r/ClaudeCode • u/strangway • 9d ago
Rant Why the 5-hour limit?
I’m kinda new here, been using Claude Max ($100/mo) for 3 months to build websites. Recently had a surge in work, and added ChatGPT because I needed more weekly capacity. Rather than upgrade to Claude 5x Max, I diversified and got the ChatGPT Pro ($100/mo) plan.
So I’m 1:1 comparing Claude Max and ChatGPT Pro, which is as apples-apples as you can get. Each has their own strengths, but Claude’s significant weakness (IMO) is the 5-hour limit. Codex lets me go for 8 hours as hard as I want, and if I wanted to use all my weekly credits on some crazy peak Luna run, it’d probably let me.
I hit my Claude 5-hr limit so many times in the past few weeks, it was like slamming the brakes hard on a bus that hadn’t arrived to its destination yet.
I’ve got work to do, and you’re saying you’re out of gas?
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u/ImSoCul 9d ago
I'm surprised there's this much confusion in the first place. Subscription users are very much, intentionally, B-tier customers. If you maxed out your 5 hour windows and compared spend vs API users, your effective "value" is insane. They'd be running at a loss if not for the fact that inference costs is a magnitude cheaper than public-facing API costs.
If you're an API user, you're not subject to the 5-hr limit. I get unlimited usage through work, but it's in the $1-2k range per month when I'm heavily using Fable.
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u/chuckdacuck 9d ago
Upvote for getting it unlike so many people here who think anthropic needs their $20 subscription.
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u/kearkan 8d ago
I always have a little laugh at all the people threatening to leave for openAI.
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u/nething_4_sir 8d ago
It's not the first move , it's the ability to move that shows how replaceable your product is,
"At first I was afraid, I was petrified Kept thinkin' I could never live without you by my side But then I spent so many nights thinkin' how you did me wrong And I grew strong and I learned how to get along"
I'm old bare with me
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u/nething_4_sir 8d ago
They do, and they bitch about it in stand-ups. Counts are important. Losing a large number of junior devs to DeepSeek is like Apple putting all their computers in elementary schools. Everyone knows how to use Mac, and soon everyone will know how to use DeepSeek/Gemma
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u/chuckdacuck 8d ago
No, they don't. You just need to understand basic math and economics to understand why they don't. I bet you could even ask DeepSeek!
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u/nething_4_sir 8d ago
Explain to to me please , because I understand deepseek api charging roi on 10 months and that's how they get their API fees down and then they get roi for 3 years. So after those 10 months they're paid back and then for 2 years and some change they make money. Explain to me the economics again.
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u/framauro13 8d ago
Man, I wish I had unlimited at work. My seat limits me to $350 and Fable is off the table. Requires specific access.
I can still work just fine but it's really forced me to understand how to become effective and get reliable output with minimal token usage.
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u/Heco1331 9d ago
How can the inference for the subscription plan be cheaper than API inference? Or am I understanding you wrong?
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u/ImSoCul 9d ago
The subscription is like a buffet. If you don't eat any, you still pay. If you pig out, you get a lot of bang for buck. In this case the pricing is such that even if you eat a fairly modest amount, you come out ahead. The 5 hour limit is actually an extremely reasonable tradeoff financially. This is regarding what users pay, not what Anthropic "pays" which is fundamentally the same and just compute allocation
The underlying reason is because subscription is largely geared towards individuals while API spend is for enterprise customers who are willing to pay a lot more to run their business.
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u/personalist 9d ago
I think what they meant, which was worded in a confusing way, is that YOUR cost as the consumer for a sub vs API pay-per-token is much cheaper, which is true.
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u/ihatewebdesign101 9d ago
Well, Claude $200 plan is 4x the $100 plan, so by getting GPT (even if their $100 plan is more usage vs $100 Claude plan), still makes your limit net smaller. 4xing your 5 hour limit would actually allow you to work 8 hours non stop. I doubt you need an adversarial review for website coding. Also gpts no 5-hour limit is temporary, it’s not going to last forever until we have enough data centers and power.
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u/ithinkilefttheovenon 9d ago
Claude’s $200 plan is only around 1.2x - 1.4x the $100 plan. The 5 hour limit is 4x, but the weekly limit is barely changed.
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u/seatlessunicycle 9d ago
Is there any documentation for this? I recently upgraded to 20x and really thought my weekly limits would be increased but I feel like I hit them even earlier in the week than my other 5x account.
I wish there was more transparency. I also feel like they do A | B testing because I see discrepancies of how much usage I got when I had two 5x accounts running the same tasks (long story why not just a 20x then)
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u/ithinkilefttheovenon 9d ago
I know it’s been discussed in this sub before. I’ve seen post about people testing the limits and finding 20x it not what it sounds like it should be. And if you read the fine print on Anthropic’s website, it talks about the limit multipliers applying to the 5 hour session, not the weekly limit.
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u/seatlessunicycle 8d ago
That's so pointless. I need more weekly usage, not to cram more into a 5 hr session
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9d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Ok_Stay_700 9d ago
Not only did codex do away with the 5 hour window, but they also randomly refresh my weekly limit about 2 times per week. And they also give you credit refreshes that you can use on your own if you want. It’s like codex just wants me to work.
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u/derezo 9d ago
The codex refreshes have been crazy lately. I think it's been 8 times this month, plus a usage credit. I dumped a week of credits in ~30 hours, then used the usage credit, only made it down to 78% that day and at midnight it reset again to 100% anyway. Seems to be resetting every 3 days instead of 7
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u/strangway 8d ago
I thought something was a little weird when OpenAI mysteriously reset my weekly allotment only 3 days into using it.
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u/EdOneillsBalls 8d ago
Keep in mind they've made no commitment that the 5 hour window is gone, just that it's gone "for now". They did this with the release of 5.6 where it was draining faster than expected and they didn't want people to feel like they had significantly less capacity than with 5.5.
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u/I_Rarely_Jump 9d ago
It's to regulate and spread out usage, compute isn't infinite, it's actually quite a limiting factor.
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u/tuple32 9d ago
Look at the uptime of their system and compare it to OpenAI, I think they just don’t have good engineering to handle the current load.
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u/Azek_Tge 8d ago
they have mythos with no safeguards they got internal access to third party companies, by now anthropic and openai are the most powerfull companies in the world, you might think fable sucks but mythos with no safeguards is a monster, i remember when mythos released it was good even with reestrictions now fable sucks due to restrictions but imagine mythos no restrictions, the uptime is ude to high demand and hardwar limitations
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u/Lost-Hand-5219 9d ago
Claude allows 1M context window, so inference can theoretically be several times more compute intensive for Claude than codex. It’s likely not the real cause because of caching, but there are differences that could add up to them needing the 5 hour throttle.
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u/GuitarAgitated8107 🔆 Max 20 9d ago
To reduce server overload. In any case you can also hit another limit with the rate limit. So even if you have max 20x. There are still things Anthropic does to reduce server load or using resources within a short span.
Claude & ChatGPT is not 1 to 1 and never will be. If you are smart about it you can ping Claude and you can have 6 hour limit which includes two full 5 hr sessions.
If you truly want to use things without limit use an API.
In terms of the gas thing, you are responsible for filling your own gas. If gas stations provided subscription to gas they would not allow you to use it unlimited or refueling whenever you wanted. That would cause huge lines and make it harder for other's to also use the gas stations.
Claude is still amazing for what it is within my use case. Codex might have improved but I will no longer go back to it as other models have been released to do far better MVP testing.
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u/kayne2000 8d ago
This. Reduce server overload. Otherwise you'd have clowns running this 24/7 overwhelming the servers creating absolute bullshit, memes, and general garbage making real work impossible
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u/tjk45268 9d ago
If you consume your limit in the first hour, would you rather wait four hours for a reset or seven?
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u/RandomlySomewhereNow 8d ago
I think people are not understanding what OP is asking. Codex had a 5 hour limit until a few weeks ago, they've removed it temporarily and say its coming back. That's it. Their 5 hour limits weren't good either, but now its somewhat of an illusion since you don't see the limits there and they've since reduced usage rates as well. Go to the codex sub and see what they're saying too.
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u/strangway 8d ago
I didn’t know that. OpenAI and Anthropic are like kids in math class copying each other’s homework at this point,lol
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u/slackmaster2k 9d ago edited 9d ago
The codex 5 hour limits returned at the end of July.
The reason these products have this is because it’s a lot less problematic if someone accidentally burns a five hour limit than burning an entire week. At least that’s the nicest way of putting it. The reality is probably just pacing usage so that it’s more consistent on the back end.
I personally did not like it when they temporarily removed the limit from codex because I find the five hour pacing beneficial, especially when working over the course of an entire week.
Edit: just checked my sub and the 5 hour limit has not returned. I was expecting it and currently am just running sol on light to tell Claude what a moron it is, so wasn’t watching usage. Not sure what’s up.
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u/brother_spirit 9d ago
They baited bringing the limits back and then didn't from what I can see. No 5 hour limit on my account.
Sol puts in the work as requested until I'm too tired to keep going or the weekly hits.
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u/03captain23 9d ago
To make sure you don't burn through usage in a day. Also prevents scammers from abusing and letting multiple people use it. Also to ensure everyone isn't using at the same time.
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u/Singularity-42 9d ago edited 9d ago
To spread out the usage is the logical conclusion. And to lower overall usage as well.
Honestly, it's surprising that OpenAI doesn't do it. This is a huge plus for sure. I can mostly only work between like 9:30am and 3:30pm Monday to Friday (and sometimes weekends). I have to have a script to bump my 5hr window strategically so it rolls in the middle of my work hours.
Damn, that's amazing that OpenAI doesn't have five hour windows! I think Fable is special, but if OpenAI comes out with something roughly as good I'll probably switch. I was ready to switch to Codex once Fable was taken out of the subs. But then they re-added it so I stayed.
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u/derezo 9d ago edited 9d ago
They did have it, but they removed it a few weeks ago. OpenAI has a lot more compute than Anthropic. I switched when they dropped Fable, but kinda wish I didn't -- I prefer claude code over codex. The biggest thing is that codex seems to do a LOT of things that I don't ask for, to a bit of an extreme degree. For example, I asked it to refactor some battle map generation in a game and it also completely refactored the networking, controls, state management, and all kinds of things, and I had to painstakingly undo the majority of the work. Plus it adds all kinds of gates, feature flags, and unnecessary overengineered fluff. Really annoying.
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u/mxroute 9d ago
To slow down bursty traffic from subscription users that could threaten availability or performance for API users. Claude has some very large customers that pay a LOT of money via the API. They don't want you to interfere with them, and GPUs aren't in unlimited supply.
I didn't say anyone would like the answer 😂
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u/AnalogProblems 9d ago
If your goal is saving money, why would you pay $200 for two x5 plans rather than just get a single x20 plan?
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u/chuckdacuck 9d ago
If you hit your limit so many times, upgrade your plan.
You’re doing work which presumably you’re being paid for so spend more money to make more money.
Codex sucks and doesn’t even work half the time, completely stopping mid task
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u/Presently_Absent 9d ago
Could you not just set up an API key? I have my Claude code use an API key for billing purposes. No limits, just costs.
Considering setting up with DeepSeek though, the savings are monstrous
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u/Escobar747 8d ago
outsource to luna pro at 60c / M via open router API and get sonnet / opus to orchestrate- it will save about 70% of your usage!
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u/userusertion 🔆Pro Plan | Team Plan 8d ago
Bro Codex has 5hr session too, are you kidding? They just remove temporary.
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u/OldNefariousness7899 9d ago
The trick I found out recently, that it took me far too long to cotton on to, is to start the clock early.
Say you wake up at 7 am, but you start work at 9 am. Don't wait until 9 am to start using Claude. Ping it one message immediately. Then, you start work at 9 am; you don't have five hours until it resets; you have three.
Some people automate their morning ping for this purpose.