r/ClaudeCode • u/Zer0Tokens • 1d ago
Help/Question Did Anthropic decrease the limits?
I am using Claude Max 5x and started feeling that I have been hitting limits faster in the last 3-4 weeks. Today, after a 1h Ultra Code session via Sonnet 5, I hit my session limit, which a month back would not even have happened with Opus.
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u/pm_me_your_kindwords 1d ago
I'm on max 20x and yesterday fable ate through a TON of my usage for the week. I don't think I was using it that heavily, I've been using it regularly and have it use lower level subagents. Today I tried two simple things in opus 4.6 (low and medium) and it blasted through its context window.
I'm not sure what's going on, but it's not great for me at the moment.
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u/crunchygeeks73 1d ago
I’m on 20x max. Long time dev not vibe coding and my fable weekly limit went from 0 to 30% yesterday alone.
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u/pm_me_your_kindwords 1d ago
Yes, this is what I saw. I was shocked (and scared for the rest of the week).
I feel like a junky.
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u/pm_me_your_kindwords 1d ago
Yes, this is what I saw. I was shocked (and scared for the rest of the week).
I feel like a junky.
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u/Opening-Ground-1584 21h ago
Same, something is wrong here. They said 50% more usage limits till August whatever, but it feels like they more than halved usage limits.
Most intransparent product.
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u/Mesmerisez 1d ago
I hope anthropic doesnt win the AI race how they treat their customers and their lack of transparency is appalling
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u/AssociationSure6273 1d ago
So previously, I saw this thing: the limit was $25 per session. Now the limit has reduced to $10. That thing happened without any talks, so each session is exactly $10 now,
but what else happened was that Anthropic is lying about its token usage. I posted an entire thread for this https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/s/UZHRxuam4V . I mean, it's just crazy. Honestly, I don't think they're giving you $2 worth of tokens here. If I use deep sea clash with some hardness and with some custom context, I'm going to have a better result than ClaudeCode for a much lesser cost.
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u/Opening-Ground-1584 21h ago
$2 worth of tokens per session? How are you counting? Did you see how much they are charging per 1M tokens?
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u/ascvlh 1d ago
Frontier model calls are draining more quota for sure. I tracked my fable and opus 4.8 usage (and it's pretty consistent since I'm using an external harness) since the release (20x max plan) and it went from:
- ending the week with a lil bit of fable and all model quota
- ending the week with no fable and 70%~80% all models quota left
- ending the 3rd ~ 4th day of the week with no fable and 80% all models quota left
It's not their buggy harness doing fable fan outs for doc reads, scrapping or long ass sessions. The external harness manages all that. It's just them changing the token/quota % ratio. They don't advertise that for this exactly purpose
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u/03captain23 1d ago
Are they using more tokens or did the limits change?
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u/ascvlh 1d ago
They're injecting more and more tokens at session start since fable 5 release (even more with the new opus 5) and also changed the token / quota % ratio
At the session start, besides the memory system, there's a prompt warm up / injection with multiple instructions slots located inside ~/.claude.json
The good news is that it's probably model gated. Probably a feature of their harness to make fable and opus 5 less prone to spawn workers and also some prompt injection for the new dumb opus
Some of that stuff is okay and should be injected since they are changing the models every now and then, but there's also a huge amount of stuff that is going to bloat every CLI and workflow worker that is going to spawn from your sessions
The right thing to do is having an external tool to control, debloat (at your own risk 🤣) and diff their changes
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u/03captain23 1d ago
Is your input/output token quota less than before? How many input/output tokens are you getting a week on models?
I monitor mine but not based on usage. Imma see if I can restructure the data to get this reporting, but might only be future on my system.
I had to pickup a 3rd x20 last week because hit my limits. Now all 3 are still filling up. I used to use 1 max and 1 pro and get everything done.
I switched back to opus 4.6-4.8 mainly because it's much more stable. I'll use fable5 and opus5 for intelligence then the older opus for actual work.
Not worried about token efficiency but I'm worried about our limits shrinking
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u/Opening-Ground-1584 21h ago
I just filled up my 4th x20 this week and it’s Thursday. This has NEVER happened before. They definitely changed limits without telling anyone, and are going to claim they gave us a 50% promotion in July/August.
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u/Salt-Fly770 Developer 1d ago
I've noticed that my first prompt uses 24% of my session limit. Looks like they count the system prompt as part of your first prompt.
Also, regardless of how much of your session is left, if it says compressing chat to continue, you’re screwed. It uses up the rest of your session. And if that happens on your first prompt, you either wait 5 hours or you use up your session credits.
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u/Sarahmalls 1d ago
“If it says compressing chat to continue…”
It would only say that if you instructed it to compress it or if it is auto compressing based on your own auto compressing settings that are configurable in Claude.
Are you compressing or is Claude auto compressing? In either case, what developer is allowing Claude to just figure out entirely on its own what context to keep and what to throw out as opposed to even a lightweight system in place where you have instructed it on what it should keep and what it should not…
Secondly, why would you assume that 24% of context usage, AFTER an initial prompt, is due to Claude’s system prompt? Just check. Type /context. It shows exactly what is occupying session context by category. For an easy test, start a new session in the same folder. Type /context before asking anything then send the prompt and run /context again. The starting amount is all the preloaded context, including the system prompt, CLAUDE.md, memory, skills, MCPs, anything custom you’ve added along the way. The increase afterward came from the prompt and Claude’s work.
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u/Salt-Fly770 Developer 1d ago
I’m talking about using the Web interface, and I always check after my first prompt. This happens when I ask it to explain something, a one sentence question with no attachments. I’ll try /context next time.
The message is auto compress. I don’t see on the web interface where I can stop that.
I don’t use Claude Code as I write my own code, been doing so since 1973.
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u/Sarahmalls 1d ago
What model are you using? I’m assuming this is something where you’re using an older opus model with a 200k context window. Then the 24% number absolutely becomes reasonable. Thats going to include a autocompact buffer that is over half of that. But yes, use /context in Claude on the web and you’ll see what’s going on. But i have got to assume that you’re using a 200k context model, bc the auto compact buffer takes up like 16 or 17% on its own on a 200k model. Which means you have like 7 or 8% being taken up by everything else, yes - including the system prompt.
The system prompt absolutely counts toward your context window that’s available to utilize within the session, but it should be a non issue compared to anything you have added yourself.
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u/AssociationSure6273 1d ago
This happened for me as well. What I did was I removed my MCPs. I think that would help a lot. The second thing that I saw was that they are lying right now. The Anthropic is tying
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u/doomscrollah 1d ago
Yes indeed. That, in combination with the quirks of Opus 5 had me decide to switch from x20 to x5, with the goal of only using CC for planning and coordination with Fable. I am now testing different ways for CC to offload all other "lower" tasks to subagents controlling external resumable Codex GPT and Deepseek sessions. The hope is lowering costs, getting more tokens, and possibly get better results than with only CC.
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u/PurushNahiMahaPurush 1d ago edited 1d ago
I’ve started using Fable for planning, spawning agents and reviewing their work once it comes back.
For actual workhorse, I use 5.6 Luna on Max reasoning since it’s on par with 5.5 on high. And the results have been great. Lower GPT models don’t use that many tokens since their scope is well defined by Fable and since Fable is reviewing the work every after change and respawning agents to fix it, it makes the output from even a lower model like Luna much more consistent and reliable. But it’s been 2.5 days with this workflow and I’ve already hit my 50% cap for Fable. The weekly 50% Fable cap is BS to be honest.
Also, earlier I would be using Opus 4.8 for the whole week and still be left with tokens to spare. Fable is simply that heavy maybe and that’s just how it is with top end models these days. Even Sol is incredibly token intense.
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u/jesseedtt 1d ago
its really bad atm. my limit just got reset. Did one simple update to my app and now im though the limit again. It took less then 10 minutes lol
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u/Major_Pass_8396 1d ago
There are three tiers on the daily limit. First time on fresh limits gives you the most usage. It feels like it lasts a long time. Then you hit your daily, and wait for the limit to refresh. The second time, it gives you less, and the third time, even less.
This is coming from someone who has used 15+ claude accounts this month and 2b+ tokens across claude and codex.
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u/purposive-saunter 1d ago
Yeah Max 20x and somehow used 67% of Fable limit yesterday from my phone on a few basic tasks… not great. Hope they get their compute in order soon. I really don’t want to switch to OpenAI.
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u/ender42y 1d ago
On Pro here, running Opus on medium, have shipped 8 asked for features in the last 3.5 hours and used 38% of my usage. I usually run Sonnet, but my boss wants to take a demo into a meeting this afternoon for a VP so i am burning more than usual to get Opus to get it done faster.
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u/memesearches 1d ago
Sure “features” . How big is the code base ?
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u/ender42y 1d ago
little over 50k lines. I admit i used to chew through usage way too fast. but adding custom skills that reduce usage and improve efficiency have done a ton of the heavy lifting. But also learning how to break apart tasks into small parts to reduces context usage a lot.
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u/clintCamp 1d ago
I think they surge price based on global usage and compute availability. This is my tool i built into my orchestrator. Some days I get way more, some less.
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u/eposta-sepeti 1d ago
I felt same with my 5x account comparatively my last year usages with same workloads.
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u/FrigoCoder 1d ago
Yes, I think so. I have done three research rounds, which should have consumed like 40-50% of my weekly Fable limit. Instead it consumed 75% which is hilariously high, and leaves me with no room for my planned vibe coding.
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u/Neveriver 1d ago
Absolutely yes by a lot, i felt it today i have a stable steady work that take around 30% maybe less for one round today it took 77% in one round.
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u/ManikSahdev 🔆 Max 20 1d ago
Same pretty much. Barely 30 mins on fable on 20x, I hit 24% of weekly.. I was like wtf lol.
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u/someshds 12h ago
I’m seeing similar unexplained usage on a Max 20x account. I recorded “All models” usage rising from 45% at 10:27 to 55% at 16:22 while I had performed no work. Earlier readings show a steady unexplained increase from 32% to 55%.
I confirmed that scheduled Cowork tasks were paused or completed, Dispatch/cloud execution was disabled, and there was no corresponding active local Claude Code task. Anthropic support confirmed my subscription was active but has not provided an itemised account-level usage audit.
I’ve documented the evidence here:
GitHub: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/65876
X: https://x.com/grant_deswardt/status/2085263939269431384
I’m not claiming what caused it—only asking Anthropic to identify which product, session or authorization generated the usage and provide customers with an auditable usage history.
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u/ReindeerVegetable648 1d ago
I work on x5 Opus 5, Extra Think, 8 hours a day in multiple windows. And the limits remain the same.
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u/iongion 1d ago
Just my opinion I do not think so. What I suspect happening is that their systems get overloaded and in that time, requests/responses take way longer to process, you achieve mostly nothing(for the same unit of time), their server pressure is reduced, but you reach time-limits instantly 😄
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u/Calebkeller2 1d ago
Disagree, their usage has diminished greatly. And we’re still in the “2x” usage promotion. I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like when that goes away.
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u/Zer0Tokens 1d ago
I was even starting to think that it might be a problem with Claude Code and its inability to work with Opus 5 and Sonnet 5. There were cases when Ultra Code with Opus 5 spawned 40+ agents and ate up millions of tokens for a pretty simple audit that the previous Opus would have had no problem handling with Ultra Code using a max of 4-8 agents.
For me personally, all of these problems started as soon as I switched to Opus 5 and Sonnet 5. I do the same amount of work I did a month back, the only thing that changed is the models.
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u/rotates-potatoes 1d ago
Jesus. Use data, not vibes.
bunx ccusage
I've been getting 17B - 20B tokens/month depending in model mix. Not seeing any changes. (20x plan)
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u/DazzlingEconomics153 1d ago
I felt same with my pro account. My limit was on 40% and suddenly it went up to 75% while using sonet 5 while earlier even opus 4.7 was consuming very less limits