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Weekly Usage Limits Making Claude Subscriptions Unusable #9424
Description
Summary
Users across Pro, Max x5, and Max x20 subscription tiers are reporting that weekly usage limits are being depleted in 1-2 days of normal use, making paid subscriptions effectively unusable for 5-6 days per week.
Impact
- Pro users: Hitting weekly limits in 1-2 days
- Max x5 users: No meaningful improvement over Pro
- Max x20 users: Still hitting limits quickly despite $200/month subscription
- Users report cancelling subscriptions and switching to competitors
Detailed Issues
1. Weekly Limits Reached in 1-2 Days
Multiple users report exhausting their entire weekly quota within the first 1-2 days:
- "i used it a little firday a little on saturday and maybe 10 minutes this morning and i hit the weekly limit already"
- "I burn through the whole damn quota in like ONE OR TWO DAYS"
- "hitting weekly limits as a pro user in a day and a half"
- "The weekly limit is now reached in one day"
2. Higher Tiers Not Providing Expected Value
Users who upgraded to higher tiers report no meaningful improvement:
- Max x5: "5% used from ONE message on a 5X Max account"
- Max x20: "I upgraded from Max x5 just yesterday, but the weekly limit is still a problem. The rate at which my Opus 4.1 usage limit depletes is no different from Max x5"
- Max x20: "$100 Max is the new PRO- PRO was just a trial"
3. "Bait and Switch" Concerns
Users feel misled by subscription changes:
- "This feels like I've been bait and switched TWICE now"
- "Whether you call it bait and switch, predatory pricing, or consumer deception, it's just plain unfair"
- "I'm literally paying for a service I can't use"
4. Opacity in Limit Resets
- Reset times reportedly change: "they postpone the reset time silently after a week. My weekly budget should be reset at Wed 10pm. Yet after resetting, the next reset time becomes Thu 11:59am"
5. Professional Use Cases Blocked
- Coding, creative writing, and data extraction workflows are being interrupted mid-project
- "5 hour limit is okay, you can plan around it... Cutting off usage mid work-week is like losing your top developer"
- "6 days of production a month is not worth your subscription"
User Sentiment
- Multiple users reporting subscription cancellations
- Switching to competitors (ChatGPT, Gemini, open source models)
- Comparisons to ChatGPT Plus: "On chatgpt plus i NEVER had to worry about hitting a limit"
Use Cases Affected
- Software development/coding
- Creative writing
- PDF data extraction
- General professional tasks
- Research and analysis
Requested Changes
- Remove or significantly increase weekly limits - Daily limits may be acceptable, but weekly limits compound the problem
- Make higher tiers meaningful - Max x20 at $200/month should provide substantially more capacity
- Transparency - Clear, consistent information about limits and reset times
- Usage meter accuracy - Better visibility into consumption rates
Business Impact
Users explicitly stating:
- "Canceled my subscription yesterday"
- "I just cancelled my plan, looking for an altnertaive"
- "I'll be going back to the API after this subscription ends"
- "Just downgraded from Max X20 to Max X5, not worth it paying more"
Date Range
Complaints escalating since Claude 4.5 release (early October 2025)
Priority
CRITICAL - Directly impacting subscription retention and revenue
Thread Source: Reddit r/ClaudeAI Usage Limits Discussion Megathread (October 8, 2025)
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Activity
github-actions commentedon Oct 12, 2025
Found 3 possible duplicate issues:
This issue will be automatically closed as a duplicate in 3 days.
🤖 Generated with Claude Code
scrapix commentedon Oct 13, 2025
Absolutely! hitting Weekly limit after 4 days, having hit daily limit only ONCE.
4 days of CLAUDE usage in MAX Plan is unreasonable. can't stop
francklebas commentedon Oct 13, 2025
Started hitting my Max x5 (~$100/month, 3099 SEK) limit on Friday.
Friday: First "weekly limit" warning appeared
Weekend: Completely blocked despite minimal usage
Monday morning: Limits mysteriously cleared after
/logout+/loginin Claude CodeMonday before noon: Hit the limit AGAIN after only ~2 hours of coding
This is making a $100/month subscription practically unusable. The quota consumption rate doesn't match what Max x5 should provide, and there's zero transparency on what's actually consuming the quota or when resets truly occur.
ranjith-jagadeesh commentedon Oct 14, 2025
Disclaimer: The 2.3 seconds figure is totally for fun — don’t actually race your F1 against Claude Code Pro!
theRebelliousNerd commentedon Oct 14, 2025
i am having the same issue, with the max plan... 2 days and it was like gone for the weekly limit..
fritzo commentedon Oct 14, 2025
It appears somewhere around version 2.0.???, Claude Code started eagerly compressing context, long before context limits were reached. I suspect this overly-eager context compression is the root cause of faster Opus consumption. Has anyone figured out which version of Claude Code introduced this cost regression, so we can pin to the previous version? See #9538
KNOWN GOOD: 2.0.0
KNOWN BAD: 2.0.15
cadamsdotcom commentedon Oct 15, 2025
Also hitting this regression, haven't come close to weekly limit before. I suspect what @fritzo suggests should be investigated.
t34wrj commentedon Oct 15, 2025
+1
Linux77c commentedon Oct 15, 2025
+1 I'm experiencing the same issue as an honest paying user who has never shared my
account or violated ToS.
The weekly limits punish ALL legitimate customers instead of targeting only actual
abusers (account sharers, resellers).
Anthropic should implement intelligent detection systems:
Blanket restrictions are unfair to paying customers. Please reconsider this
approach.
K3rNh3LLs commentedon Oct 15, 2025
Iam a max x20 tiers and i will move on if they did'nt correct that price point!! as soon as i got my nvidia DGX workstation.... I go Fully local on my own! and they will get no more of my money.
sittim commentedon Oct 15, 2025
Something is wrong, my week was reset at 4 PM today, and it is already at 6%, less than 3.5 hours into it, and not heavy use:
I am not using sub agents, just the main agent.
A7F commentedon Oct 15, 2025
so far, the PRO plan is useless to me. I'm glad I did only one month of pro subscription because I did not know of the existence of a weekly usage limits; I was already annoyed by the 5-hour timer thing, now this.... for sure I won't renew my subscription.
theRebelliousNerd commentedon Oct 15, 2025
yeah, i got a 20x plan... i dont even know how i bypassed the 5 hour timer... but my weekly limit was hit in 3 days...
87 remaining items
mgarbs commentedon Nov 18, 2025
Why did this get closed?
mgarbs commentedon Nov 18, 2025
@ThariqS ^^
Heathenlamb commentedon Nov 18, 2025
@ThariqS .. we want this re-opened or we'll just start new bug reports
thedumbtechguy commentedon Nov 19, 2025
I've been using Claude Code steadily for months. Been on 5x since it came out.
I'm a moderately heavy user. 2 tabs generally running.
Once in a while I hit daily limits. NEVER ever hit weekly limits.
Last week I started to hit more and more daily limits. Then I hit my weekly on Thursday, "heavy week" I assumed.
Then this week, I hit my weekly limit on a Wednesday morning?
Also noticing a lot of compaction going on more frequently than before.
It is really more noticeable now. Just a few commands and then it compacts over and over again.
This is super frustrating.
mgarbs commentedon Nov 19, 2025
I didn't close the issue nor do I have the permission to reopen it :(
chrisns commentedon Nov 19, 2025
Hey @bcherny any official line on this thread beyond 'not an issue'?
DumbTechLion commentedon Nov 19, 2025
Yeah, okay. You are clearly playing the Overvaluation game, there. Like everyone else.
I'm done. I don't want to pay 200$ per month to a company that insults their customers without hiding it.
This way of considering customers has to stop. It's almost everywhere, today. But don't forget, we are the payers. Without our money, you are nothing more than a fancy heuristic algorithm.
In economics, you learn that Customers have needs. Therefore you can sell a solution to those needs.
Currently, big tech companies try to UNO reverse this principle. They try to sell a product, no matter what the customers need. For profit. Always for profit.
I advise you to prepare yourself for another economic lesson. The AI bubble will explode, eventually. Like every time people become too greedy. Overvaluation, circular financings, unsustainable spendings.
Accelerationism is over. So get real before you lose everything.
anasalaqeel commentedon Nov 20, 2025
let anthropic = "Bots"
null-topology commentedon Nov 20, 2025
I have the impression that more intensive use of Claude affects the rate of consumption of the weekly limit in a non-linear way. It's similar to a progressive restriction mechanism. If this is the case, it's doubly unfair, as it negates the assessment of remaining capacity. For example, my load is uneven, sometimes I have to use Claude in parallel for several tasks, and I see the limit usage increase non-linearly.
What the hell have you done with these limits? From being unable to work to unpredictability... I don't even know which is worse.
iconsentapp commentedon Nov 20, 2025
What is this ridiculous mess. I am being limited by the hours I use this thing and new by weekly limits on top???
Stop this now!!!
emcd commentedon Nov 21, 2025
@mgarbs and anyone else who still cares at this point, here is the response that we got from ThariqS last night in the earlier aggregator issue for this problem:
Once again dodges the actual issue being reported and manages to be patronizing at the same time. (They seem think that we are all a bunch of context management noobs who are whining because we don't know how to use their product properly.) He did at least say that if we have more "questions", he would be happy to clarify. Could try taking him up on that....
Also, many of the issues that I linked in #9094 are still open if you want to try piling comments into them, in the vain (?) hope that Anthropic will pay attention to what they are actually being told rather than what they want to believe they are being told. But, I'm mostly done with Anthropic at this point. Will miss Claude.
Krigo121 commentedon Nov 22, 2025
Since I subscribed to Claude Pro, all I received were emails claiming they had to restrict use of the tool due to so-called “abuses.” In reality, the service was largely unusable, as many others have already reported, so I cancelled my subscription.
On top of that, the code it generated was poor. It was inconsistent and repeatedly failed to implement features I explicitly requested. I followed all their recommendations—using projects, preparing a comprehensive contextual document—yet the more I worked with it, the less I could actually ask. Reviewing the output now, I ended up discarding everything; it was simply too far off to be usable.
m-muiznieks commentedon Nov 23, 2025
After a month on 5x, I had reached the limits, and I had to upgrade. In 4 days, I've reached the weekly limits, and my overall workload has increased maybe 2x than on 5X. To say that I am frustrated is to say nothing.
github-actions commentedon Dec 1, 2025
This issue has been automatically locked since it was closed and has not had any activity for 7 days. If you're experiencing a similar issue, please file a new issue and reference this one if it's relevant.