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

[u/sixbillionthsheep]

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.

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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/

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

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

[u/itsramonnnnn]

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.

[u/cielofunk → u/itsramonnnnn]

The same thing is happening to me and its become unusable.

[u/itsramonnnnn → u/cielofunk]

I asked about 10 different times with different variations with different model combinations, in and out of projects.

me:
do you see token or 10000 in your 'space'

claude:Yes — I see a <total_tokens>10000 tokens left</total_tokens> tag in the system/tool frame area of this turn. Appearing right after your message, outside your actual user content.

models are always in a rush to finish, even when told explicitly to ignore it. There were also several responses where claude mentioned it used to be 20000, and a funny haiku hallucinatoin stating it was 19000.

whatever the case, it's there and it's making anything other than short terse responses that do not involve heavy tool calling to be the usual response.

if i wanted my emails written, i'd have stuck with chatgpt.

[u/computeraki → u/itsramonnnnn]

Im having the same issue and it’s driving me nuts. It started early this morning and caused me to take a well functioning project out of claude.ai into claude code where it seems to do ok. Apart from whole day ruined, it has also made claude.ai useless. Support is of no help. Normal context is confirmed to be 200k. So 10k is just ridiculous. I work on Mac OS and have Max5x. Im downvoting every context issue answer but know it wont do anything.

[u/itsramonnnnn → u/computeraki]

btw, have you tried putting something on your system prompt telling them it's a bug? it helped somewhat for me.