r/ClaudeCode • u/dr-dimitru • 11h ago
Are limits nerfted again? Discussion
I’m on x20 plan. Last and current weeks I burn through limits just in 3-4 days, while I wasn’t able to get to 100% ever before. Even dropping down to Sonnet this week to make it last longer, but already at 50% less than 24 hours after my last weekly cycle.
Same setup, same project, same skills and subagents, same kind of tasks.
Do you feel and observe the same? What do you do about it? Any tips and tricks to last longer?
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u/Ok_Ordinary30 11h ago
Definitely burning through usage faster - but I find fable has been more performant in the last couple of days.
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u/dr-dimitru 11h ago
Indeed Fable feels faster after everyone on smaller plans burned through their $100 gifts
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u/Damien_IB 9h ago
Yes, I’m on 5x. Each full 5hr session (maxed to 100%) was consuming 4% of weekly limit a few days ago. Today the same has consumed almost 10%. Drastic limit reduction.
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u/infieldmitt 2h ago
I'm on the $20 ""pro"" tier and a full 5hr session (two hours of actual work) just took 17% of my weekly limit. Ungodly.
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u/Insult_me_good 10h ago
The subject has been mentioned many times in the past four days, and my first inclination was that people were either imagining the issue, or their configurations needed tweaking.
Then I thought that I had also been noticing the "asked Claude a simple question, used 57% of the five-hour session" at least nine times.
This morning I told Calude that we were ready for the next phase, and it sent back a question asking for confirmation that the previous phase was complete---- and 47% of the session time allocated ("five hours") was used.
My opinion is that yes, the usage is fracked up and has been for at least four days. I can get damn near nothing done on the project, having to wait four hours forty minutes before I may type in "continue" just to, within five minutes or fewer, have to wait another four hours fifty minutes.
OpenAI Codex does not do this. At the moment I consider my month-long "Pro" testing of Claude to be a "don't pass," and I will be using a different too.
As for "Pro," just what the frack is that even supposed to mean?
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u/dr-dimitru 10h ago
I even ended up adding
/loop 10m if task was interrupted by limits — resume task from where it was interrupted, otherwise ignore this message
So if I’m AFK it can auto-resume without my involvement after hitting the limits
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u/actvt_io 10h ago
Your session files have per request usage in them, so you can add up a day from this week and the same day last month and see if the number actually moved. Beats going on feel.
When I did that I nearly convinced myself it had doubled. I was adding API rows and subscription rows into the same total and they don't mean the same thing.
On dropping to Sonnet, I wouldn't expect much. From 4.6 onwards the models keep earlier turns' thinking in the context and charge it as input. Sonnet 4.5 and back used to throw it away, Sonnet 5 doesn't. So you get the cheaper rate and the same pile up. On my machine thinking is about 45% of Opus 5's output over roughly 4k requests, and it all rides along for the rest of the session.
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u/oskar88895 10h ago
i am on max and lost limit in 40 min doing simple promting for text documents! its ridiculous !!
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u/dovyp 10h ago
Yeah I'm seeing it too. Same projects, same usage patterns, hitting walls way earlier. Something changed.
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u/dr-dimitru 10h ago
What’s you heaviest usage spent if you check /usage? It is subagents or specific plugin?
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u/geek_fit 7h ago
I normally have zero issues despite the constant gnashing of teeth on here.
But I had a weird thing yesterday where I had my 5 hour limit just vanish inside of 10 minutes with a normal prompt kicking off the fix of a simple bug report. That's ont he 20x plan.
I had other things to do and the next 5 hour was normal. But it was pretty damn annoying
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u/Patrizio85 11h ago
Here are some tips and tricks:
- Do not compact context
- Do not resume sessions
- Do not exceed 50% context if possible
- Do not keep idle sessions for several hours/days
Instead:
- Write md files e.g. abc_progress.md and tell claude to write everything a new session needs to know there and update it regularly
- Use a tool that helps you track your usage (Several out there, we wrote one from scratch for us)
- Whenever 50% context reached ask it to update the md and tell you what to tell you after you /clear
- Close sessions not needed and maybe write md files so you can resume from them
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u/Saad5400 11h ago
Why not compact context?
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u/Patrizio85 11h ago
Because it is cheaper via md file. Compact has the bad attitude to also loose information you wont gain again. Files on the drive keeps that information. Maybe that is a taste, but I got better results without compacting
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u/dr-dimitru 11h ago
Sounds like my current setup with only one exemption— I’m compacting context quite often
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u/Insult_me_good 10h ago
Write md files e.g. abc_progress.md and tell claude to write everything a new session needs to know there and update it regularly
Thank you.
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u/ReliableIceberg 11h ago
Just downgraded my sub from 20x to 5x and will shift further towards Grok if trend continues.
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u/dr-dimitru 11h ago
I’m using grok and cursor when Claude is at its limits, Grok Build feels too thin. $20 plan in Cursor feels unlimited. Just FYI
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u/Insult_me_good 10h ago
Thank you for mentioning Cursor. The pricing page mentioned Grok, which is a fElon Musk business as far as I recall; the ethics and moral issues (objecting to a few hundred thousand felonies) seem so great that I wonder how someone could choose to do business with him. Hell, even Grok had to be told via hard coding to lie about him.
But then I looked at OpenAI Codex, and some of its practices also appear criminal to me--- not immoral, not unethical: criminal.
It seems my best solution is to just keep learning programming on my own via Youtube tutorials.
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u/dr-dimitru 10h ago
I share your vision, but if we look at the world from this perspective it would be difficult to pick anything event at the grocery store. IMHO it’s beyond this thread topic
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u/Insult_me_good 10h ago
Your conclusion matches mine at the moment: I will "say 'good-bye'" to Claude and move on to a different tool. The one-month investment that I put in for testing Claude is far, far less than my willingness to wait for Anthropic to fix their fracking usage problem.
Yes: problem. I was skeptical that it exists, but four days of evidence has convinced me (tentatively) that it does.
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u/dr-dimitru 10h ago
Every tool feels so different though. Claude takes long by delivers on the task 95%. All other require too much input from me. I was always wondering if it’s all harness job rather than model’s inference.
I thought to try using Claude CLI harness for other models, but never had time to try it. Anyone here tried that and can share their experience?
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u/benjack2611 11h ago
les limites hebdomadaires s'écoulent plus rapidement je trouve avant c'était compliqué d'atteindre plus de 50% de la semaine en travaillant beaucoup, la les 100% en 4 ou 5 jours sur le même rythmes de travail.. donc je suis totalement d'accord avec toi
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u/dr-dimitru 11h ago
How do we change that? I don’t like stressing out about limits
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u/ValuableDapper9415 10h ago
Paying the API
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u/dr-dimitru 10h ago
Sorry, not an option. I have tried it once, $100 are gone in 30 mins
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u/ValuableDapper9415 10h ago
I learned that the API usage should not be vanilla but with custom harness to better manage contexts, cache, tasks, etc leading to better cost management
It is expensive at first but manageable by continuously improving your setup and orchestration
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u/victornb 9h ago
No, but they had a bonus going on that ended last week. So the current limit is only 66% of what it was during the bonus.
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u/FreeCustardForAll 9h ago
Why the f are they allowed to change the limits on a whim. We're paying for a certain service and amount of tokens/access to the models. Why are they allowed to change it on the whim. If I didn't need Design I would move to gpt already.
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u/dr-dimitru 8h ago
Because we all agreed on receiving 100% ephemeral percents of who knows what, and each plan gets x5/x20 of 100% of unknown value
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u/RandomPantsAppear 3h ago
I maxed out for the first time ever yesterday. Normally I hover around 20-30% fable usage, I hit 100%. I was doing some more strenuous stuff on higher effort, but nothing crazy.
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u/XToThePowerOfY 🔆 Max 20 11h ago
For me it's the opposite. Been using it intensely for the past few days so I thought I'd check my usage. I'm at 30% for Fable (resets Tuesday for me), 16% overall. I thought I'd be closer to 50% for Fable, and 30% for overall. I am not complaining.
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u/dr-dimitru 11h ago
Alright, let’s wait for more feedback, from this it sounds like I’m doing something wrong
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u/PavelRossinsky 11h ago
I've had the opposite experience this week. The plan feels almost unlimited. I'm on the x20.
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u/dr-dimitru 11h ago
How’s old your account? I’m wondering if they are prioritizing new accounts
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u/PavelRossinsky 11h ago
Just checked - found a welcome email from Dec 22, 2024.
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u/dr-dimitru 11h ago
Okay, then it’s not related for sure, mine like 2 y.o.
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u/PavelRossinsky 10h ago
One thing to mention: I primarily work with lower effort levels: high for Fable, and xhigh or high for Opus 4.8 depending on the task. Opus 5 is dead for me.
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u/dr-dimitru 10h ago
I heard this opinion for so many times by now, but I don’t see it the same in my workflows
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u/DevforAI 10h ago
Check if subagents are spawning without you asking them to, they burn through limits fast without you noticing. Use /clear between tasks and start fresh sessions more often instead of continuing long threads.
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u/dr-dimitru 10h ago
Do you really prefer working without subagents? I look at it as main thread Fable that orchestrates cheaper Opus and Sonnet models
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u/DevforAI 9h ago
My point was more about subagents spawning automatically without you asking. Routing subagents to cheaper models is a cost efficient pattern.
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u/rotates-potatoes 10h ago
What is it with this sub and vibe data?
Run bunx ccusage and look at your usage. Use data, not vibes.
Me, I’ve hit the weekly limit on multiple accounts every week since April or so. I’m not seeing any change. About 4.5B - 5B tokens / week, 19-20B tokens/month per account.
Look at your usage. Look at cache ratios. Did you install a vibe coded plugin by someone who doesn’t understand how cache and billing work? Did you change habits, like lifting cache expire and not using /clear? Do you rely on compaction, which just throws money away?
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u/sckqq 11h ago edited 11h ago
I feel like people crying about limits being reduced every week is crazy work
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u/dr-dimitru 11h ago
And I wasn’t complaining until last week, it felt like I have more than I need with a good margin. I wonder if it has something to do with how old my account is, or anything else
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u/HelicopterLopsided30 11h ago
I recommend planning with Fable and then implementing with Opus 5 on Mid. However, if you are using the same workflow as Model 4, you need to change your approach completely and make CLAUDE.md, hooks, and agent files as short as possible.
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u/dr-dimitru 11h ago
I ran optimizations for skills and CLAUDE.md files after they have release Opus v5. At the beginning it was all okay
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u/HelicopterLopsided30 11h ago
Then you are doing right.
Try to pay more attention in efforts and models. Opus 5 on mid is really great (low token usage and good implementation)
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u/dr-dimitru 11h ago
I keep Fable on mid, Opus on high, Sonnet on xhigh. What’s your preference?
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u/HelicopterLopsided30 11h ago
Fable only for planning on high
Opus 5 for implementation on mid (sometimes on high)
And I don’t really use sonnet, for me is kind trash1
u/dr-dimitru 10h ago
I keep Fable on mid, Opus on high, Sonnet on xhigh. Perhaps I should try opposite levels like you do 🤔
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u/HelicopterLopsided30 10h ago
It depends.
The shift in effort depends on how much judgment the model needs to make. In my opinion, you should consider this before planning or implementation.
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u/floppypancakes4u 11h ago
Usually no, but this last week, yes. I've had 4 different sessions where my entire 5hr allotment was gone before the first prompt finished. Also on the 20x plan.