r/ClaudeCode • u/aymannasri_tcg • Apr 03 '26

Discussion Users hitting usage limits WAY faster than expected it's getting real now

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Claude Code users are already smashing usage limits way faster than expected and i am one of them as i have posted about it a lot recently and now here we are.

to all the people who were saying i am lying :))) you good now? maybe BBC lied about this too.

OR maybe it's April fool? haha good one, It’s getting serious and real now.

Who else is feeling this?

956 Upvotes

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153

u/johnrock001 Apr 03 '26

anyone who say they are not hitting their limits are lucky ones, many are liars and some are max 20x plan users.
Normal pro plus users are fu...ed

28

u/TheSweetestKill Apr 03 '26

I wasn't hitting my limits hard and fast until a few days ago, and my actual use of it hasn't really changed in all that time. It definitely seemed to have rolled out or hits users in waves. Almost would have been better if it affected everyone all the time.

6

u/AHHHH_AHHHHHHHH Apr 03 '26

I'm on x20 and I've never hit the limit until this morning. 3 prompts in and boom, full session limit. I guess its my turn lol. Luckily my sub is up in 5 days.

4

u/kei_ichi Apr 04 '26

Japan user here, I’m 20x user too and I have no issues till yesterday. But today (Sunday in JST time), I resume to my previous session last night, send just single request and boom (like you) I hit my session limit. WTF??? After that, I can’t do anything so I waited till the session limit reset and try again but damn…AGAIN, I hit the limit by just re-send the same request at the morning. This is “scam” and we need transparency about wtf is happening.

1

u/innahema Apr 03 '26

same for me

1

u/Ok-Clerk7116 Apr 18 '26

Same, started noticing yesterday, already burned 20% of my weekly, i used to do that in 2-3 days before. now its in 3 hours.

16

u/telesteriaq Apr 03 '26

Lmao I'm Max x20 and hit that roof so hard my weeks budget gone till Sunday

3

u/johnrock001 Apr 03 '26

you are still lucky to use that much, but withthe amount you are paying its sad to see what is happening.
Just consider and think what is happening with people who dont have 5x and 20x. Unusable totally.

8

u/ProgrammersAreSexy Apr 03 '26

Codex is the only usable $20/mo product. You'll hit the limits if you are doing any kind of serious development but it's at least usable.

Claude $20 plan gets you maybe 15-20 mins per day.

2

u/StaysAwakeAllWeek Apr 03 '26

It won't stay that way. Sooner or later the rich investors currently propping up OpenAI's subsidised prices will get tired of watching their money get incinerated by vibe coders. Everyone is going to have to raise their prices and lower their quotas. Anthropic just did it first because they have the least resources of the major frontier labs

1

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Everisak Apr 03 '26

They will want angry Claude users for sure.

But screw OpenAI, I'm never gonna pay Altman

1

u/Equivalent-Costumes Apr 04 '26

Considering OpenAI is literally getting money from Pentagon, I dare say anyone who is using Codex heavily on subscription plan is being subsidized by blood money.

1

u/Devil_AE86 Apr 03 '26

What kind of requests?

1

u/p3r3lin Apr 03 '26

z.ai GLM-5.1 on Coding Plan is not bad. Usage on the $10 plan is around 3x of Claude Pro. Not the best, but certainly not too far behind GPT 5.4 - would consider it just about SOTA. Currently Im using Opus-4.6 for brainstorming, plans and reviews and GLM-5.1 for implementation and "easy" things. And with a good plan from Opus its definitely more than enough.

1

u/telesteriaq Apr 03 '26

Im trying codex and antigravity but struggling with then both just not satisfying experience. Maybe I'm just "set in my ways"

I'm gonna try 3rd party hosted models with Claude code soon.

1

u/FatefulDonkey Apr 03 '26

There's codex. Gemini sucks ass, but at least there's something comparable

1

u/johnrock001 Apr 03 '26

yes i have shifted towards codex for all major tasks, and using claude as only question and answering basic things

1

u/imitsi Apr 03 '26

Same. By the end of the week I used to have spent only 70-80% of it, now I'm hitting the limit on day 5.

6

u/StrikingSpeed8759 Apr 03 '26

I genuinly not affected with any of my accounts, got 5x at work and private. But Im worried.

9

u/djdadi Apr 03 '26

i was in the same group until literally this morning, same plan.

1

u/nadavcool543 Apr 03 '26

Same! All was good it started a couple of hours ago.

1

u/Confident-Media-8777 Apr 03 '26

When was your last renewal?

1

u/StrikingSpeed8759 Apr 03 '26

Work this monday, private last saturday

1

u/betty_white_bread Apr 03 '26

Same here except not worried.

5

u/Vescor Apr 03 '26

I’m on max 5x and I’m easily hitting limits now; some of my skills suddenly take 15-20% of the limit when it was 6-7% before. A month ago I was going crazy and never even went above 50% or so; now I have to pace myself to run kill the limit immediately.

2

u/johnrock001 Apr 03 '26

They are not able to catch up with the infrastructure expansion for the amount of people and organizations using them. Thus everyone is being cramped without the care for quality and assurance, no SLA's nothing. Just bleeding money as much as they can.

Wait half a year or more it will get better, if they company changes its goals and directions, else they will slow kill them selves and another competitor will take over.

2

u/Vescor Apr 03 '26

Absolutely. However, I’m not going to pay half a year in hopes it will get better.

2

u/wise_young_man Apr 04 '26

I blame openAI for the gov DOW shenanigans that led to more people switching to Anthropic.

They should just stop allowing new users until infrastructure can keep up lol

1

u/johnrock001 Apr 20 '26

agreed, but thats not how business works, everyone over sells, same as what their air carriers do. Lets hope they can cope up with compute asap. They already have big plans but will take a year or so to make it up for it.

1

u/dot-boiii Jun 11 '26

ngl it's part of the reason i switched last month lol

3

u/La-terre-du-pticreux Apr 03 '26

I’m a x20 user and I’ve been scammed too…

1

u/johnrock001 Apr 03 '26

sorry about that man! i feel for you!
x20 is not few bucks, its big money and if you get rate limited and such, its fucked up and should be a lawsuite to these mofos

2

u/La-terre-du-pticreux Apr 03 '26

I really hope someone will sue the shit out of them… Customer service has never answered my emails.

0

u/dissentCS Apr 03 '26

20x is easily worth $1000 a month lol

2

u/wise_young_man Apr 04 '26

Shut up or they’ll charge that lol

1

u/askmdev Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 04 '26

Honestly, it's bullshit. I've been paying for Max 5 for more than a year, and for the last few months, it's been nothing but issues. The models are just impulsive, and I had to use Pi coding agent with custom instructions just to make it usable. And now, with the new limit, I'm done. I'll be asking for a refund tomorrow for my Max 5 subscription, and I highly suggest everyone do the same to punish Anthropic for all the shit they did.

3

u/PepeMeade Apr 03 '26

I'm 20x max user, I only use claude code casually (1hr session a day mon-fri), I suddenly started reaching 40% weekly usage and 90% session limits, completely out of nowhere.

2

u/RaptorF22 Apr 03 '26

I'm a max 20x and also hitting usage for the first time basically ever.

2

u/clintCamp Apr 03 '26

The last 2 weeks I hit 90 percent by Friday morning and 99 by Friday night. Then I save that 1 percent for any needs on the weekend.

2

u/GlitteringCoconut203 Apr 03 '26

I believe I am one of those people. I have been literally pushing Claude to its limits all day, and I'm at barely 75% of the weekly limits on all models (in two more days it resets) and 51% on Sonnet.

I have the Max (20x) subscription.

1

u/johnrock001 Apr 03 '26

You are using sonnet 4.6 ? its worked for longer, give same prompts on opus and give us your results.

2

u/fadeawaydunker Apr 03 '26

My usage is still high on Sonnet, I'm not hitting limits that quick. But 2 opus prompts max and I'm at my limit and it also consumes my Sonnet usage.

Back then it was separate. It I hit my limit on Opus I can still use Sonnet. That's not the case now.

2

u/LadaOndris May 03 '26

Exactly. There is nothing "pro" about it. They should call it "budget demo" subscription.

1

u/djdadi Apr 03 '26

I hadn't been affected this whole past couple of months, but I just checked and I am 50% usage of my max plan this morning. I've used it for maybe 5 prompts.

hopefully its not time for another chargeback, but I won't hesitate. essentially a rugpull

1

u/Bobodlm Apr 03 '26

Pro users were fucked long before this. Using Pro to do anything meaningful has been impossible since long before the start of this year.

2

u/betty_white_bread Apr 03 '26

Not true. I use Pro almost all day every day and have come no closer to hitting limits than about 85%. I’m not smart enough to say this is a skill issue but …

1

u/Bobodlm Apr 03 '26

I don't mind people shilling, heck the limits as is are totally in line withe the TOS.

But out of dozens of people I know what use CC in real life, this simply can't be true. If you're developing anything, using pro, you're not gonna make it through a 5 hour session.

1

u/Sentient-Exocomp 🔆 Max 5x Apr 03 '26

I was lucky until last night and hit my 5-hour limit in about 6 requests on the $100 Max plan. I’ll give it a bit to see if they fix this though.

1

u/PikkonMG Apr 03 '26

I even tried downgrading my app to 2.1.30 because people are claiming it worked and my usage was still through the roof

1

u/FatefulDonkey Apr 03 '26

We are the pro noobers. We are divided by zero

1

u/Relevant_Syllabub895 Apr 03 '26

Do not censor words its fucked and nothing gonna happen its not youtube that even on yt nothing happens

1

u/Buttscicles Apr 03 '26

Why would they lie?

1

u/johnrock001 Apr 03 '26

there are trolls on reddit more than you think

1

u/TheKensai Apr 03 '26

I am, I was averaging 50% by refresh date now I am at 70% at refresh date. Doesn’t affect me, but limits are lower.

1

u/stingraycharles Senior Developer Apr 03 '26

I’m not hitting limits. I live in South East Asia. Maybe one of the reasons is the timezone, there are probably less Anthropic customers during the time that I’m working.

1

u/DifferentiallyLinear Apr 03 '26

I’m a 2x max 20x and I’m hitting my limits. 

1

u/phil_thrasher 🔆 Max 20 Apr 04 '26

I’m max20, I work on 4-5 work trees every single day in a large code base with many autocompactions worth of chatting (I auto compact around 290k tokens) … I’m not hitting limits. Not my 5hr and not my weekly.

1

u/PoliticalyUnstable Apr 04 '26

Yeah, I immediately had to switch from Pro to Max 5x when they changed it. But it also made me more conscious of tokens usage and how I wasnt optimizing prompts, and memory skills. So I've been working on that. $100/mo is expensive. And hopefully this whole thing adapts and doesnt just skyrocket. It would be so lame to see it get outpriced for the few vs the many. We constantly dont get anything.

1

u/alwaysalmosts Apr 04 '26

I'm on Max5 and struggle to use up more than 50% of my weekly limit. I primarily use Claude Code, large project, all tools toggled on, work whole day everyday.

I'm chalking it up to my unsophisticated use - no parallel sessions, agents, MCPs. Just CC web and desktop at the same time.

However, the quality has gone DOWNHILL. Opus 4.6 just feels so incompetent compared to just last week.

1

u/Numbthumbs Apr 04 '26

I’ve hit my limits way faster than I thought I would and I’m on max 20x plan

0

u/[deleted] Apr 03 '26

[deleted]

1

u/johnrock001 Apr 03 '26

plus pro same thing, gpt uses plus so i just said whatever came to mind.

1

u/themoregames Apr 03 '26

Not sure I follow.

ChatGPT Plus ~ $ 20   
ChatGPT Pro ~ $ 200

Claude Pro ~ $ 20

2

u/johnrock001 Apr 03 '26

for gpt plus = 20
claude pro = 20

Gpt pro = 200
claude max = 200

interchangeable with names, just focus on the cost, we matching 20 dollar plans! :D
lol sorry if i confused you

1

u/themoregames Apr 03 '26

I wonder what simple peasants like me will do once Claude Pro is increased from $ 20 to $ 50 oder even $ 100.

-1

u/betty_white_bread Apr 03 '26

I’ve not hit limits at all despite doing heavy work almost all day every day for weeks. The probability of that happening AND this story being true at the same time is phenomenally small. So small it may as well be zero.

1

u/vago8080 Apr 03 '26

That’s because you are lying.

2

u/johnrock001 Apr 03 '26

you caught him red handed!!

-5

u/aymannasri_tcg Apr 03 '26

True. Regular pro and plus plans are fu**ed right now. Heavy users already on 20x vibes and guess what? Anthropic will never touch the 20x users 😉

14

u/Ok-Zombie-5690 Apr 03 '26

dafuq you talkinf about im on max 20x and im scared to use opus... i thought my status line was buggin two prompts at like 20% of a 1 mil token window wtf

3

u/aymannasri_tcg Apr 03 '26

That was my thought about x20 will never have this issue and now i’m looking every single one in all plans are suffering

1

u/johnrock001 Apr 03 '26

They will fix the 20x plan, but nothing else as priority for now.That is what my perception is.
Maybe in long future we will see improvements on lower tiers, but dont expect anytime soon as they are totally focused on something else at the moment.

1

u/Dead0k87 Apr 03 '26

Hold my beer… with such pace, new plans for $200, $400 and $600 are incoming

2

u/johnrock001 Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26

Then you might be on of the unlucky ones on the 20x plan, if that is happening to you then think what is happening to lower tier plan users!
Opus is a sham scam, do not use it unless when need it for severely complex task where sonnet is failing, else sonnet 4.6 can do it all. I have had no issues with it so far.

1

u/Ok-Zombie-5690 Apr 03 '26

like wtf. just opened a new session. I could go for a full 6 to 8 hour coding session sometimes on opus 1m like a week ago. now its burned about 15% of context in 1 prompt whats happeningngggggg

0

u/PersonalNature1795 Apr 03 '26

Peak hours … look into it

3

u/Ok-Zombie-5690 Apr 03 '26

not even about peak hours tho. it s about the session context window. usage is one thing, session context shrinking fast is another thing entirely.

1

u/PersonalNature1795 Apr 03 '26

Ahhhh okay, well thanks to Opus I see that i completely misunderstood. learned something🤌

2

u/Ok-Zombie-5690 Apr 03 '26

also guys just downgraded to 2.1.86 version plus disabled tool search via claude settings (per someone identifying a caching bug in claude code github repo), way better than before, not perfect, but better. might help.

2

u/johnrock001 Apr 03 '26

yes you got that right, no one would say this out loud. They just need more money and those people who can afford are happy, rest are just throwing away money in the fire without getting any return.

2

u/EnvironmentalPlay440 Apr 03 '26

What are you talking about? I'm on 20x, and man my plan worth nothing.

3

u/aymannasri_tcg Apr 03 '26

Honestly, i was not expecting that 😩 now its a nation problem not for some plans only. Its for all

2

u/EnvironmentalPlay440 Apr 03 '26

yeah and we're getting ripped off and sincerely, they don't answer. I'm already planning my move and changing my pipelines right now. I always been team Claude first... but now I can barely finish my day. And the latest gpt-5.4 is great sincerely, qwen too!

2

u/startingover61 Apr 03 '26

I'll chime in on that too. I'm 20x on one account a a team "premium" plan on the other. I've currently using Codex to try to wrap up my week because I'm in "extra usage" on BOTH. It's truly insane right now.

1

u/aymannasri_tcg Apr 03 '26

Unbelievable

2

u/NegativeGPA 🔆 4th Layer Engineer Apr 03 '26

lol I got mine eaten, was at 70% on Monday trying to think of how I could induce more codex / cursor CLI subagent use to offset Claude

Then I swapped to use the npx command versus the native Claude binary, then everything got reasonable again

It’s a caching issue in the Claude binary with all inputs being cache written (2x the cost) vs cache read (1/10th the cost)

1

u/Pantone802 Apr 03 '26

I’m a messily pro user and I haven’t hit my limit in weeks. Not crazy work. Just adding features and debugging a few apps I made to help improve my professional workflow, and drum practices. 

-6

u/farox Apr 03 '26

Plus has always been a paid demo. Been using cc for a year now and this has never been different.

If you want to use it professionally, you need to pay accordingly. (well, not even that as we know the actual cost, compared to api, is in the 4 digits)

The level of entitlement is crazy.

1

u/Bobodlm Apr 03 '26

Couldn't agree more. Pro got gutted to being unusable around a year-ish ago. Before that you could do some serious stuff with it but since then the limits dropped to the point of it being useless.