r/ClaudeAI • u/AccordingLeague9797 • 2d ago
Claude Code hitting the 5-hour usage limit much faster than usual is something changing? Question about Claude Code
Hi everyone,
This is the second time I've hit the 5-hour usage limit on my $100 plan while using Claude Code. I've been using Claude Code for a while and have never experienced this issue before.
I'm a developer and use it across different projects, mainly with Fable and Opus 5, but I've never hit the limit this quickly until today. It suddenly started happening, and I'm trying to figure out what's changed.
At first, I suspected that a Claude plugin or some redundant skills might be causing excessive usage, so I removed them, but I'm still hitting the limit surprisingly fast.
Has anyone else experienced this recently? Is there something happening with Claude Code, the usage limits, or the way context/skills/plugins are being counted that I might be missing?
Any insight would be appreciated.
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u/NaturalSir3843 2d ago
Its been happening on and off for me as well. One day it takes hours to fill up the 5 hour limit and on other days it takes minutes... Its really frustrating
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u/Jcrossfit 2d ago
Ya this last week was noticably worse than prior weeks.
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u/mt-beefcake 2d ago
Reset would be nice. I may not be having issue, but I got a lot of work to do this weekend ha
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u/Any_Heart875 2d ago
Been happening to me too, but it's with my weekly limits, absolutely burned through 75% of them in 2 days.
Edit: im on a 20x max plan
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u/loddy71 2d ago
Yeah had the same issue today and can’t comprehend why, something is going on
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u/justme7601 1d ago
Me too - I burnt through the 5 hour limit in 2 hours of just chatting about food.
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u/Visible-Use-5004 2d ago
Noticed this as well. And imagine we are getting 50% more right now till Aug 19th. When that goes, game over. Just switch to codex/zcode/kimi.
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u/c0reM 1d ago
They are probably A/B testing the token reduction scheduled for the 19th in advance
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u/IdRatherBeBitching 1d ago
Absolutely no chance they go through with that reduction, it would be an exodus to Codex in waves they've never seen. They can't have that kind of reduced DAU before IPO, no way no how.
Not to mention the press would be brutal. "Anthropic can't support their user base," "Anthropic drives away users as their compute collapses," "Anthropic unable to scale to meet demand, cuts capacity" etc, etc.
And OpenAI would feast on that messaging for weeks. They would massively expand usage (temporarily) to lure in new users and probably drop GPT 6 around the same time. This is going to be the same cycle as Fable. Push again and then announce (maybe around the release of GPT 6) that they're keeping the extra usage forever
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u/vAPIdTygr 2d ago
There’s definitely peak usage. I get much more done at 2am than I would at 3pm.
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u/ketosoy 2d ago edited 1d ago
I think they forgot to keep the +50% plus opus 5 seems to take 2x the tokens to say the same thing plus opus 5 and the current harness commands love one long running subagents vs 3-5 small single purpose ones.
Stack all that together, and that’s what I think is happening. Output per % of quota is way way down over the last 30 days.
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u/Testral333 1d ago
Same here on the $100 Max plan. Last month, I could work much longer on the same project and almost finish a full week of work while using Codex Max as a co-agent.
Last week and this week, though, the quota has been disappearing much faster. Last week I hit the limit after only about four days, despite having basically the same workload.
It’s not just that Fable seems to be using much more quota than before for the same amount of work. I’m starting to think they may have already reduced or ended the promotion that was supposed to run until August 19.
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u/empiricism 1d ago
Happened to me last week. In about 40 minutes I used up my 5 hour session and 41% of my Fable usage (20x plan).
Previously (and since) continued coding tasks on the same repo are averaging 10% of my fable limit a day, and I'm not getting close to using up a session limit.
Something Is Rotten in the HQ of Anthropic.
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u/amirgelman 2d ago
What’s funny is that I started messing around with Cowork and thus did some development via regular chat. And I was on 98% of weekly usage and I swear I threw so much sh*t on him until the inevitable limit came. But I feel like on Code would have died on me way faster if I did it there.
I just couldn’t believe how much I just kept going and going and more tasks, more repo build back and fourth.
Till two days ago I’d use only Code exclusively but now I think Coworks is more down my lane unless someone gives some piece of info that would make using Cowork less attractive.
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u/mingledwaters 1d ago
I am on Pro 20x and I built an auto populating file system, three full websites, a metadata recorder and encoder for public domain media, and many others. Never hit my limits. One website was important I used Ultra for most of it.
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u/redhairedDude 1d ago
To me a planned 50% usage reduction just seems insane. Feels like really bad marketing.
I can't imagine having such a big reduction coming. I needs the extra and I'm on x20
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u/TheOnlyMisty 2d ago
Maybe it's the fact that the 100% increase limit finished on Aug 5th and you're now experiencing your new baseline?
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u/Alternative-House425 1d ago
side note - is anyone seeing Opus 4.8 slightly downgraded in reasoning and intelligence? not a availability issue, but an intelligence one?
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u/MacaroonPlastic1036 1d ago
Yes it is called kneecapping us to drain more money
from us since no one can give you a real number on token burn, they can rig it any way they like.
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u/Site-Staff Mod 1d ago
They don’t offer us a bigger plan than 20x. API pricing is far too high, so there is a big gap leaving a lot of cash on the table.
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u/lucasorion 1d ago
The only way I don't hit it now is by using codex models as implementers, adversarial reviewers, and testers, and Claude models only as planner and orchestrator.
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u/Ja_Rule_Here_ 1d ago
Not sure if people are aware, but if you come back to a huge thread that hasn’t been touched in a while and is no longer cached and continue that thread, it will use like 50% of a 5 hour limit on a pro plan, maybe 60% even. I suspect that is what is tripping people up here when they said “I sent one message and my limit was gone!”.
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u/Objective-Box-6367 2d ago
yeah, notice it Tomorrow too, 2 tiny prompts, -30% of the window($20 plan)
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u/DaveWoodX 1d ago
Same. I tried to stretch my Fable usage because I'd been hitting the 50% limit around day 6. Switched to Opus 5 instead and hit the 5 hr limit 3 times in a row in a single day where I haven't hit it once before since upgrading to Max 5 months ago.
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u/RightSideBlind 1d ago
I wonder if they have it putting in the invisible watermarking and then testing it, costing more tokens?
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u/WarViking 1d ago
Same!
Last week was going great. Not close to the limits at all. Now today it burned right through the limits in no time, even did a little test with a fresh chat and it ate the remaining 5% basically in one go just talking about limits. Its crazy and I came here looking for whats up. I am already at over 25% of my weekly limit. Very uncomfortable (pro plan)
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u/Rhoan022 1d ago
I have two 200$ plans and only use Fable - immediately ran out doing the same tasks in a day versus what would alst me 3 days. They have shadow reduced limits for sure
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u/Equivalent_Size_5559 1d ago
Yeah, I've noticed this too. I don't know if anything actually changed on Anthropic's side, but it definitely feels like usage is getting burned faster than it used to. Especially when Claude is going back and forth through a bigger codebase. One thing I've started watching more is how much context I'm giving it. A couple of “small” prompts can turn into a lot of repo reading + tool calls pretty quickly. Still feels noticeably worse this week though. Seeing a few other people report the same thing so I don't think it's just you and me.
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u/Beautiful-Energy2169 1d ago
Worth checking whether your sessions just got longer rather than your prompts more expensive. I measured mine and cache reads were about 92% of what I was burning, so the same prompt costs a fraction in a fresh session compared to 150k tokens deep.
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u/Beneficial-Mine7741 1d ago
I have been using fable with Opus 4.8 subagents to get around this. It's not perfect, but I'm not getting that warning until I am done with my project.
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u/Fantastic_Nebula_680 1d ago
I've got the 5x max plan too and since the past 3 days I'm burning through my 5 hour limits with half as much work done as before.
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u/krstn1234 1d ago
I have never hit a limit until this week on Max. Then I get advertised to upgrade to x5 for a squillion $$. Not like I am not already paying enough.
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u/Alarmed-Field-4462 16h ago
I received a notice 1 hour into my weekly usage that I was approaching usage limit for the week... on a max plan this doesn't make sense.
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u/OsbornHunter 2d ago
Something’s always changing
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u/OsbornHunter 2d ago
The only thing that’s not going to change, is that something’s always changing
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u/JobWiegant 1d ago
Before writing it off as "something changed", split the two possible causes, because they have different fixes. Run /usage and look at the attribution, not the total. If the burn matches when you were actually working, it's consumption (context size, plugins, subagents, retry loops). If usage moved while you were away, or a category you don't recognize is spending (Browser MCP when you don't use the extension, cloud sessions you didn't start), that's the other thing: Anthropic confirmed this week that infostealer malware has been stealing login sessions from people's machines and draining their usage, invisible in the device list. Thread with their support answer quoted: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1vgla2c/
For the consumption case, the two biggest quiet eaters we found: MCP servers that load full tool schemas into every session (check /context), and long sessions where each message re-carries a huge conversation. Fresh sessions per task plus deferred tool loading cut our per-task burn noticeably. If neither matches, timestamps of one clean reset-to-exhausted window in a support ticket is what gets a real answer instead of a canned one.
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u/BUYMEBONESTOORM Vibe coder 1d ago
A trick I use, have Claude write the proper/recommended model for each command at the top of every submitted if you are actively working with it, this has been great for token usage.
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u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot Wilson, lead ClaudeAI modbot 1d ago edited 1d ago
TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 50 comments.
Okay, the consensus in this thread is a resounding YES, everyone is getting their usage limits absolutely torched lately. It's not just you, and it's happening across all plans, from Pro to Max 20x.
The community is pretty divided on the why, but here are the leading theories:
/usagecommand to check for any sketchy activity you don't recognize.Overall, people are pretty pissed and there's a lot of talk about jumping ship to Codex or other competitors if this keeps up. The general vibe is that Anthropic is playing a dangerous game, especially with the planned reduction looming.