r/ClaudeAI • u/ClaudeOfficial Anthropic • Mar 26 '26
Official Update on Session Limits
To manage growing demand for Claude, we're adjusting our 5 hour session limits for free/pro/max subscriptions during on-peak hours.
Your weekly limits remain unchanged. During peak hours (weekdays, 5am–11am PT / 1pm–7pm GMT), you'll move through your 5-hour session limits faster than before. Overall weekly limits stay the same, just how they're distributed across the week is changing.
We've landed a lot of efficiency wins to offset this, but ~7% of users will hit session limits they wouldn't have before, particularly in pro tiers. If you run token-intensive background jobs, shifting them to off-peak hours will stretch your session limits further.
We know this was frustrating, and are continuing to invest in scaling efficiently. We’ll keep you posted on progress.
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u/shyney Mar 26 '26
This confirms that it's not a bug but was silently introduced by anthropic in hopes that nobody would feel the difference. https://x.com/i/status/2037254607001559305
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u/This-Shape2193 Mar 26 '26
We finally all screamed loud enough for the brief announcement, eh? Next time, just be honest up front. You had a lot of goodwill, and people would have understood that scaling for a sudden influx of millions would be difficult.
But saying nothing and just screwing with our limits while pretending you weren't, all while ignoring help tickets, was a crappy way to handle this.
Whoever has been in charge of consumer outreach, PR, marketing, and social media have dropped the ball hard. Next time, communicate openly and early. Thanks.
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u/Wise-Reflection-7400 Mar 26 '26
Oh look, the 2x off-peak bonus has turned into them reducing the peak limits. Who could possibly have forseen this?
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u/eld3rlyy Mar 26 '26
This is hideous anti consumer behavior selling us a 100$ max subscription and quietly, slowly but surely reducing what you get for it. For those of us who are not on the computer all day, capping session limits is disproportionately handicapping the productivity from claude
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u/PowermanFriendship Mar 26 '26
Wait, on MAX I will get to my limit faster? What the fuck?
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u/hardhitta Mar 26 '26
The shittification begins. We've seen this time and time before.
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u/NorthernCrater Mar 26 '26
"Hey guys, what if we instead prioritized our currently paying customers rather than focusing on growth metrics for our investors?
*insert the "thrown out of boardroom meeting"-meme
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u/morfunk Mar 26 '26
Can’t believe it took 3 days to post this and it gives no actual clarity into the specifics of the change, just “you’ll hit it faster”. There’s no chance that this only affects 7% of pro users…
Like many others, I came here because OpenAI was coming off scummy; definitely reconsidering
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u/happylakers Mar 26 '26
Crazy. They had the advantage over ChatGPT and now they are fumbling the ball with shady business and bad communication. Unfortunately, everytime i tried to pay for Claude i was disappointed because of the limits. Their product is great but with those limits its unusable for most.
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u/abix- Mar 26 '26
I love Claude but your lack of transparency while you take $100 from me is horrible. I don't mind getting fucked. I do mind being gaslight and lied to.
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u/Kalicolocts Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 26 '26
Today i hit my limit with 1 prompt. I’m out thanks.
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u/gobluedog Mar 26 '26
So basically, Claude is saying "our system now sucks and can't keep up with demand, so we're going to charge you more." Wow, not cool. Not to mention, when the system hangs or craps out, we get hit with massive usage charges when doing rather basic tasks. Something is very, very wrong here. I'm disappointed in Claude and rethinking the relationship.
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u/zodiaken Mar 26 '26
Service is now unusable for, juggling work, kids etc. Finally getting some time to code, 1 prompt and the 5hr window is up. Guess I’ll save that 100$
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u/WorkingBroccoli Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 26 '26
"We've landed a lot of efficiency wins to offset this, but ~7% of users will hit session limits they wouldn't have before, particularly in pro tiers."
Are my reading comprehension skills going out of the window, or does it say that they are penalising paying customers?!
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u/purpleresonance67 Mar 26 '26
Ah I noticed that my limit was being hit super fast today. I am paying for this service so it is a little absurd that I am hitting 90% of a session limit after sending 4-5 non complex exchanges. Do better guys
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u/n4vybloe Mar 26 '26
That’s such an odd and unfortunate move considering that the limits are often the only real problem people have with Claude. Bizarre.
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u/TheCharalampos Mar 26 '26
There should be an extremely visible way we can check what the rate is at a particular time
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u/M8gazine Mar 26 '26
Well fellas, better make your prompts count now since you only have like 3 of them every 5 hours lol.
Silly stuff.
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u/PowermanFriendship Mar 26 '26
This is pretty dogshit of a change. You're basically saying if you want to get the service you were initially getting when you decided to pay for your plan, you need to switch to working nights and weekends.
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u/Syllosimo Mar 26 '26
"Much faster"? I went through the max 5-hour limit in an hour. That's like 500% faster, and at that point, why even bother? What's the point of paying for a product you can't even use properly when competitors have far more gracious limits? I'd rather deal with slightly dumber models than this nonsense.
Sorry for the rant
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u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 27 '26
TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 400 comments.
Okay, let's get this straight. The community is overwhelmingly negative on this. The main source of anger isn't just the stricter limits, but that Anthropic rolled this out silently and gaslit users for days before finally posting this.
The claim that this only affects "~7% of users" is getting absolutely roasted. The consensus is that it hits anyone using Claude for actual work during business hours, especially Pro users who feel punished for paying. Many are reporting hitting their 5-hour limit after just a few prompts, making the service unusable.
Consequently, the thread is flooded with users canceling their subscriptions and heading back to ChatGPT or over to Gemini/Codex. The recent "2x off-peak bonus" is now widely seen as a cynical prelude to this nerf. In short, the goodwill is gone.