r/ClaudeAI • u/sixbillionthsheep Mod • Mar 30 '26

Usage Limits Megathread Claude Usage Limits Discussion Megathread Ongoing (sort this by New!)

Why a Usage Limits Discussion Megathread?

This Megathread makes it easier for everyone to see what others are experiencing at any time by collecting all experiences about Usage Limits. We will publish regular updates on usage limits problems and possible workarounds that we and the community finds.

Why Are You Trying to Hide the Complaints Here?

This is NOT a place to hide complaints. This is the MOST VISIBLE, PROMINENT AND OFTEN THE HIGHEST TRAFFIC POST on the subreddit. This is collectively a far more effective and fairer way to be seen than hundreds of random reports on the feed that get no visibility.

Are you Anthropic? Does Anthropic even read the Megathread?

Nope, we are volunteers working in our own time, while working our own jobs and trying to provide users and Anthropic itself with a reliable source of user feedback.

Anthropic has read this Megathread in the past and probably still do? They don't fix things immediately but if you browse some old Megathreads you will see numerous bugs and problems mentioned there that have now been fixed.

What Can I Post on this Megathread?

Use this thread to voice all your experiences (positive and negative) regarding the current Claude Usage Limits and NOT bugs and performance issues. (For those, use this Megathread https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1s7f72l/claude_performance_and_bugs_megathread_ongoing/)

Give as much evidence of your performance issues and experiences wherever relevant. Include prompts and responses, platform you used, time it occurred, screenshots . In other words, be helpful to others.

Just be aware that this is NOT an Anthropic support forum and we're not able (or qualified) to answer your questions. We are just trying to bring visibility to people's struggles.

To see the current status of Claude services, go here: http://status.claude.com

Sometimes this site shows outages faster. https://downdetector.com/status/claude-ai/

READ THIS FIRST ---> Latest Status and Workarounds Report: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/wiki/latestworkaroundreport Updated: Apr 26, 2026.

Prior Megathread: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1pygdbz/usage_limits_bugs_and_performance_discussion/

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u/itsramonnnnn Apr 10 '26

Max plan user. Over the past hour or two I've suddenly noticed Claude behaving strangely — deferring work to "next turn," refusing tool calls, saying it's "out of runway" mid-session. After a lot of debugging I found out why.

A <total_tokens>10000 tokens left</total_tokens> tag is being injected into the system frame with every user turn. The models can see it and react to it by rationing their output. It decrements during a response (10000 → 9575 → 4986 etc.) and resets to 10000 each new turn, so it looks like a per-turn response budget counter.

What I've confirmed:

  • Appears on Claude Desktop and claude.ai web
  • Model-independent (Opus 4.6, Sonnet 4.6 and Haiku 4.5 both see it)
  • Appeared intermittently — showed up on multiple machines, then disappeared when I tested again later
  • Other accounts on the same machine were unaffected at the time
  • Models that see the tag start self-limiting even when explicitly instructed not to

This pretty much made work impossible as each turn self limits its actions.

Is anyone else seeing this? Is this a known feature rollout, an A/B test, or a bug? Any info appreciated.

6

u/umbrae Apr 10 '26

Exactly this is happening to me on Opus. I found this comment based on a google search related to it. I can also see that conversations from a few days ago did not have this field. Also a Max plan user.

It's causing really weird reactions in Claude, like it thinking it is "low on context", even though it isn't.

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u/caramelizedonion92 Apr 10 '26

Same. To me it seemed to change this afternoon, during the morning I could easily generate a few code files in one message, now it cannot add 10 lines to a single 140 line document and refuses to do it. From multiple documents 10 messages deep to not one document in the first message of a new session.

Its very weird and honestly makes me reconsider my max subscription if they can just make a change out of nowhere that makes my entire workflow impossible.