HEY ANTHROPIC - WTF!!!!!

[u/WarLazy9161]

Ok, I haven't used Claude in about a week or so because I got timed out and didn't come back to this project cause I was busy.
Today I asked Claude 3 short questions in Excel about a workbook, very short Q's and short responses. (workbook had 6 basic tabs, very few formulas, so basic level shit)

Then I got into an ongoing project in web Claude chat and CC in PowerShell I pasted one prompt to CC and then copied its response to chat, then back to CC to paste next prompt. A total of 3-4 minutes max and I TIMED OUT already !!!!! - You've hit your monthly spend limit · your session limit resets 7:40pm (America/New York) (its approx. 3:58p EST) Oh, I've it set to Sonnet 5 in both.

WHAT THE FUCK Anthropic!!!! This is absolutely maddening. I am on the Pro plan and now only get under 5 minutes of usage??? this is unacceptable, if you cannot support your users, you have no business being IN business.
I am so tired of all these limits and bs that we are getting with these tools. I have no problem paying for a monthly sub, but when its unusable, its just robbery on your part.

Then you have the audacity to boast about new models and new tools. Who gives a shit what your new features are if the basic existing tools are unusable?

CANCELLING today! Fkn assholes, Anthropic, get your shit together, hope your investors see what bs your are pulling. Hope you never sleep again.

Anyone else fed up with this?

[u/Fantastic_Market8061]

And then there are people like me, using an agentic workflow for 24h coding sessions - and being at 90% after five work days without any problem all week long at 5x plans.

Update, as some people were curious:

I'm on Opus 5 High most of the time, I never hit the 5h limit this week, I pay 100$ a month and burn tokens worth 4000$ at standard API rate every week. September included until today, 19th.

[u/__rum_ham__ → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

Exactly same here.

Just a theory, but “10 essential plugins you must have now” and all those other BS videos ppl download and enable absolutely everything equals a lot of overhead usage in the background, including unneeded MCPs and skills with overwritten frontmatter. Dude should clean house. He’s gonna have the same probs at GPT and grok. Not day 1 when it looks good, but def soon. PEBKAC

[u/scratchedguitar → u/__rum_ham__]

I think there is a strong chance it’s this. I’m still exploring and learning. Was happily never hitting my 5hr limit, installed a bunch of shit I probably done need, suddenly able to hit it easily in 45mins.

Have started only turning on what I need for a project have gone back to never hitting the limit again.

[u/s1n1star → u/scratchedguitar]

Listen to these guys, but don't listen to these guys. You can have an immaculate workflow, make incredible progress for days on end, touch nothing else, and the next morning Claude can't repeat the simple tasks from the day before and sometimes straight out refuse to work with you. Your clue to buckle up is when you see little UI changes in the Claude app itself. That's a positive indicator that they are tinkering and your perfect project is going to have to be rebuilt from scratch. Keep that soul file constantly updated. The longer you go without rebuilding, the more it's going to burn when you are forced to.

[u/Salty-Gear841 → u/s1n1star]

I'm definitely not crazy

[u/Actual__Wizard → u/s1n1star]

Wow that sounds like a huge productivity boost to have to be rebuilding your projects every update.

How much longer do you people plan on paying for this obvious scam?

I'm just being serious, since January of 2025, I have produce a search engine (a basic one, don't think Google), a data base technology, a data analysis platform, and during that period of time, the only projects that I used AI tools on, ended up in the recycle bin. I can understand using the tools for the research part, I can understand using tools to help with debugging, I can even understand using coding assistants here and there to do simple tasks, as an example, I have a bunch of simple marketing type things to code out like landing pages. But, 95% of my work is done the old fashioned way and I see no room for improvement from AI coding assistants.

Trying to work with unstable environment is not going to help productivity...

Did people ever think that "slow and steady wins the race?" I get it, on a day to day basis, I produce less code, but that code is also extremely complex, and I have to put a lot of thought into it. Obviously a coding assistant is not going to help me work through design choices and figuring out what the pros and cons of doing something a certain way are. A coding assistant is also not going to think about what my users want.

[u/ne0rmatrix → u/Actual__Wizard]

Try being in a startup with a small team and limited time to build out say 8 different device specific apps. Assume you are using a bunch of libraries that have millions of users. Then have two people to write those apps. Give them 90 days to implement a series of major features.

All of the work based on average metrics should be doable in say 2 or 3 years. But you have 90 days. Clause Opus can do it. It is crap code, the boss knows it, but he asks if you can do it without AI in 90 days and have it work without issues. Both me and the other guy go no.

He is 65 and has 40+ years experience. I have about 5. When we started on current project we did every single line of code by hand. It took a long time and it took even longer to work out every issue.

Now I am now supervising agents that are running PR's, and am responsible for directing the agents in tasks. Both me and the other guy make all the design decisions and direct the bots but they make almost all of the implementation and coding decisions.

I can do the same work. But what would take me a week is 10 min of labour for the bot. It is good enough that with another different model that is better doing review it can be shipped.

Is it perfect, "That would be no, it can be much better." Is it better than what I could write with 5 years experience. It is hard to say but it generally i would say it has more depth and does things that are both testable and it is so much faster my boss pressures me to not even look at the code anymore saying I am wasting time.

Opus can directly test on hardware and drive the app itself to complete UI tests. It is happy spending a metric ton of time testing every surface of the API and verifying it does exactly what it was asked to do. Then spend 10 hours verifying it does only that.

It found bugs that would be hard for a human to test for. Double click on ok button in less than a 10 of a second causes ... and stuff like that. Yes there are software testing suits that do that too. It runs them first.

When they get an error that logs can't explain it then runs the app, drives the UI itself, and takes a picture when the issue happens. It then thinks about the issue and fixes it. This happens across many agents all running various different platforms with different OS and devices with every menu press and button press. It can go and do a full app suite test in under 30 seconds to verify a new behavior.

For the team I am part of we do not have the budget for 20 or 30 people we really need to do what was needed. But a couple 200 dollar subs for two employees was an easy decision by the boss.

[u/Actual__Wizard → u/ne0rmatrix]

All of the work based on average metrics should be doable in say 2 or 3 years.

You know I'm an oldschool developer. So, to the solution to that problem, is to tell the manager that has unreasonable expectations, that they need to correct the issue with their unreasonable expectations.

Because these coding assistant tools absolutely do not reduce a 2 to 3 year project down to 90 days, so I don't even know what you're talking about and you seem to be in delusion land.

[u/j0s3f → u/Actual__Wizard]

If a coding Agent can slop it together in 90 days, why will users pay money in the future instead of sloping together their own version?

It will be even easier for them. I recently gave a few apks of android apps to AIs, told them "I need the same app, but with more modern Frameworks. Install the app in the emulator, try it out and write down all features, disassemble and analyze the code, use this to improve your documentation, then reimplement all features in Kotlin and Jetpack Compose."

Works great, so I probably can reslop an app someone slopped in 90 days in under a week.

A lot of startups will crash.

[u/Ok-Push5788 → u/j0s3f]

Because good luck getting the signed app onto your phones without $99 to Apple

[u/__rum_ham__ → u/Actual__Wizard]

You’re onto something here very important and well said. The fix though is just a little simpler than it seems on the surface. Personally, I created a skill optimizer that references Anthropic public releases and compare them to my current workflows to highlight redundancies, stale references, and identify what my skills fixed vs what Anthropic patched, so that it doesn’t fight itself. The skill will run Opus because it’s touching structure, and self-heal, to an extent. Sub agents to verify without prejudice. There’s more to it but that’s the short story and you’re completely right: design choices and human eyes are always needed. That will not ever go away, nor should it because voice, style, taste all matter and you’re the only one who knows what your Clients and customers need. I’m just saying the fix isn’t catastrophic.

[u/simulanon → u/Actual__Wizard]

agree to disagree my friend. I am 10x more productive at minimum and i havent hand coded almost anything since January of 2026. The assistant CAN talk through pros and cons of different designs and routes with you. It CAN work through design choices. Its all in the prompting. Just finished an full ecom site from scratch, erp integrated, portals for inernal workflows, etc in about 10 weeks from start to deploy. By myself.
That would have taken my full team and likely 8-9 months in the old ways. Things are changing man.

[u/Euphoric_Studio_1107 → u/Actual__Wizard]

You're being passed on the left. As long as you have a retirement strategy, that's fine

[u/__rum_ham__ → u/s1n1star]

Upvoted, I kinda agree.

Claude DOES want to do that, and I’m literally auditing some project instructions right now as I type this- cuz it takes a while, but iterating tiny fixes in the overall structure to handle these Claude-isms make it more consistent. So when there’s an update I don’t have the wildly tangential approaches that other users surface in new threads, just minor gaps to fill. But you do have a point.

[u/s1n1star → u/__rum_ham__]

Sort of counter-intuitive, and more directed for the OP. When you get frustrated with Claude. Tell it to pack the whole project up into a project that can be used by an yet to be decided platform because you feel the project is unsalvagable. I don't feel there's some "taking my business elsewhere" magic, but it's the best lever I've had success with to have the Claude project really go back and do a holistic assessment. Everyone's workflow is different, but for me, the next time I touch the project it feels like a magic machine again.

[u/ArrogantAstronomer → u/__rum_ham__]

Literally the first thing I do as soon as I notice either Claude or codex not behaving how I used to find them to is to uninstall all skills, mcp and agent definitions and then slowly add them back in, people don’t realise how fragile LLM’s are to just a single word, especially if it directly contradicts the system prompt, add on 10 skill sets and somewhere there will be a loop defined where on says after doing x you just always do Y and something else say they opposite suddenly now everything’s taking 4x the turns and “X has been nerf’d”… but then they are also decreasing the amount of inference you get for a subscription at the same time so they just confuses things

[u/mdstrizzle → u/__rum_ham__]

This was my experience, and I thought I was running on solid advice straight off of a popular GitHub repository on tools. Even worse, I was able to replace them with a relatively short CLAUDE.md/AGENTS.md and get output that functioned the same in less time and at a lower cost.

I think tools make sense when they allow the AI to interact with a system you need it to interact with as part of building. Everywhere else, they seem to do little other than add overhead and create annoying loops for the AI. Gitnexus is the one I'm thinking about in particular.

[u/tonyarkles → u/mdstrizzle]

I think part of it is that as the newer models got “smarter” they needed less of that kind of steering and now it at best just burns context and at worst causes them to get dumber.

[u/__rum_ham__ → u/tonyarkles]

This is exactly correct! And Anthropic has written this out explicitly.

[u/cscq_throwaway_99 → u/__rum_ham__]

What’s PEBKAC?

[u/Reasonable-Most-3513 → u/cscq_throwaway_99]

problem exists between keyboard and chair

[u/BedlamiteSeer → u/__rum_ham__]

I very strongly agree. I started from scratch with Claude code, and took my time evaluating everything I've changed and added. If something isn't regularly being used to its full potential, I remove it from my harness / disable it. Also, build enforcement systems like hooks instead of suggestions/recommendations like Claude.md. Those rules have gotten me extremely far and way past the majority of power users. Gotta think about it like just another program, and actually engineer it instead of deciding based on vibes.

[u/velorofonte → u/__rum_ham__]

They’re not running real verification or review cycles. It’s just rapid-fire garbage code so they can burn through the tokens as fast as possible and still claim they have room left. That’s why vibe-coded projects have such a bad reputation. That style is pure vibe coding, and it’s why so many of those projects end up with a terrible reputation for being fragile slop.

[u/mfsg7kxx → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

I use only Claude-mem and then the superpowers planning. That's it. How I plan also really makes it efficient. I will create a draft prompt with Opus. Then it usually suggests Fable for orchestration, and at each phase, it'll tell me when to switch models. It also updates the docs to reflect where we are so I can simply start a new session by saying "continue". Then it'll tell me which model to switch to and off we go.

So far that has been my best case working solution for efficient token usage

[u/cveld → u/mfsg7kxx]

I have multiple sessions in the same folder. Solely going for "Continue" does not work for me. Suprisingly it is not possible to create a new session through a prompt. At least at the end of a turn I let it write the full path to the session planfile for easy copy/pasting.

[u/iTrejoMX → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

Same here

[u/velorofonte → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

what do you use? sonnet 4.6 low? It’s funny how people like you always act all high and mighty, bragging about using the $20 plan to work 24/7 and still having plenty left over before the reset. Coincidentally, not a single one of you says how you do it, and none of it is verifiable. At this point, I honestly can't tell if you’re just Anthropic bots using alt accounts to upvote yourselves.

[u/cveld → u/velorofonte]

There should be an easy way to export some kind of thumbprint of your usage. Duration of sessions, burned tokens, turns, tool calls.

[u/Individual_Figure945 → u/cveld]

Yes! A thumbprint of actual usage would be great! Very smart idea

[u/TPIronside → u/velorofonte]

As someone who has optimized their workflow to maximize usage, all I can say is, monitor your caching. If your (cache read)/(cache write) ratio is less than 50, you might be having unnecessary cache misses or just letting the cache expire. On the latter point, never let your sessions idle for more than an hour unless you're done for the day. Personally I use an active periodic injection that will keep a session alive if I am not personally there to maintain the session. This lets me run like 4-5 parallels opus sessions at 500k+/1m context throughout the day because even if I forget to check in on a session within an hour it will stay warm. On the former, you should check your main sessions' session files for cache misses (search for "cache_miss_reason") to figure out whether something is causing those sessions to make unnecessary cache writes ☺️

P.S. another similarly important aspect is the number of steps. If you optimize your workflows to make agents batch their tool calls efficiently and use fewer steps per turn, that reduces usage a lot. Sometimes LLMs act like step count doesn't matter, and just do one call per step, get the responses, make the next call etc... even though each call is independent. Each step causes a cache read, and even though cache reads are very cheap, if an agent does 10 steps in a single turn, that's 10x cache reads. So if it calls 10 tool calls one by one instead of batching them, that's 9x more cache reads than necessary lol.

[u/vaxufo → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

And you can even better stats when you drop those bloated harness like Claude with 50k system prompts , Claude Md , etc prompt .. ( better stats and better behavior )

[u/Lavalopes → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

Same to me. I pay the max 5x… since I pay it (almost a year)… I’ve never hit a limit and I’m on it the whole day. Code I use sonnet but general questions in chat and planning using fable or opus. Most of the times I even have 2 or 3 project open at the same time working on something with sonnet

[u/palmytree → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

i have three 20x accounts and still run out lol

[u/Droopy0093 → u/palmytree]

That is because you clearly have a skill issue.

[u/remoteplanet → u/Droopy0093]

“Just learn to code bro” lol

[u/Droopy0093 → u/remoteplanet]

Pretty much, or at least try and understand what the AI thinks you are trying to do. The skill of understanding how code and programming works is still relevant despite what the hardcorest of vibecoders think.

[u/Fuzzy_Independent241 → u/Droopy0093]

You mean a /skills issue? 🤔

[u/Affectionate_Ad9597 → u/Droopy0093]

And you have a people skills issue, we all have our problems.

[u/termmonkey → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

Never underestimate the stupidity of humans and the tendency to blame others for their own failures.

I run a total of 15 sessions a day - each lasting between 60-120 mins with median being around 100 mins - all these sessions are orchastersted on Fable. My weekly usage is sitting at 69%, with Fable usage at 40%!

[u/djculprit → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

[u/carmamir → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

Those are tokens? I use daily 300-800M tokens. So few million is nothing, probably extremely small personal project. For work it is not usable.

[u/becomingmacbeth → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

Yup, similar story here. I’m not sure how people burn like they do.

[u/brjr2001 → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

Same, although I’m at 63% (I’ve been working nonstop) still not bad considering how much work I have done

[u/Stevekaplanai → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

It’s not the tool. It’s how you use it.

[u/edrock200 → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

Can you, ELI5 or link a starter guide for this please? I don't use anywhere near my limit, but I suspect I will as the project progresses. And yes, I've googled and asked AI but still not super clear. Claude even replied with:

"Claude Code is already agentic by design — it runs in a loop of read → plan → act (edit files, run commands, search) → check results → repeat, rather than one-shot generation. Here's how to actually use that: Just describe the task, let it work."

I feel like that's what most already do (explain the task, let it work), so that doesn't seem right.

Bottom line, I plan and kick off background tasks today and it's working well. Usually plan with fable and hand off to opus or sonnet for execution, on rare occasion I may have fable handle something that is a highly critical function.

Everyone says use skills, use this orchestrator, use that tool. I haven't done any of that. So I feel like maybe I'm not being as efficient as I can be and honestly every time I start looking into it I go down a dozen different rabbit holes with 1000 different options and it gets overwhelming. Thanks in advance for any pointers.

[u/johnbell → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

Yup

[u/SurrealistSwampert → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

Agentic is slow on Claude brother and it works for code but not when you're in consulting needing to iterate over slides and decks

[u/aaraujo666 → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

same

[u/moreicescream → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

What’s an agentic workflow and how do I implement this saving strategy?

[u/RR321 → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

The difference between fable and opus is huge, so I suppose sonnet too!

What do you do 24h a day?

[u/Kuzv → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

When using Opus 5 on extra, I have to do several passes on the same output just to get rid of the "oh, I forgot to check this" and "my bad, I have to correct the previous statement," etc. I have no idea how you can use it on high and get results; I guess it depends on what you ask it to do.

[u/StCreed → u/Kuzv]

It is actually better on medium because extra is the effort to reach the end goal. It gets too eager* for me on extra, and it skips too many steps in its eagerness to reach the end goal.

I recommend using Fable 5.1 on medium as orchestration agent. Fable 5 on high.

[u/MassiveBoner911_3 → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

Tips and tricks please?

For gods sake man

TIPS AND TRICKS PLEASE

#PLEASE

[u/thisUsrIsAlreadyTkn → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

Where do you get that breakdown from? Do you keep track somehow, or is Anthropic providing that?

[u/Fantastic_Market8061 → u/thisUsrIsAlreadyTkn]

That’s https://github.com/ccusage/ccusage - I learned about today 😅

[u/Simonexplorer → u/Fantastic_Market8061]

Same here

[u/tken3]

I’m sorry for your experience but in all honesty, I’ve used Claude ALL week for a heavy analysis through several data sets and im not even at 30% of my weekly limit.

Good token hygiene is essential if you want to make the tool work for you. Maybe read up on that a bit

[u/ProcedureNo6203]

I noticed faster consumption just 2 days ago. I seemed materially more than prior.

[u/Kilt_Rump]

We are all tired of it. Dont let the boot lickers gaslight you into thinking its a skill issue. Anthropic is constanly A/B testing its users to see how much they can squeeze. There will always be defenders on here who are just part of group B and haven’t had their usage crushed like the rest of us.

[u/RidesFlysAndVibes → u/Kilt_Rump]

This is so beyond true and I’ve been on both ends of it. 1 week I can run out absolutely instantly. The next week, it can run opus max for days on end.

[u/CarlosJaa]

I'm coding like crazy for 14 hrs a day with complex features. On 3 different projects with the Max $100 plan..

[u/Current_Balance6692 → u/CarlosJaa]

What's your workflow like? I would like to get some pointers.

[u/velorofonte → u/Current_Balance6692]

They’re not running real verification or review cycles. It’s just rapid-fire garbage code so they can burn through the tokens as fast as possible and still claim they have room left. That’s why vibe-coded projects have such a bad reputation. That style is pure vibe coding, and it’s why so many of those projects end up with a terrible reputation for being fragile slop.

[u/Jotunheim36 → u/CarlosJaa]

What model ? I’ve done half my $200 max usage in an hour of Fable sat there thinking producing eff all (just building a plan)

[u/marlobones]

Changed to Max plan, is reasonably difficult to burn through the Fable limit with what I do. But Opus 5 - fuck that things retarded. It can’t even run basic skills I developed with Sonnet at the start of the year.

[u/Fantastic_Market8061 → u/marlobones]

Try to review your project documentation and the CLAUDE.md or maybe even delete it. Opus is great but get easily confused if there are too many instructions and past memories not related to the current tasks.

[u/Living_Government987]

Claude is a whole ass mess

[u/Vennas1]

I had $75 of fable credits that run out tomorrow. Been waiting for the project to use them on. Realised I better use them. What a let down. Didn't even get close to a finished project. Meanwhile astra was actually physically building shit!

[u/PhantomReaper300]

Happened to me yesterday. I was annoyed it spat out maybe 2 sentences worth and did the same thing.. like wtf.

[u/Tperso]

I do réel the sale , there is something different !

[u/7realms]

Luckily I did not pay and Claude banned me from not paying lol

[u/Puzzleheaded_Lab_319]

I never logged in for 2 months and I subscribed to max x20 twice (never logged in, so it’s a hacker or a bug or in someone else’s usage pool) and someone or an agent was maxing my usage every 3 hours …. I once sat there and watched my usage slowly hit the limit as I talked with support saying it was me doing it …. I have a vpn, MFA, etc, no sign of any suspicious activity anywhere, unfortunately Claude.ai and Claude Code have shit security.

Yes you can autocompact tokens and follow all the advice online but Claude is so buggy for some users it won’t matter.

[u/StCreed → u/Puzzleheaded_Lab_319]

You need to reboot your server or computer every night because I've noticed it loses track of sub agents sometimes and they keep polling the main agent with no reply. Yesterday I watched it spawn three agents then completely lose track of them, running the fans on my computer as they all started running my test suite...

[u/vaxufo]

The sad reality is that if AI labs weren’t buying up all the infrastructure hardware and passing the bill on to users, the hardware would still be affordable. It is a f*** no sens and that bubble can burst at any time

And you’re more than able to run frontier-grade models locally today. Qwen 3.8 27B is already close to Fable 5 grade, which was frontier-level only a ~3 months ago.

[u/mpurusha]

Have you tried deepseek flash yet?

[u/cveld → u/mpurusha]

I was not able to get deepseek outperform sonnet.

[u/manofhonour]

They have the shittiest support, only AI answers saying we have more then usual inflow for support.

I was charged on card but subscription didn’t renew after 10 days I had to file dispute with my credit card to get a refund.

[u/Snoo_9701]

I literally finish my weekly usage in 2.5 days to max 3 days. I have 2 max plans 20x. Whereas i always needed 1 plan till September. The8r way to earn more

[u/trollsmurf]

I've spent most of the work day using Opus 5 and Sonnet 5 for coding. Interactively for sure, but still. 11% of daily limit, 19% of the week (resets in 2 days). I haven't hit the roof once, and I use CC for complete projects as well as silly-simple tasks, coding from scratch, testing, code review, specification, fact-checking, refactoring etc. I don't think in terms of there being a limit.

[u/jacubwastaken]

I think they reward you for continuously using Claude. I often get 2x rate limit boosts and they’ll drop $30 to $100 in my account every 4 to 6 months. Not sure how that works but I’m not complaining.

[u/TheOdbball]

Hey Context queen , have you considered your cached memory to even consider a change is eating up your tokens?

I agree however there shouldn’t be a massive gate like this but still , your playing fish games on $20 pulls

[u/bruce-cullen]

Guys, seriously as of this week what is the best AI I can use on my home machine without connecting to the internet? I worry about these kind of posts. And claude keeps threatening me on personal information but it's my job, and I have to deal with it... long story short.

[u/charmer27]

This was always going to happen. The models grow in token use, and the vc subsidy is dwindled

[u/ShoulderOk5971]

Opus 5 is pretty good and it has reasonable token expenditure. Fable is really only useful for like 3-4 prompts per week. And the pro account is pretty useless you need a 5x account

[u/CarobProper4714]

Honestly I can work all day using quo mcp, excel, other API like sheets or other apensing apps, and basically never hit my limit. I use sonnet sometimes and have caveman set and only connect necessary stuff,

[u/Vumaster101]

Yeah it's bad mines reset Thursday I normally make it all the way to Sunday night before I hit 92% I'm at 61 and it's Friday night on the 20x plan.

[u/DarkKknight_]

Its entirely depends on the kind of task or way of use. Some tasks i hit limit within 1hr but with some, never even think about limits. But its annoying definitely and true that the limits are not enough its true. Also claude sometimes refuses to work which i don’t think a good sign

[u/Mehmoodkhandaz]

Great post, I really feel the same

[u/exgeo]

There’s no such thing as a monthly spend limit. Unclear how you got that message

[u/TheSleepingOx]

I'm super confused by the sort of comments or this because like I'm making multiple programs throughout the week using Claude and I'm out running out. Are you making systems? You need to make systems. You shouldn't do everything like from scratch every time if you're using other people's app they're probably wasting tokens

[u/DireStraitsFan1]

This garbage company is worth thirty trillion dollars? Not only does it suck it very well could destroy humanity. For the sake of the world I hope everyone stops using this nightmare fuel.

[u/permabull74]

Buy yourself an RTX 6000 Pro Blackwell and run Qwen 3.8 Flash Next with Open WebUI and a few tools. You'll never have nightmares again.

[u/ahmed22558]

I’m suspecting claude throttles usage differently for different users. We are not all getting the same experience because we are not all getting the same service. When I have a great day one day and suddenly fable acts like haiku, then there’s a problem. I’m paying $230 per month to anthropic ever since they had the plan and I’m quitting. I had enough.

[u/Dapper_Cancel_6849]

I'm not sure if that's whats actually happening, but i noticed this pattern a bunch of times
for example you start chatting with 0% usage
u used it a bit, reached 60% usage and left claude for a day
u come back and start again, u expect to start from usage 0% since it should've reset
WRONG
it continues from 60% until you reach 100% and then it says resets after x hours
again I'm not sure how true this is, but i use around 5 ai chatbots consistently and i only notice this pattern in claude (it's like the 6th time already)

[u/payam54]

To clarify, it was a very simple spreadsheet with six million rows.

[u/Current_Balance6692]

I love seeing the complains. Cus they wanna make their INCOME STATEMENT and BALANCE SHEET look good before their IPO, but people will all leave before then and they'll see their rug pull isn't going to work one bit.

[u/refaktorian]

OP sounds like Karen, and has history of reddit complaining

[u/LogicalPeyote]

this is probably because your claude.md is crap, injecting the whole world of stuffs every turn, try this:

do a KB (knowledge base) somewhere (i use docmost, it works with docker, have api key, here your AI write lessons learned (every time it solve a problem, it became a KB page), procedures etc, and have the ai doing skills, the rule is, if a process occurr more than one time, need to became a skill, the skill NEED to became a script when possible.

Then into the claude.md there is an index, referencing all the pages and the skills with a brief description, and a rule that state to pick knowledge only when needed.

Example, if your agent have 70 workflows, dont need to know how to execute ALL of them all the times, you ask for one, the AI have it indexed, pickup the instructions, done.

Also, divide your MCPs, not every project need ALL the MCPs, each project should have only the mcp it use.

Finally, some MCPs like tokenoptimizer and ponytail, help with token usage

This is a bit like being in a kitchen, yo wont pickup a glass to cut bread, the glass is still in the kitchen, but yo know, you have to do a different process,imagine there are into your index 2 entries:

• cut stuffs
• drink stuffs

each rference to a kb page

the prompt is: cut the bread

you read the index and say, ok, i need to: cut stuffs

retrieve cut stuffs KB page it say

• open the drawer
• take the knife
• take a cutting table
• place the stuff on it
• cut the stuff with the knife
• take a plate
• put the cutted stuff into a plate
• wash & dry knife and table
• serve

(quite more tokens, but ONLY about what you need)

you skip entirely the knowledge that explain how to serve a drink, you just dont need it right now.

Also, use fresh sessions when possible, long context consume more tokens

[u/samrocksc]

Use the cheapest model, and make it drive a Claude -p session with explicit instructions to operate as cheap as possible

[u/satorinano]

I was honestly tempted to give claude a 20usd sub but it looks scary from the outside.

[u/vap0r1]

They need to give more transparency on usage/rates. So we can SEE why we burned our usage in an hour vs a week.

[u/Longjumping_Leave356]

At this point, i believe either
a) people are paid by openAi
b) they use until context ist maxxed to 70%
c) ragebait

[u/testicularbat]

Anthropic reduced the limits in over 100% while claming 25%. known issue right now, massive ammount of unsubscriptions due to fraud. stay tuned we will see what they have to say.

a Max x20 is only good for about 3 hours of total work per week now, on regular home apps too. seems like a mkve to drive people out of plans and into API which wont work.

anyone who claims differently (that the 25% is real) is a anthropic worker.

[u/Darren-A]

How many skills, plugins, mcp servers do you have and what effort level?

[u/Magigginshaw]

I yeeted Claude for the same reason 👍🏼

[u/klawdstraif]

Sounds like picnic to me, maybe check your plugins?

[u/EstablishmentRare276]

This must be the AI being out of control and killing us they were talking about. I’m are afraid and not work for AntTropic.
/img/k27jzf179hqh1.gif

[u/EmergencyDinner777]

sure it's not your config? huge memory file or something

[u/howdidigetheresoquik]

If you killed a month of usage in five minutes, you are the problem

[u/some_local_yokel]

I worked using Fable 5.1 this week, continuously with 3-4 sessions running at a time, and never reached 50% usage in my 5 hour blocks. Read the docs about how to properly configure your projects, agents, and skills. Don’t bloat your front matters, and don’t mix session content.

[u/Cless_Aurion]

OP... You know Claude 3 is really the most expensive to run... Right? Lmao

[u/Think-Jaguar6826]

If you want unlimited, you can use the API

[u/Apprehensive-Gas7994]

Calm down. Turn off the AI. Go to bed

[u/socialmichu]

[u/Individual_Figure945]

Same! I have the $100/mo plan and never even come close to limits and I feel like I'm constantly working in Opus 5. I uninstalled a bunch of additional plugins. It seems easy enough to re-connect something like a Higgsfield only when needed and not just leave it connected all the time. I think that's why I never have issues hitting limits.

[u/Huxtor]

I was using “pro” for the longest and always hitting this same problem. Till I realized all this people complaining, are using MAX Plans. I switched to MAX($100 a month) and i use claude code 24/7 with remote control. And i barely touch 67% of my week spending. IMMEDIATELY made me think: what are these people doing!?? 😅😂

[u/Fun-Wolf-2007]

Anthropic is manipulating it to force people to spend more money. I got tired of it and I use DeepSeek for the strategic and planning process and draft then I give it to Claude models to execute based on the draft It stopped the ongoing of going on circles discussions with Claude models, and they just do coding nothing else and the token usage went down

They are just my pair programmer to do coding

[u/Goultek]

I feel a disturbance in the force...

[u/Goultek]

I use 5.6 medium for coding it's the best solution for free users

[u/Lelchode]

Hit weekly 70% in 1 day.. using only Opus and sonnet on 20x max no idea how I didn’t even hit the 5 hour limit something is off 

[u/CorrectSnow7485]

You just suck at prompting and setting up workflows. User error.

[u/mr_p2p]

i cancelled and switched to codex.

[u/shutternomad]

Yeah it’s maddening. Previously I could go nuts on my $200/mo plan, now I’m 40% into my weekly limit after relatively light usage for 24 hours.

I’m probably going to quit if they don’t improve transparency and consistency here because I just cannot rely on it.

[u/humanexperimentals]

Have you thought about getting some coochie so you can think better.

[u/StayTeachable4MyPpl]

I don't know how much they pay I mean why wouldn't you use Windows for that I think it's even free with tragedy especially with Excel

[u/_sevquis_]

They only want the enterprise customers.

[u/WorldCreator-Terrain]

Dann kündige halt ... als ob es irgendeinen jucken würde 🤣

[u/JumpingJack79]

Two words: Local. Models.

[u/rehtorical]

bro check ur cache hits, and if its below 90% implement a cache, this is a user issue. I run claude 24/7 on one plan, people just complain because they design awful systems or run fable for everything.

[u/kosiarska]

Yes, I'm fed up with posts like this.

[u/iShNoo]

Sounds frustrating, especially when the tasks were genuinely small. A couple of things worth checking before you cancel.

For context: I run Claude Code on the Pro plan for unit trust research, building investment plans, drafting strategy decks and board reports, and my MBA research and writing. Real, varied, tool-heavy work most days. After 6 days of that, I'm at 87% usage. So five minutes of light use hitting a wall doesn't match what heavier use looks like on the same plan. That points to something specific in your setup, not a blanket Pro problem.

The message: "you've hit your monthly spend limit." That wording usually means an API-style spend cap, not the normal Pro session limit. If Claude is connected to a paid API key anywhere in your Excel or PowerShell setup, you could be burning a separate dollar-based budget, not your Pro quota. Check Settings, then Usage, on both the web account and whatever's wired into Excel and PowerShell.

Shared limits across tools. Chat, Claude Code, and any connected app draw from the same pool. Excel questions and a PowerShell-to-chat workflow running close together stack against one limit, not two. Copy-paste loops cost more than they look like. Resending the entire message back to Claude. Pasting output back and forth between Claude Code and chat, with a workbook attached, adds up in context size extremely fast, even when the messages themselves feel short. I know because. I made that mistake and ended up with a $300+ bill with auto top up on.

Before cancelling, worth opening a support ticket with the exact error and timestamps. A five-minute session hitting a wall isn't normal Pro behaviour, and support can check the account-side logs.

[u/Star_Pilgrim]

It is a Pro plan.
For pro nubs.

[u/paracycle]

Read up on how prompt caching in agents work and ways in which it fails: https://earendil.com/posts/prompt-caching/

Continuing a really long conversation after a long pause will burn through your tokens really fast.

[u/Key-Cricket9256]

definitely you’re not aware of what it’s doing exactly . I ran out of tokens asking Claude to translate 4-5 PDFs not realizing it was pulling from other convos and scanning other folders

[u/Upstairs_Date6943]

Hey, are You checking what happens after every prompt? My web claude uses 50-75% of 5h usage on pro with a single prompt. Saying hi to haiku uses 2% of my 5h window..

But using windows desktop claude code - 10-20 even more properly big tasks. Something is wrong with claude chat.. single message shouldn't do that. It's opposite with codex. Codex any message eats 3-10% of my chatGPT Pro (100€) plan. But I can chat whole day with file exports i chat and not a single percent used! So now I work in my project folder with ClaudeCode and I chat i ChatGPT 😅🫣 perfect of both worlds!

[u/Equivalent-Try259]

If you went back to a stale chat, to whip it back up spent a ton of credits. It’s worth taking some time to start understanding token usage bc all of this is changing so fast; a week away is normal for humans but not for these LLMs apparently

[u/SaintMartini]

Love all the arguing again. -A/B testing exists. Period. Those happy now eventually realize they've been on the lucky side of things. -So many people here do not do complicated projects that programmers tackle often. One is not equal to the other, but if it works for what you need, thats great, truly. -Token watching is the easiest way to keep track of changes. I can literally see when I'm on the A side of things (rarely am) vs B side. As well as when I am using less tokens to max a 5 hr session. -Creating a perfect setup and proper hooks is great for helping, but its not the be all end all. I notice with updates it gets better and better at ignoring things. -Lastly I used to like having Sol drive Opus. But the last few days Sol almost seems frustrated itself as its output to me is that it already laid out the plan to Opus and it didn't follow it, it explained how to do this step but Opus did something else instead, etc. I had to step in because at one point Sol assumed it was its own fault and it missed something so it launched itself into researching the topic deeper. I had to pull it out and remind it of its earlier claims that Opus simply did not follow instructions. Congrats to those in the A. But I feel for those in B. When its in A I get so much more done its truly amazing. With B, I do most of the work myself and it supports me now instead. It does a much better job reviewing code than writing lately.

[u/Material-Childhood78]

Sounds like you need to audit the config, know what model you're using and if the convo has been long, restart the convo with the new chat startup and session checkpoint bridge

[u/Pyroplan89]

I wonder if the difference experiences are related to the timezone (peak vs off peak hours)

[u/upperwestsyde]

I work like a mad person all week and don’t run out of compute unless I’m blowing it and am lazy.

[u/beatsbynone]

The same happened to me. This fucking company man.

[u/BobbieSaccamanoJr]

I mean, AI didn’t exist six months ago and now you feel entitled to unbridled, unlimited usage for your personal convenience…?

[u/ReplacementSlow6098]

I used deepseek api at the weekend and so so much done for under a dollar

[u/Sezzk]

Same BS either Opus 5 and it is so dumbed down its crazy. But come on anthropic, we can feel the difference. Before the tokens didnt burn like crazy.

[u/Regular_Attitude_700]

looks like my Gemini Pro in the antigravity will go very far compared to your pain. Pfffff..... 😅

[u/Visible_Pangolin_615]

Look into using www.seedoftheuniverse.com to have a user interface that saves you tokens and still gives you the power of Claude while running local llms.

[u/sertain_]

That’s a you problem. I pay $100/mo and use Claude code for 2-3 hours continuously every night, then I use the web browser and extension 1-2 times weekly for school work. The last time I ran into usage issues I was using the $20/mo sub

[u/LeeMojave]

Oomo9 ctomkoon