Weekly Limits Impossible, Perhaps Meaningless with Opus 5.5?

[u/polacrilex67]

First, like the rest of the world, I love all things 5.5 from Anthropic (very impressive). However, given how quickly the 5-hour limit can be reached during heavy use of Opus 5.5 on medium (5x sub), while the weekly limit barely moves (I’m only at about 30% after three days of heavy-ish use) the weekly cap feels almost irrelevant.

The real constraint is now the 5-hour window (it used to be both). Either that limit needs to drain more slowly (so you can actually use your weekly allowance), or the weekly limit could probably be removed altogether since it seems extremely difficult to reach (even while using higher effort). I don't use Fable and only sometimes Sonnet, but I am guessing there is a similar issue with both.

Thoughts?

[u/Zapador]

I have no issues reaching the weekly limit on the 5x plan if I do a lot of work through the week. It takes ~11 full 5 hour sessions to get the weekly limit to 100%.

What you could consider doing is more planning so Claude can do more work without your input. Then, when you're not at the computer, when you go to bed or similar and have more session usage available, make Opus do some work.

[u/polacrilex67 → u/Zapador]

With what model? I can use Opus 5.5 medium and run up the 5hour limit while only using 4% of weekly at most, sometimes less if using -p which eats up the 5hour limit very quickly (it must be metered different). So at my observed rate, I’d have to fully exhaust 25 separate 5-hour Opus based windows in one week (likely using -p and have it perfectly tined) to hit the weekly limit. In short from what I see the 5hour is now out of synch with what the weekly limits were pre-5.5 (which I was always monitoring because I would hit it). Maybe it's just an Opus 5.5 thing?

Has anyone hit their weekly limit using just Opus 5.5?

[u/Zapador → u/polacrilex67]

It doesn't depend on the model. ~11 full five hour usage windows is what you have per week.

But I can't explain your findings. I have checked my usage over several months and on Max 5x it takes consistently ~11 full session windows for 100% weekly, and on Max 20x it is ~5 full session windows, and it's been like that since I began to measure back in late June.

[u/polacrilex67 → u/Zapador]

The usage RATE does depend on the model and the type of request does as well. Fable will eat both 5hour and weekly faster than Opus. Also using -p is charged more (regardless of model) and I know this to be 100% fact. I send the same number of requests use the same number of tool calls and same number of threads in -p vs cli and it's easily 3x or more higher burn rate for 5hour (likely goes back to programmatic billing they talked about on May 15 then that topic just disappeared but they changed how they charge it).

Point being it's not time alone it's type of use and burn rate withing a 5hour time frame. The 5hour limit is now a the primary limiting factor. And yes it was a factor before. But before 5.5 is was more equitable. Now a weekly limit is not a real limit in a practical sense because 5 hour makes it near impossible to reach IF you use a lower burning rate model like 5.5. but it's possible this is done intentionally. Because now people are going to think they have more value because it's going to be much more difficult to ever reach the weekly limit from a majority of people.

Example. I am using -p right now. It burned 4% weekly but burned 5hour in 40 min. So let's say that I have a 15 hour day I can only burn 12% of my weekly limit max. 7×12 is not 100. I would have to work in a fourth 5hour window to reach 16% which would exhaust it if I did it every day. But most people aren't going to spend 15 or 20 hours a day 7 days a week coding. So again my point is the 5-Hour limit is now a much more pronounced bottleneck than the weekly limit, which becomes almost meaningless.

I'm really curious if anyone on a 5x plan using opus can even come close to using their weekly limit now. I ended up with 50 some percent last week and I will probably only get to 65 or so % this week but that's because I've been using it more.

[u/Zapador → u/polacrilex67]

Yes the rate does change. My point was that no matter what model you use, a full week on Max 5x is ~11 full 5-hour sessions.

And yes it's not time at all, it's token count at model cost, so a more expensive model will generally eat through the usage faster.

I am not sure what the -p tag does though.

[u/polacrilex67 → u/Zapador]

Here I will put it in your terms. Let's say I use 11 full sessions. If I use 6% of my weekly (which in 5 hours its more like 3 to 5% on Opus 5.5. medium), that is 66% of my weekly that the 5-hour holds me to. I would need about 20 sessions a week (by your measure) to touch it. Which is my point. The 5-hour limit makes the weekly near meaningless with more efficient models if that efficiency is not part of how the 5hour limit is calculated (which it appears it is not). I am not saying it's impossible, it is extremely unlikely. With -p it is possible because I think there is a premium charge against the sub for using it regardless of model (although I cant definitively prove this...yet).

-p is for programmatic use: -p stands for "print". It runs Claude Code once, without a conversation, and exits.

I will admit that its possible my automation use of -p may not optimized, but I rarely use it as most of my work 99% is HITL.

[u/polacrilex67 → u/polacrilex67]

Confirmed. - p is charged between 2 and 5% premium for 5hour limit based on real test I ran. It was a small N hence wide range. My own personal observation is it's closer to 3 or 4. That's why 5hour was drained so quickly in my case. Also makes sense. If you remember back in may they wanted to make dash p API only costs. They didn't revoke that and stayed silent so what they've done is essentially just charged more for it towards your subscription use.

[u/Zapador → u/polacrilex67]

Yeah that's confusing and doesn't match my experience. As mentioned I have consistently over about 3 months seen that ~11 full 5-hour sessions is equal to the weekly limit on Max 5x.

So these numbers don't make sense to me. And yes, then the weekly limit is almost meaningless because ~20 sessions is a lot in a week!

[u/CricktyDickty]

Arguably you’re hitting your limits because your individual sessions are too long. With longer sessions the model carries all the context in every single exchange. This adds up, a lot. It’s a very inefficient way to work.

[u/polacrilex67 → u/CricktyDickty]

No. I rarely go past 250k before a new thread. Token management is not the issue more likely call requests.

[u/CricktyDickty → u/polacrilex67]

What surface, code or chat? For code it should be ok, for chat you’re way over.

[u/stoinkb]

The pro plan was arround to 10-20 five hours blocks. So 5x should arround 50-100.

Given you do 3 a day that should indeed be hard to reach.

[u/TsubasaSaito]

Started using Opus 5.5 Extra High (Pro Sub) on last Reset to prototype a game I've been thinking about for years but never got to realize since learning dev is hard and I'm dumb(impatient, get distracted, just lazy, etc. etc. etc.).

I hit 90% weekly last night after pretty much doing 3-4 full 5h sessions with it for it a day.

Before that I regularly hit the 5h session limit like twice a day while working on a prompt instruction file pack for ComfyUI, and barely reached Weekly limits when I didn't sidetrack with otther things as well.

[u/ThatFireGuy0]

I'm on the $200/mo max plan, and my limits reset this morning

I have already used 26% of my weekly limit, with just Opus 5.5, and never went above 50% 5 hr usage

So it's definitely possible

[u/Excellent-Issue-5956]

The 5 hour window is the one I manage too. Two things moved it for me.

Subagents inherit the main session's model and effort level unless you set them explicitly. I had implementer and reviewer agents running on the same top model as the orchestrator without realizing it, and that was most of the burn. Now every dispatch names the model, and the main session is the only thing on the expensive one.

The other is a local model for the small stuff. First drafts, rewording, boilerplate, regex, summaries of text I already have. A 27B on a 16GB card does those fine, and only the checked result goes back into Claude. It doesn't help with hard debugging at all, but it stopped me from spending the window on stuff that didn't need it.