after 1 day of hard usage reach the week limit and I have to wait 1 week to use again Claude code. Regrettable.

Hey,

Is anyone else finding the usage limits on Claude's team plan a bit restrictive? My team and I keep bumping into the low thresholds, and it's really starting to hold us back. We've noticed that GPT-4 Teams allows for way more tokens and larger file sizes, which makes things much easier.

The thing is.. Claude is giving better results for us on all metrics when inside the limits it has.

Also, it would be awesome if Claude could support MongoDB vector search. This feature would really boost our projects and make a huge difference in our workflow.

Anyone else in the same boat? Would love to hear your thoughts or any tips you might have. And if anyone from Claude is listening, please consider these requests to help us out!

Thanks!

Latest Workarounds Report: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/wiki/latestworkaroundreport

Full record of past Megathreads and Reports : https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/wiki/megathreads/

Why a Performance, Usage Limits and Bugs Discussion Megathread?

This Megathread should make it easier for everyone to see what others are experiencing at any time by collecting all experiences. Most importantly, this will allow the subreddit to provide you a comprehensive periodic AI-generated summary report of all performance and bug issues and experiences, maximally informative to everybody. See the previous period's performance and workarounds report here https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/wiki/latestworkaroundreport

It will also free up space on the main feed to make more visible the interesting insights and constructions of those using Claude productively.

What Can I Post on this Megathread?

Use this thread to voice all your experiences (positive and negative) as well as observations regarding the current performance of Claude. This includes any discussion, questions, experiences and speculations of quota, limits, context window size, downtime, price, subscription issues, general gripes, why you are quitting, Anthropic's motives, and comparative performance with other competitors.

So What are the Rules For Contributing Here?

All the same as for the main feed (especially keep the discussion on the technology)

• Give evidence of your performance issues and experiences wherever relevant. Include prompts and responses, platform you used, time it occurred. In other words, be helpful to others.

• The AI performance analysis will ignore comments that don't appear credible to it or are too vague.

• All other subreddit rules apply.

Do I Have to Post All Performance Issues Here and Not in the Main Feed?

Yes. This helps us track performance issues, workarounds and sentiment and keeps the feed free from event-related post floods.

You can now track your usage in real time across Claude Code and the Claude apps.

• Claude Code: /usage slash command

• Claude apps: Settings -> Usage

The weekly rate limits we announced in July are rolling out now. With Claude Sonnet 4.5, we expect fewer than 2% of users to reach them.

Recently, I'm having to compress 2MB files as hard as possible to even get more than 4 messages into a chat. It seems like claude is functionally useless for anything other than as an alternative to google.
I will litterally hit the limit if I attach more than 3 files to a chat. What is going on?
I'm cancelling my subscription and moving back to OpenAI, even though I hate it's guts

For context, I'm a software engineering student and this particular chat contained, I kid you not, three messages, a single 175KB file and I was trying on the 4th message to attach 2x 2MB pdf files, using 3.5 Sonnet. Compressing the files down to 600kb and it STILL won't work, even trying with a SINGLE file.

I'm getting "You message will exceed length limit, make a new chat". It's so damn awful

EDIT: So it turns out that Claude is absolute TRASH at pdfs, wasting all my tokens and all capacity on trying to process the company logo that appears on each of the 90 pages in the pdf. After fiddling around I finally got a different message specifying something like "this message exceeds image limits". What a shame

EDIT 2: People don't seem to understand that Claude advertises file uploads of 20 files, 30MB max EACH. Hitting the limit with a 600kb file should not be possible and is an enormous oversight

I’m on the $50 plan and recently got a “Weekly limit reached” message, even though I’ve barely used Claude Code this week.

When I checked with

ccusage blocks --period week

the actual usage looks very low (see screenshot).

the PROJECTED value keeps increasing and shows several hundred percent over the limit — which doesn’t make sense.

Is anyone else experiencing something similar?
Could this be a bug in how the projection is calculated?

Thanks!

Just making a post about this because there's been no announcement or anything, and I've seen it barely get any attention in general.

The pages regarding the limits in the knowledge base have been updated: https://support.anthropic.com/en/articles/9797557-usage-limit-best-practices

The new section I want to highlight is this:

Our system also includes caching that helps you optimize your limits:

Content in Projects is cached and doesn't count against your limits when reused
Similar prompts you use frequently are partially cached

Like... What? Files uploaded as project knowledge now don't count against your limit? That's genuinely nuts.

Personally I'm seeing a lot of weirdness around the limits, might be because of the changes. Last night I had a usage window go up to like 5 times as many messages as usual, but I'm also seeing people hit the limit immediately - seems like there's a lot of wackiness going on, so it might be buggy for a couple days.

Still, if the changes to project knowledge apply like they seem to, that's genuinely massive.

Like you could take 100k tokens worth of code, upload it as project knowledge, and get the same usage as if it was a completely blank chat.

What the fuck - I get to use it for like 1 hour before I'm kicked off for 4 whole hours. I am dying to pay for a premium version like chatgpt pro - or i can pay on a usage basis too.

I'd even rather have all my usage limit in one block so I can just do something else with my time vs. coming back every 4 hours for 45 mins.

Claude is still clearly superior vs. all the others, even O1 and deepseek, especially for non-coding work/thought partner work.

It kills me that I have superintelligence on demand but I'm cut off from it like 80% of the time - this is how people feel when their electricity is cut off I imagine.

I’ve been Team Claude since the early days, but these new daily, weekly, and model limits are absolutely nuts. Especially for a $200/month subscription.

Last week I hit my Opus limit by Sunday morning - three days into the reset - just doing some light Claude Code refactoring. Then I had to sit on my hands until Thursday to use Opus again. This was on 20x Max.

Today I hit my daily Claude limit before 11 a.m. just from working on resumes, cover letters, and career strategizing throughout the morning. To make it worse, half of what Claude produced was complete gibberish - totally incoherent nonsense. It’s been noticeably worse lately, like something fundamental broke under the hood. So not only did I waste a ton of tokens repeatedly correcting Claude's errors, I couldn’t even finish what I set out to accomplish. And when I tried to switch over to Claude Code thinking I would work on my SaaS, I couldn’t, because I’d already hit my usage cap - Claude Code and Claude Web usage are tied together. Now I have to wait three hours just to do any further work with Claude.

It’s insane. Claude used to be my go-to for everything - creative, technical, writing, whatever. But the combination of throttling and quality drop over the last few weeks has made it basically unusable for any real, professional work. I can’t get through a normal workday without hitting a wall.

I’ve started using GPT-5 for most stuff now. I still prefer Claude’s tone and personality, but GPT doesn’t stop me from working. It’s faster, more consistent, and doesn’t slap me with arbitrary limits. Between ChatGPT for general reasoning and Codex GPT-5-High for code, I can actually get things done.

As much as I like Anthropic as a company, they’ve turned Claude into a crippled version of itself. And seeing constant Claude ads everywhere (college aged people holding their petite mics acting like influencers, showing how they created a Claude agent that evidently has changed the world) while the product itself gets worse just feels like deja vu - straight out of the Starlink playbook. Amazing during beta, then they scale up, saturate their customer base, quality tanks, prices go up, limits show up and incrementally worsen, and everyone who helped build the hype gets screwed.

It sucks to say, but at this point, I’m done. I’m no longer Team Claude.

Exactly as the title says. I noticed my usage limits have been higher than any Opus model has given me in the past. I remember with Opus 4.1 it started out good but then they slowly started reducing usage limits over time. I assume Anthropic wants users to thoroughly test the new model, thus why the limits are high right now. They will likely start slowly reducing it again to encourage people to pay for higher tiers.

I have the Pro tier at the moment and its been great.

Below is a report of user insights, user survival guide and recommendations to Anthropic based on the entire list of 982 comments on the Usage Limits Discussion Megathread together with several external sources. The Megathread is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1mbsa4e/usage_limits_discussion_megathread_starting_july/

Disclaimer: This report was entirely generated with AI. Please report any hallucinations.

Methodology: For the sake of objectivity, Claude was not used. The core prompt was as non-prescriptive and parsimonious as possible: "on the basis of these comments, what are the most important things that need to be said?"

TL;DR (for all Claude subscribers; heaviest impact on coding-heavy Max users)

The issue isn’t just limits—it’s opacity. Weekly caps (plus an Opus-only weekly cap) land Aug 28, stacked on the 5-hour rolling window. Without a live usage meter and clear definitions of what an “hour” means, users get surprise lockouts mid-week; the Max 20× tier feels poor value if weekly ceilings erase the per-session boost.

Top fixes Anthropic should ship first: 1) Real-time usage dashboard + definitions, 2) Fix 20× value (guarantees or reprice/rename), 3) Daily smoothing to prevent week-long lockouts, 4) Target abusers directly (share/enforcement stats), 5) Overflow options and a “Smart Mode” that auto-routes routine work to Sonnet. (THE DECODER, TechCrunch, Tom's Guide)

Representative quotes from the megathread (short & anonymized):

“Give us a meter so I don’t get nuked mid-sprint.”
“20× feels like marketing if a weekly cap cancels it.”
“Don’t punish everyone—ban account-sharing and 24/7 botting.”
“What counts as an ‘hour’ here—wall time or compute?”

What changed (and why it matters)

• New policy (effective Aug 28): Anthropic adds weekly usage caps across plans, and a separate weekly cap for Opus, both resetting every 7 days—on top of the existing 5-hour rolling session limit. This hits bursty workflows hardest (shipping weeks, deadlines). (THE DECODER)

• Anthropic’s stated rationale: A small cohort running Claude Code 24/7 and account sharing/resales created load/cost/reliability issues; company expects <5% of subscribers to be affected and says extra usage can be purchased. (TechCrunch, Tom's Guide)

• Official docs still emphasize per-session marketing (x5 / x20) and 5-hour resets, but provide no comprehensive weekly meter or precise hour definition. This mismatch is the friction point. (Anthropic Help Centre)

What users are saying

1. Transparency is the core problem. [CRITICAL] No live meter for weekly + Opus-weekly + 5-hour budget ⇒ unpredictable lockouts, wasted time.

“Just show a dashboard with remaining weekly & Opus—stop making us guess.”

2) Max 20× feels incoherent vs 5× once weekly caps apply. [CRITICAL]
Per-session “20×” sounds 4× better than 5×, but weekly ceilings may flatten the step-up in real weekly headroom. Value narrative collapses for many heavy users.

“If 20× doesn’t deliver meaningfully more weekly Opus, rename or reprice it.”

3) Two-layer throttling breaks real work. [HIGH]
5-hour windows + weekly caps create mid-week lockouts for legitimate bursts. Users want daily smoothing or a choice of smoothing profile.

“Locked out till Monday is brutal. Smooth it daily.”

4) Target violators, don’t penalize the base. [HIGH]
Users support enforcement against 24/7 backgrounding and account resellers—with published stats—instead of shrinking ordinary capacity. (TechCrunch)

“Ban abusers, don’t rate-limit paying devs.”

5) Clarity on what counts as an “hour.” [HIGH]
Is it wall-clock per agent? active compute? tokenized time? parallel runs? Users want an exact definition to manage workflows sanely.

“Spell out the unit of measure so we can plan.”

6) Quality wobble amplifies waste. [MEDIUM]
When outputs regress, retries burn budget faster. Users want a public quality/reliability changelog to reduce needless re-runs.

“If quality shifts, say so—we’ll adapt prompts instead of brute-forcing.”

7) Practical UX asks. [MEDIUM]
Rollover of unused capacity, overflow packs, optional API fallback at the boundary, and a ‘Smart Mode’ that spends Opus for planning and Sonnet for execution automatically.

“Let me buy a small top-up to finish the sprint.”
“Give us a hybrid mode so Opus budget lasts.”

(Press coverage confirms the new weekly caps and the <5% framing; the nuances above are from sustained user feedback across the megathread.) (THE DECODER, TechCrunch, WinBuzzer)

Recommendations to Anthropic (ordered by impact)

A) Ship a real-time usage dashboard + precise definitions.
Expose remaining 5-hour, weekly, and Opus-weekly budgets in-product and via API/CLI; define exactly how “hours” accrue (per-agent, parallelism, token/time mapping). Early-warning thresholds (80/95%) and project-level views will instantly reduce frustration. (Docs discuss sessions and tiers, but not a comprehensive weekly meter.) (Anthropic Help Centre)

B) Fix the 20× value story—or rename/reprice it.
Guarantee meaningful weekly floors vs 5× (especially Opus), or adjust price/naming so expectations match reality once weekly caps apply. (THE DECODER)

C) Replace blunt weekly caps with daily smoothing (or allow opt-in profiles).
A daily budget (with small rollover) prevents “locked-out-till-Monday” failures while still curbing abuse. (THE DECODER)

D) Target bad actors directly and publish enforcement stats.
Detect 24/7 backgrounding, account sharing/resale; act decisively; publish quarterly enforcement tallies. Aligns with the publicly stated rationale. (TechCrunch)

E) Offer overflow paths.

• Usage top-ups (e.g., “Opus +3h this week”) with clear price preview.

• One-click API fallback at the lockout boundary using the standard API rates page. (Anthropic)

F) Add a first-class Smart Mode.
Plan/reason with Opus, execute routine steps with Sonnet, with toggles at project/workspace level. This stretches Opus without micromanagement.

G) Publish a lightweight quality/reliability changelog.
When decoding/guardrail behavior changes, post it. Fewer retries ⇒ less wasted budget.

Survival guide for users (right now)

• Track your burn. Until Anthropic ships a meter, use a community tracker (e.g., ccusage or similar) to time 5-hour windows and keep Opus spend visible. (Official docs: sessions reset every 5 hours; plan pages describe x5/x20 per session.) (Anthropic Help Centre)

• Stretch Opus with a manual hybrid: do planning/critical reasoning on Opus, switch to Sonnet for routine execution; prune context; avoid unnecessary parallel agents.

• Avoid hard stops: stagger heavy work so you don’t hit both the 5-hour and weekly caps the same day; for true bursts, consider API pay-as-you-go to bridge deadlines. (Anthropic)

Why this is urgent

Weekly caps arrive Aug 28 and affect all paid tiers; Anthropic frames it as curbing “24/7” use and sharing by <5% of users, with an option to buy additional usage. The policy itself is clear; the experience is not—without a real-time meter and hour definitions, ordinary users will keep tripping into surprise lockouts, and the Max 20× tier will continue to feel mis-sold. (TechCrunch, THE DECODER, Tom's Guide)

Representative quotes from the megathread:

“Meter, definitions, alerts—that’s all we’re asking.”
“20× makes no sense if my Opus week taps out on day 3.”
“Go after the resellers and 24/7 scripts, not the rest of us.”
“Post a changelog when you tweak behavior—save us from retry hell.”

(If Anthropic implements A–C quickly, sentiment likely stabilizes even if absolute caps stay.)

Key sources

• Anthropic Help Center (official): Max/Pro usage and the 5-hour rolling session model; “x5 / x20 per session” marketing; usage-limit best practices. (Anthropic Help Centre)

• TechCrunch (Jul 28, 2025): Weekly limits start Aug 28 for Pro ($20), Max 5× ($100), Max 20× ($200); justified by users running Claude Code “24/7,” plus account sharing/resale. (TechCrunch)

• The Decoder (Jul 28, 2025): Two additional weekly caps layered on top of the 5-hour window: a general weekly cap and a separate Opus-weekly cap; both reset every 7 days. (THE DECODER)

• Tom’s Guide (last week): Anthropic says <5% will be hit; “power users can buy additional usage.” (Tom's Guide)

• WinBuzzer (last week): Move “formalizes” limits after weeks of backlash about opaque/quiet throttles. (WinBuzzer)