Hey everyone,

I recently subscribed to Claude Pro and today I used Claude Opus 4.1 to create a portfolio website. It actually generated the whole site in one go, but right after that single prompt I got locked out for about 4.5–5 hours.

So now I’m wondering:

Is this lockout/usage limit only for Opus 4.1?

Or does it apply across other models too like Sonnet 4, Opus 4, Sonnet 3.7, Opus 3, Haiku 3.5, etc.?

What are the actual daily or weekly limits?

I mainly got Pro because I want to use Claude for learning LLMs, interview prep, and practicing coding by doing projects but I’m not sure how restricted I’ll be if I keep hitting limits like this.

Anyone else run into the same issue?

Warning: Wall of text! ~3k words.
TL;DR: Claude Pro Sonnet 4.5 limit after Opus 4.5 launches is abysmal, ~6x worse than API. Pre-Opus seems to be 3x less than $20 API. With evidence.
Pre-Opus limit might be okay for certain types of users (casual, just chat, no code) but UX for trackers is anxiety inducing instead of educational (3 limit trackers after paying, half baked transparency with percentage instead of tokens/messages). Anthropic could have better communication and UX/UI design.

Edit: Milan from Nano-GPT corrects me that $8 subscription gives 2,000 queries per day AND 5% DISCOUNT, not markup when using with proprietary API. Pay with Nano gets 5% discount for subscription price. My bad for the mistake.

CONTENTS

1. CONTEXT

2. BUG: Claude Pro limit is worse than API cost after Opus 4.5 launches.

3. SUGGESTION: Actual Pro usage feedback and suggestion.

CONTEXT

Product: Claude Pro. Only on web, no Claude Code. Subscribed from Nov 20. Only use Sonnet 4.5. No ET.
Usage: Mostly text, little code. Chat and plan with artifacts.
Background: I'm already a Gemini and Perplexity subscriber, cancel ChatGPT because the rerouter makes workflows unreliable, especially when you have spent enough time with each model to know and design prompts around their quirks. I take the jump on Claude Pro despite the community consensus on terrible limit after I found a thread on Chinese forum giving estimated numbers of requests and Claude docs saying "If your conversations are relatively short (approximately 200 English sentences, assuming your sentences are around 15-20 words) and use a less compute-intensive model, you can expect to send around 45 messages every five hours, often more depending on Claude’s current capacity."
Claude's cited limited on Help Docs

With this, I expect 135k words, or 180k tokens conversations per five hours. Assuming 2 5-hour sessions per day (because humans need rest), it's 360k tokens daily, 2.5M tokens weekly, 10M tokens monthly. It's about $118.80/month on API, so while I don't use Claude that much, I would still get a good deal.

For context, using API pricing, what $20/month gets me?
At the ratio of input:output = 1:2, I would have roughly ~60k tokens daily, 1.8M tokens monthly.
At the ratio of 1:5, it still 50k tokens daily, 1.5M tokens monthly.
Whenever I want. No limit. Charged only when used.
Boys was I wrong.

BUG: Claude Pro limit is worse than API cost after Opus 4.5 launches.

This is my test prompt and chat for receipt: https://claude.ai/share/e6ae1981-3739-4e0c-8062-a228d66dd345
Sonnet 4.5, no style, no project, clean new chat. First message input is 161 tokens, output is 402 tokens. Second message sent less than 5 minutes later, input is 371 tokens, output 502 tokens.
Each of these message costs me 2% of my session and ~0.3-0.5% of weekly limit. Cache isn't working, or maybe there isn't prompt caching benefit on web and subscribers bear the full price for the sin of not using API.
In another conversation discussing that Pro limit is reasonable for certain use cases, just badly communicated (the irony, I know 🙂) at 59k tokens, one artifact with 800 lines of code for a demo UI (I'll link the artifact below), each message at 200-400 tokens cost me 7-8% of session, ~0.5-1% weekly limit. No caching applied, too. The next message costs as much as the previous, sent 5 minutes apart.
(Disclaimer: I'm not sure if caching applied on web, but my observation on my first few days with Claude shows that next messages in a conversation sending continuously in a 5-15 mins windows ate up less limit.)
Extrapolated limits: roughly ~28k tokens/session, ~56k tokens/week, ~241k tokens/month (calculate from weekly limit).
Notice how weekly limit means only for 2 full sessions before blocking users out? We keep monitoring session limit and here we'll hit weekly limit and get blocked for the week even if we are careful and never hit session limit. What does this even mean? In what kind of world does this makes sense? Aren't all session limit should combined to weekly limit and help us pace our usage? This double limit seems punishing at this point, because they aren't working together to help you plan your work, but against each other and "gotcha" at every point you aren't careful.
To put that into perspective, that's $3.02/month in API pricing for Sonnet 4.5; even Opus 4.1 would be $15.12/month, no caching discount. So I'm getting 6x less usage than API pricing, with multiple limits and pacing?
Pre-Opus launch, same usage patterns, I regularly hit about 30-50% session usage, max at 70%, behind in pace for weekly at 70%. Each message is 1-2% at most, the 2% are one Claude write me a whole document and
one particularly long conversation on switching OS, so it involves a lot of planning, code snippets to solve problems. So I figured a Pro user can use more than my usage, at $5/month? Math still not mathing, but maybe it aims at users who don't want to tinkering with API key and monitoring usage and open source or third party front-ends with artifacts built-in. So trade-off, I guess, and after a few days I didn't constantly look at trackers anymore, so it's fine by me. I tell myself I have Gemini and Perplexity Pro to fall back anyway.

Proof:

SUGGESTION: Actual Pro usage feedback (pre-Opus) and suggestion.

This is my review from one week usage, pre-Opus. Only Sonnet, no ET. Only on web, no Claude Code. Text, mostly. Use artifacts as documents in three chats to plan works. Did not use code (the UI artifact is made yesterday, after Opus launches).
So I'm supposed to be in the lower end of usage. If you code or something, this would be much different for you.
Now, after we get that out of the way, what's my experience with Claude?

First impression is emotional whiplash. Free user only sees limit after they hit it at about 5 messages. I planned a 30 months programming curriculum with Free. And here I am, just wiped my card for $20 just to be greeted with not 1, not 2, but 3 limit trackers? And it's buried in the settings I have to pin another tab to keep track?
So I spent my first hours with Claude Pro to hunt for Chrome extensions to track it properly. I ended up with not 1, not 2, but 3 extensions because each is doing part of the job.
Here's my final threes on tracking limits alone, I'm not related to the devs, this is what I personally use:
- This shows in the sidebar, collapsible, I can see it all the time and see how each message affect the limit: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/claude-usage-tracker-chat/madhogacekcffodccklcahghccobigof
- This one has the pace toggle, I can see if I'm going much faster than average to pace my usage for ongoing access: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/claude-usage-monitor/jaadjbgpijajmhponmgggflfgmboknge
- This has the cache timer, the token count isn't correct: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/Claude%20Usage%20Tracker/knemcdpkggnbhpoaaagmjiigenifejfo
Bonus: I use this one to keep Enter key from sending the prompt: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/claudify-the-ultimate-too/hofibnjfkkmlhnpjegcekcnnpnpjkgdj

Great starts, Claude! Paying for access, then go on an adventure (hunting for extensions) to make sure it works. Talk about panic and anxiety inducing design.

The next few days are fine. I discussed ideas, fixed some old prompts. Feel the magic wears off, longer conversation length reveals Claude's unique quirks (just like every other models), but when Claude works, it still cool enough I don't think about cancel my subscription (I usually cancel right after, reactive for manual payment only when needed) because I feel I can work with it, limit isn't really affect me (as I said, pre-Opus, I hit 30-50% per session, 70% max and 70% weekly), I didn't need to watch the limit constantly, so I thought I could work with it. I didn't feel the rip-off to the point I need to calculate tokens and justify my subscription (when I did calculate, it's not on Claude's favor 🙂).

So, after a week usage, I was discussing with Claude about how I feel the limit is bearable for casual use, just poorly communicated.

1. Pro plan is like a part-time remote junior assistant, you can have it in the background, chatting away on some small issues, doing some planning, researching, one or two UI prototypes per week with minor changes. Think your boomer relatives or parents who consult it a few times a day when they encounter an issue with their laptop. In fact, I have a relative who uses it to talk about her new YouTube Shorts channel and how to use CapCut, then spend 5 hours following the instructions to make one video. Perfectly happy. Never hit limit. If Claude has advertised that this is their target audience for Pro plan, I'm sure we wouldn't get confused. After all, you don't ask Canva to give billboard quality PSD.

2. Imagine if Anthropic had come out addressing the abuse and imposing limit in a more positive framing.

   • For the abuse of usage, maybe something along the line of "We designed subscription tiers for individual knowledge workers. We've learned some users need industrial-scale automation—that's awesome! We built specialized pricing for that. If your usage is hitting limits, you might be in that category, and we'd love to get you on the right plan." Instead, they came out with "Some users are abusing the system, so we're imposing limits on everyone." It's the equivalent of the teacher punishes the whole class because two kids cheat in exams. They essentially said "We screw up in designing system, but since one of you tries to game the system, you'll all pay for that. We assume everyone is cheater now, so we'll ensure you are watched and punished." If you teaches users that this is a hostile relationship with only transactional value, that you only look to save yourself first at the first sight of problems (and not even a big one), not alignment in values or having stakeholders' best interest in mind (yes, paying customers are stakeholders), then well, good luck once some competitor comes swinging with a cooler model. That date will come. It might ends quickly, it might last. No one knows. You can build relationship for that day. Or not. In any way, which was supposed to be a misuse incident gets blown way out of proportion.

   • On announcing limit: "45 messages per 5 hours means 6-7 minutes per turns, input and output. Humans average reading speed is 238 WPM, and process deep thinking at a slower speed. We're designing for thoughtful, high-quality collaboration between humans and AI. Our science-backed research shows this usage pattern creates the best outcomes, so we've optimized our infrastructure and pricing around it. We commit to continuously bring you more features, smarter models, better responses and overall more enjoyable experience over unlimited generation. For industrial-scale automation needs, we have specialized tiers."

3. On UX/UI design, they could try to design a limit tracker that inform and teach, with actionable solutions instead of panic, anxiety and scarcity inducing, and predatory like current ones. I'm sure they think more trackers are better for informed decisions and planning, but without context, understanding and baseline behavior, more info is just pure confusion.

   • Start with explanation. Usually, one type of limit is enough. You either optimize to prevent burst use, or overall prolonged abuse. Like Poe (not perfect, but better on this one), they either give you 10k points daily, or 1M points monthly. Want to pace usage so traffic is even out? Daily limit. Don't care, infrastructure can handle, only care about users not abuse system long-term? Monthly limit. Something in the middle? Weekly limit. Then users know clear constrains to plan their workflows with it.

     • Why do Claude need daily, weekly and Opus/Sonnet limit?

     • How are they related? As of now, clearly daily sessions doesn't compute to weekly.

     • Give concrete, practical numbers users can plan around and report if something is off. Either tokens or messages. Half-baked transparency is as bad as no transparency at all, and floods users with unnecessary anxiety around the product. Transparency needs to go with context and understanding, with guidance to help users, not leaving them helpless ("Take a break", "review your work" is better than "buy more or go away").

     • Without concrete numbers instead of arbitrary percentage, how can I know that faster pace is a bug, a stealth change or expected behavior? Should I report? It's was eating 5% of limit, but what that limit means actually?

     • Do you really want users to tell each other to work around by send long messages first thing waking up, skip sleep, set alarm to reset the limit to accommodate their work schedule?

     • Do we have cache in the Pro plan? Or every message is sent anew? This is supposed to be Claude's best feature and it is hidden or broken. Why advertise 200k context windows when at 1/4 or half that point, the limit is totally unusable because one message could cost 16-32% session limit, and sending 3 more messages wiped the entire session limit?

     • "During peak hours, the Pro plan offers at least five times the usage per session compared to our free service." So the pitch for Pro plan is supposed to be consistent access with reasonable limit but surely more than free for a fixed price. Instead I get around the same number of messages as free, more expensive than API, multiple limitations that don't make sense I have to find extensions to work around and track on my own because they don't math and no explanation?

     • "A model as capable as Claude takes a lot of powerful computers to run, especially when responding to large attachments and long conversations. We set these limits to ensure Claude can be made available to many people to try for free, while allowing power users to integrate Claude into their daily workflows." So you are telling me you are optimizing for market share with free users, and power users with Max or API. Thus, Pro is...?

     • "Your Pro plan limits are based on the total length of your conversation, combined with the number of messages you send, and the model or feature you use. Please note that these limits may vary depending on Claude’s current capacity." I'm buying a subscription, not a blind box. At least give us a baseline to work with. An estimated range. A minimum number. An average based on our usage patterns.

   • Humans plan workload in day, week and month. Why 5 hours? No concrete reason AFAIK. "Because Anthropic said so" isn't a valid one.

     • This breeds FOMO and resentment. One good night sleep means you lost 1.6 session that don't roll over, and then when you are working in the morning, you hit your limit after 3 hours and having to wait 2 hours for it. Theoretical, this means a day consists of 4.8 sessions, but you can only use 3.2 sessions in your walking hours. Best you could start early, end late, and get 4 sessions each day, still lose one full session.

     • Daily pacing is the best way. Some person are morning larks, some are night owls. Some needs heavy session to review materials, quiz themselves in the morning or night, and spend the other part of day review the content. Some needs to pace throughout the day. Let users plan how this TOOL support their works, not planning their works to support this tool's unexplained limitations.

     • Support deep, uninterrupted works. Not one amount of works breaking into multiple sessions scattered throughout the day. It's a recipe for FOMO and shallow works that hinder productivity.

   • Maybe could frame the subscription tier as "hiring assistant"? The current one sounds predatory and vague.

     • It would be easy to understand that you hire a junior assistant at $20/month, they are committed to do a number of daily tasks. If you want more works, hire a team of assistants at $100. Production-grade? Hire a department with $200.

     • When the amount of daily work is done, the assistant goes home to rest, and so should you, the human. It's not session limit, it's healthy work-life balance for healthy and long-term productivity.

     • If there is work you need to be done urgently but your assistant is done with their daily workload? PAYG as overtime. Simple as that.

4. Proposed design for tracker:

   • One limit. If multiple, justify and explain how they link together.

   • Actual token or message cap for each limit in concrete number.

   • Pacing indicator. Let users know if they are going at which pace compared to average allowance of this tier. This justifies moving up or down if consistently hit limit, instead of being stop dead in track. Limit tracker should be a helpful tool to plan fair usage, not just punishment.

   • If caching is applied, add a timer in conversation or at message ends to encourage deep work on one topic instead multiple concurrent threads.

   • Token count for input/output. Breakdown report (at least on demand). I suspect this one could be done, though. When people see how much they are burning because of injected LCR or ethics reminder, they will be livid.

   • Extra: tooltips to link to Claude's resources on how to best prompt for efficiency. Turn every heavy session into opportunity for learning. Users can select the level of tooltip they want: Beginner-Experienced-Off.

   • Sample: This is one shot by Claude Sonnet based on the chat, I didn't edit anything because each chat now cost me 7-8% session and 1% weekly. Should convey the general idea: https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/1ebe1583-7b64-447f-aa51-88f2baa6f4e0

Summary: Claude Pro subscription after-Opus gives me ~241k tokens/month for $20. API pricing would give me 1.5M tokens for the same $20. I'm paying 6x more for the subscription, getting broken caching, non-functional Opus, and limits that don't math.

Verdict: I'll continue to monitor. With current limit and burning rate, subscription is more expensive and limited, I'll be better off with the API, thus no reason to subscribe when I can get a subscription for 2k queries daily on open source models at Nano-GPT for $8 and top up if I want to use Claude at the API cost with 5% markup, not 3-6x.

And by the way, I just figure out you can't export your Claude data? The instructions here on their docs doesn't work. Ouch, I thought Claude was the ethical AI that respects privacy?

Thank you for coming to my TED talks. Would like to hear what are your suggestions. We have many complaint threads and I'm adding my voice there, too, but I also want to discuss any good direction for moving forward. Better product is better for Anthropic as a business and us as consumers.

P/S: Pardon for bad grammar or typos. I'm non-native. This is handwritten (or hand-typed, I suppose 😅)

I used to subscribe to the Pro plan back in the Claude 3.5–4.0 era, but I canceled because Opus would burn through my usage limits way too fast to feel practical.

Recently, OpenAI Codex’s usage limits have gotten pretty bad, so I’m thinking about switching back to Claude. If I resubscribe, I’d pretty much use it exclusively for Claude Code.

For anyone currently on Pro: how usable are the Opus limits these days when coding? Is it sustainable for daily development, or does it still run out quickly?

I have Claude Pro ($20/month) and consistently run into the per-session usage limits when using Claude Code (CLI tool). I'll max out my current session and have to wait for the window to reset, even though I often end up using only 20-40% of my overall weekly allowance.

My budget is around $30/month total. Is there a better solution than Pro + occasional overage purchases?

Options I'm considering:

Paying for extra usage when I hit limits (but feels inefficient)

Switching to API pay-as-you-go for Claude Code specifically

Upgrading to a higher tier (but $100/month seems excessive for my usage)

For those who use Claude Code heavily in bursts but inconsistently week-to-week - what's your setup?

https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-4-5

The past few days I have yet to reach a limit warning using Claude Code with Sonnet. With Opus 4 I get the warning of 2 minutes of it thinking on a problem..

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.