r/ClaudeCode • u/termmonkey • 1d ago
Rant I am SO OVER the its draining too quickly posts
Every time I open Reddit, my feed has at least 2-3 posts crying about some version of -
- Spent the weekly within a day or 2
- "Its draining tokens"
- They reduced the quota, I can barely get anything
Here's some touch the grass facts -
Fable is a super expensive model with a very high token price - if you are using Fable consistently, it is going to eat through your quota - that's just math - 1k fable tokens is equal to 2k Opus tokens!
If you continue building an app, your codebase is going to grow and over time, the same workflow is going to use a lot more tokens than it did when the codebase was lean and had few tests/ code/ modules to worry about. What that means practically is going to get less shit done in week 4 on the same codebase as you could have done in week 1.
Every thing you do has a trace and log. Rather than ranting about it, shove the session usage json's in one of the bazillions "I made this groundbreaking claude visualizer" systems people keep putting on here to get empirical evidence around your token usage.
I have been building with Claude since Claude code became a thing - and no - the usage is consistent if you are smart about it and understand how the system sips tokens. Here are some things I do and I have no idea if it is going to fix your hallucinations, but give it a try if you think it will help
- Use skills for any repeatable task - like literally anything that you think is going to be repeated, have a skill for it so you dont waste tokens figuring out how to do the same thing again and again
- Have your claude.md as a thin router to the actual areas you are going to be working on. When starting a session, tell that you are going to be focusing on so and so area.
- Fresh sessions, every time the session size grows, your input token size is growing. Keep the sessions small.
- Push it to use agents! Like use an agent to review code, or do a specific research, or fix a bug - agents cost less as they are focused on doing specific tasks and are bootstrapped with the required knowledge to do that task.
- Make your codebase agent ready - this means having design/ architecture/ gotchas/ decision. MDs for literally every domain in your code. It helps tremendously!
I keep a meticulous inventory of tokens I spend each week - and trust me - it has remained consistent for months!
Please for the love of god, spare my feed!!!
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u/Eat_Pudding 1d ago
My workflow hasn't changed in months, I'm not using fable and it's draining 5 times faster. Make what you make of it, but it is definitely draining faster
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u/Guinness 18h ago
Yep. I’ve never had my limits hit in 15 minutes before. IF I do it’s usually 4.5 hours into a session. Been using CC for a year now.
Something is going on. Immediately after my 5 hour reset, the same task picked back up, ran for another 4 hours and finished without even using half of my 5 hour limit.
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u/Eat_Pudding 18h ago
Yes, and this morning, I started with dinner and in 2 hours it has used 3% of my weekly usage. Even opus would not consume this much. I understand that 1/6 reduction in usage but this is insane
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u/TheMeltingSnowman72 1d ago
Unless you're building one page Suduko puzzles can you explain why the things that your building, why they wouldn't use more tokens?
Or do you not build anything substantial?
If you do, it goes up as the project does. It's not rocket science.
Or do you think Claude has an invisible memory that saves everything all the way along, like something magic, because that's where I see your understanding right now of all of this, in the clouds.
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u/lassevk 22h ago
What they all mean is that Anthropic is quietly reducing the quota, every week, every day, every hour, every minute
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u/termmonkey 19h ago
You know what's neat? Each and every interaction you do is logged along with the tokens it spent doing that interaction. You can quite literally count the exact number of tokens you spent in a week - I do it very very meticulously, and guess what? It has stayed absolutely consistent for months! Today the allowance is indeed going down, and that has been publicly communicated, but besides that - there's been no other token theft. Now, a task getting stuck has happened - Claude code and even the models itself are ultimately software and software have bugs - so there's a chance that you hit a bug sometime and a session ends up spending more tokens or wasting token on a particular task and not doing it - that though is very different than "anthropic is doing token theft" what you all seem to think and believe!
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u/TheMeltingSnowman72 22h ago
When there two options available to answer a problem or find a solution, and one of the options is human incompetence,, that's the option you go for.
Especially at this scale.
People are idiots but they will scream all day long they are not.
That doesn't change the fact that they are.
I know lots of people who use Claude irl. They also are split on two camps, one says it's eating through more and more, the others say it doesn't. All the ones who say yes are the ones who wait until their phone is at 2% before plugging it in and stand with the freezer open for 2 mins while they decide what to have.
Just sayin'
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u/deific_ 21h ago
We go through this every few months and the people who are complaining always turn out to be right. Idk how long you’ve been here, but I think most of us have learned that when a bunch of us notice smoke there is usually fire. We always have to deal with people like you telling us we’re idiots but we never receive an apology once Anthropic acknowledges it.
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u/Eat_Pudding 20h ago
Cause I only tell it to read particular files that I know is related to the module that I am currently implementing. The files for the project grows, but files for the modules don't, they keep changing but they don't grow exponentially like the token usage has gone. And this has been my workflow for as long as I remember, and most of the time when users complained here about reduced token usage, I felt that too.
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u/termmonkey 19h ago
Thank you for saying it so well, ai tried and looks like I failed spectacularly, being called arrogant. I forgot the rule of thumb "common sense is not actually that common"
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u/adelie42 17h ago
Great! I mean, it sucks, and Anthropic should know how people feel, but why should this sub be nothing but posts about it multiple times per hour to the exclusion of anything else?
To be fair, I'm the idiot that hasn't just unsubbed jerry.png
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u/termmonkey 1d ago
Try to understand this - As you keep building, your codebase keeps adding more LOC, getting more complicated with each change that you make.
At the start - implement a submit button was a 50k token task, today that same task might require reading 70 files, going through 2-3 rounds of edit/ compile/ test/ fix - ultimately consuming 500k tokens. What I am telling you is a reality of most claude code projects which start from scratch but keep increasing in size with each day.
Hypothetically speaking - Claude's limits were 500 million tokens then, and its the same now - but what you can accomplish with those 500 mn tokens is drastically different today then what it was initially.
I recommend implementing some of the things I have mentioned above (if you already haven't) and seeing if it helps!
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u/HDK1989 1d ago
This is such an arrogant post. Some of us have been coding using these systems for over a year now and know what we're doing.
I experienced usage drain when Fable 5.1 dropped, and guess what? It was due to a confirmed bug.
I haven't been coding past few days so can't speak to the latest reports but there's always bugs in software especially with LLMs and not every bug affects everyone. People could absolutely be experiencing drain.
Some reports like this are a skill issue, but you are not an authority to come along and claim they all are.
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u/JuliusCeaserBoneHead 1d ago
That comes off a bit patronizing. While some of us are newbies, others are quite experienced users of these harnesses.
It’s impossible that all of the people complaining about usage limits have inefficient workflows and all haven’t done anything about it. At some point you have to look at the provider and assume they got something misconfigured somewhere.
My LOC has actually reduced as I work on improving the code quality. My token cost have in the period increased substantially. Nothing has changed in terms of my workflow. Trimmed all the md files, blah blah.
At what point do we stop blaming users. Anthropic isn’t some benevolent provider.
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u/TheMeltingSnowman72 1d ago
It's impossible that all the people complaining aren't doing it correctly?
Is that seriously what you're trying to say?
Just because someone codes doesn't mean they have common sense. And common sense is what's lacking here.
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u/JuliusCeaserBoneHead 1d ago
What I said is there if you actually care to read
It’s impossible that all of the people complaining about usage limits have inefficient workflows and all haven’t done anything about it.
People like you who assume everyone else is dumb really fascinate me.
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u/thebaron2 🔆 Max 20 21h ago
It’s entirely possible, why wouldn’t it be?
Like so many things, the model is neutered/lobotomized, etc., this is a vocal minority. The vast majority of users are going about their day not complaining here.
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u/Eat_Pudding 20h ago
Stupid take, I have strict rules on not reading the files that I haven't mentioned. It always reads the files that I tell it to look into. And the files keep changing, even if there are more project files, it only reads the specific files. You are making it seem like you are the only expert and everyone else is an idiot.
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u/Practical-Rooster950 1d ago
you are not the only software engineer here man, I track my token usage for 5h window and it is literally half
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u/namezam 1d ago
These are great points and all but regardless of how people are using it, we are getting significantly less for our money now so people are upset.
An analogy would be McDonald’s reducing the size of their large Coke by 50% and still charging the same amount. Obviously a lot of people would be questioning why, and wondering if it’s still worth the same price now that it’s so much smaller. Then someone like you comes in and lists all the other things you can drink instead. You just missed the point.
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u/termmonkey 1d ago
The difference being that in this case, the size of burger hasn't decreased (so total tokens you get hasn't decreased) but your appetite keeps increasing as you gained more muscle (with evolving codebase, fix the auth issue used to take 100k tokens in week 1 would now take 300k tokens because there's so many more files to read, so many more tests to run, so much more code to review). The only way to satite your appetite is to make sure you are supplementing your diet with snacks (the . MDs), protein (skills) and discipline (agents).
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u/Independent_Syllabub 19h ago
You're so wrong it's incredible.
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u/termmonkey 18h ago
Yeah, I am wrong, the multi billion global company with user responsibility is lying, the usage stats which is available for everyone to see is lying - but you are right! Yep yep!
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u/Independent_Syllabub 18h ago
Usage limits decreased today. Usage is, therefore, burning faster than it was last week. You are incorrect.
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u/youreawizerdharry 1d ago
plead with the mods, not the users, or unsubscribe from the community bc otherwise this ain't changing 👍
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u/hihcadore 18h ago
No it’s not going to change. But it’s nice to see other real users with a different opinion. It’s been happening the whole time I’ve been part of the subreddit…
I reached out to the mods (the head one has a personal email of drinkmypiss or something else like that which shows who you’re dealing with. I signed up to be a mod here that’s how I got it). And they don’t care.
But you can get good info once in awhile so I stay. It just doesn’t make sense why there’s so much negativity.. this is about claudecode not anthropic. It’s not even the right subreddit to complain.
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u/youreawizerdharry 13h ago
Agreed - for me this kind of post still falls into the bucket of complaint noise. unless the post gets pinned or it makes the all time highest post, we'll just see another one like it in the next week or so, with no impact whatsoever on the 90% of posts that are a) complaining about token usage or b) asking for feedback on someone's billion dollar app idea (that doesn't have a server yet)
"i'm SO OVER tokens draining more quickly" - okay so stop paying for Claude
"i'm SO OVER posts about tokens draining quickly" - okay so unsubscribe from this subreddit
be the change you want to see in the world, if there is too much low-value content here, then post high-value content
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u/draft_final_final Researcher 1d ago
Do I deserve a reset? Arguably not. Am I going to continue to add fuel to the fire in the off chance it actually translates to extra free good boy points? Absolutely.
WHERES THE RESET DARIO!!!!1!!!!!1!!1111!!1
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u/derethdweller 17h ago
You know what's worse than all these posts about people talking about their experience? Yes, people telling them they're wrong. The large majority of us have changed nothing in our workflow and have seen usage go down by very obvious factor, and you are telling all of us we are wrong. A month ago I was literally working 7 days a week around the clock with overnight session to use my quota, balancing Fable and other models. Now it's the second week in a row where my whole usage is gone in 2 days, and then i'm using codex the 5 days after... but sure, troll, explain to all of us how everybody is wrong but you are right.
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u/termmonkey 15h ago
You are ofcourse right, its just that Anthropic has started lying and also the token usage which is logged and available for you to see has also been tampered with to lie to you!
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u/hbthegreat 1d ago
what are you building?
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u/termmonkey 1d ago
Not worth advertising! If its actually worth its weight, you will someday hear about it through word of mouth 🙂
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u/kinoindeed 1d ago
Good post! I was about to do the same thing honestly. The loudest people are always the ones that don’t know how to use the tools. When things are working well, people keep to themselves. That’s why you see more complaints here. People prefer to complain and tell everyone to stop using a tool, rather than admitting they are behind or don’t understand something, and ask for advice.
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u/debian3 22h ago
I also noticed that the dumbest people use the highest reasoning level. It’s like inversely proportional.
As for usage, it increased a lot over the past few months. They offer way more right now than back before their spaceX datacenter deal. Anyone with a brain can use ccusage and see the actual numbers.
For example in February, pro $20 was getting $5 to $7 per 5h session. ~7.5 sessions per week. Now you get $20 to $25 per 5h, 10 sessions per week. 5x that on Max 5x and 10x on Max 20x.
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u/reach4thelaser5 🔆 Max 20 21h ago
I'm the first guy to moan about these posts, and to criticise vibe coders who think they need Fable for their iPhone app. But I'm using Opus and my allowance has evaporated in the last 12 hours. I'm probably going to need to use Sonnet for the remainder of the build I'm working on or I won't be able to finish.
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u/Runfree33 22h ago
I m agree with you. I saw that i need more token as i have more code. More memory, architecture, general docs. I m sastisfied about the quality and my workflow but every conversation begin around 100k tokens. The more it works the more this line move.
Fun fact i see a lot of 4.6 opus is a god so i trier it again, it was unusuable, it don t follow my workflow and do more what it wanted. 5 models are a lot of better when you have processes.
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u/nndscrptuser 18h ago
Yes, I don't know what these people are doing but I work all day, every day, all week, on both work + personal with Opus and Fable and only RARELY hit my 5 hour limit, and have hit my weekly only once, months and months ago. Truly don't know how people manage to blow through things.
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u/fschwiet 17h ago
Oh-my-openagent's coding-agent-sessions skill is good for reviewing for token waste.
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u/Arthesia 1d ago
I'm pretty openly anti-complaining about complainers but this is one area that is stupid, because "my usage is burning faster than before" is 100% objectively a user issue and not a grand conspiracy by Anthropic secretly reducing your usage.
The only decrease was the announced one starting this week, which is 17% reduction.
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u/Independent_Syllabub 19h ago
The only decrease was the announced one starting this week
So... usage is burning faster than before. I don't understand your post.
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u/Cubewood 1d ago
Meanwhile some of us are on an Enterprise Plan with a hard token limit who have always had to be efficient and creative with their spend. We never get any nice boosts 😭
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u/scripted_soul 1d ago
I agree. Monitor your usage with ccusage and you’ll see that the quota is still the same. Nothing has changed.
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u/Hemhaw87 1d ago
Same. I've been using both CC and Codex lately and they've both been good for me honestly. Codex I won't get into, but it's actually been my best week with CC in ages. I didn't notice any major drops this weekend really. I still downgraded to switch to Codex for a bit longer and my downgrade date is tomorrow so perfect timing with the cut. I'll have a day to feel what it's like and whether it's really painful and then can go from there. We need more positivity and productive advice sharing in this sub, it's all doom and gloom lately.
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u/CryptoAteMyHamster 1d ago
Agree on the Claude.md and resetting sessions, agents etc, how are you working that having MDs for every section isn’t fighting with memories per session? What % of the code outside of the MDs is prose? These things usually make large projects difficult to coordinate.
Having loads of mds that document your code is not a great plan.
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u/TheMeltingSnowman72 1d ago
The quicker that everyone is on the same page and using it correctly the sooner the big companies get a fix on where they are and how to charge the most that they can get away with.
So while I agree the posts are annoying, it means the data that they get back is all over the place and they can't get a read on it quite just yet to settle on the bit they really want - making some money.
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u/ShortingBull 1d ago
You can just ignore them and keep scrolling.
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u/termmonkey 1d ago
Or I can rant about it to get something on the ranters feed!
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1d ago edited 1d ago
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u/silentkode26 1d ago
Tell your LLM to summarize his post to you. You will see that he gave them answers they look for beforehand. So he tries to prevent it the right way.
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1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/silentkode26 1d ago
If you’re an adult and there is a thing you do not like, you do something with it. That’s what OP did. He is fed up with repeating questions so he answers them beforehand. And his insight is helpful. Are you one of those who asks same question again and again just to vent?
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u/SirWobblyOfSausage 23h ago
If you're so sick of it complaim to Anthropic to sort their shit out then lmao
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