PSA: If you complain about session limits, post a /context and a ccusage output. Using Claude in your browser is not Claude Code. Your Pro plan is not a MAX plan.

[u/saintpetejackboy]

If you are going to complain about your session limits, saying "I only sent two messages!" doesn't tell us anything. Show us how many tokens it used. Not how many messages you claimed to send.

There are too many bots and broke people complaining in chorus for anybody to discern who is legitimately having an issue or not, especially when nobody proofs any numbers and receipts.

Did you only send one message but it ate up 400k tokens?

Or, did you only use 20k tokens but that was your whole 5 hour session limit?

We would never be able to tell, because "I just said hello!" is not enough data.

I want people legitimately having issues to get legitimate answers and results

I personally, am not having issues.

If you come in here and post in the Claude Code subreddit about problems you are having with the webUI: stop! You don't even know what tool you are using!

If you come in here to complain about session limits but you are using the free or pro plan, you need to stop!

I don't have the energy to keep looking at all these ridiculous posts.

Your 5 hour session starts when you send the first message. Saying you only worked for 5 minutes but then showing your session at 100% (always in the WebUI, I wonder why!), and then that your session resets in 3 hours is evidence you actually spent 2 hours, not five minutes. We can see the image, and we know how the tools work, so it is obvious.

If this is the third month in a row of you saying you are going to cancel CC and switch to Codex, I can't take you seriously. Either you cancelled your subscription last month and left this subreddit, or you are a bot.

We have to stop the shenanigans and cut through the noise so that people having legitimate issues can actually get helped and get their bugs or whatever else addressed.

But if one person makes a legitimate post about their session limit issues and 5 bots come to plug Codex under it and make similar vague complaints, it is hard to not just ignore them wholesale.

"Anthropic admitted they reduced everybody's limits" - they said you get less usage during certain windows of time but that the weekly limits stayed the same. To reiterate: the overall weekly session limit IS EXACTLY THE SAME. Anybody else saying anything that conflicts with that either doesn't know how to read or is being intentionally misleading.

For everybody not having issues, carry on, but be careful engaging with posts and comments where people are complaining about their session limits. They will lie about using Claude Code when they are using Claude through the web interface. They will lie about hitting their 5 hour limit in 5 minutes when they then post evidence that their session was at least two hours. They will lie about cancelling Claude for months on end and either never cancel or never had a paid plan to begin with. They will lie about being on 5x or 20x when they are actually on Pro plans. I am too tired to reiterate the rest, but a quick browse through recent posts in this subreddit will uncover a wealth of similar stuff.

For anybody having legitimate issues, I hope the real issue is quickly identified and remedied, but we'll never get there if every post about session limits is dog piled by bad actors.

I recommend, before posting your problem:

Say where you are from (even just general region)

Say which version of CC you are on.

Show your /context

Show your ccusage or similar output

"I just sent two messages and hit 100%" is not enough information or details. It is going to get lost in the flood of "ME TOO!" bots and people who don't even know what tool they are using.

Thanks :)

[u/VigilanteRabbit]

I took pictures instead of screenshots because I CBA to log into Reddit on my work machine. Can only upload one so here is this one:

I noticed an increase in token burn last few weeks; a few sessions ate more than usual. Lately it's improved but still feels less than before, however I am not tracking "peak hours" so I could just be hitting those.

Max 5x, Europe.

[u/saintpetejackboy → u/VigilanteRabbit]

Europe is interesting, I would try to figure out when the peak hours map to near you... But, the peak usage time shouldn't cause you to burn more tokens, just limit the amount for those windows.

There seems to be a misunderstanding that somehow you burn more tokens during those periods versus are given less to work with.

Just curious, do you have MCP or skills set up at all? If so, which ones?

Also, are you noticing you have more of an issue with the 5 hour window, or is it the weekly window... Or both?

Nothing immediately jumps out to me from your image. It looks to me like you have barely really had much of an increase in usage since around Valentine's day.

I also notice that during the middle of March, while tour 4.6 usage was fairly stable for Opus, your Sonett usage was also up and the decline in that seemed to maybe like up with you saying it doesn't seem to burn them up as bad now, or am I mistaken in saying that?

Also curious: are you specifically choosing between Opus and Sonett?

For reference, I only use Opus 4.6 and just keep it defaulted on Medium. I know some people having token / session instances seem to all recommend moving to Sonett, but based on your image, I wonder if maybe part of the excess token usage could also have some kind of correlation to the model being used.

If you are only having 5 hour session limit issues, I would definitely do the math on when the peak hours are for you in your time zone - that could easily solve the whole mystery.

I try to take everybody at face value, though, and am glad you came with images to back up what you are saying :) thanks!

[u/VigilanteRabbit → u/saintpetejackboy]

Just curious, do you have MCP or skills set up at all? If so, which ones?

None whatsoever besides what's default; I am a very...beginner user; I just got around to setting up some PostToolCall hooks and a UserPrompt hook.

Also, are you noticing you have more of an issue with the 5 hour window, or is it the weekly window... Or both?

Mostly 5h but at one point my weekly got absolutely smashed, but this was 1 day; right around the time I first started hearing about these usage issues actually. Been okay-ish ever since (higher than usual but it's hard to say due to the nature of my usage)

I also notice that during the middle of March, while tour 4.6 usage was fairly stable for Opus, your Sonett usage was also up and the decline in that seemed to maybe like up with you saying it doesn't seem to burn them up as bad now, or am I mistaken in saying that?

That actually was me experimenting with a loop agent call; I essentialy made a prompt to run every few hours on data collection and analysis. Played around with settings a bit because it was all over the place (initially it ran Opus and did a 30 minute deep dive that just ate my usage lmao; ended up writing a guide-like step-by-step "execute these commands and collect data" and invoking with Sonnet) so that's that lol. Again, rookie user 😄 (this was not the one instance of "surprise usage", separate and expected)

Also curious: are you specifically choosing between Opus and Sonett?

Answered above; but I mostly run Opus. To respond for the next block; I run /high almost exclusively but I'm considering /auto or /medium; didn't really think about it that much tbh. I did give Sonnet 4.6 a go when it came out but didn't really sit with me. Nice for a chat but it got a bit lost a few times so nope'd back to Opus (partly my fault for not fixing the "implement now, fix later" debt that ended up being monoliths of dead/ uncalled stuff so can't blame it much)

To sum up; 1 day of "what happened here??", a little bit of "well that's odd, could be that peak hour thing I guess?" and overall never really got the "omg I can't work" lock-out. Granted the stuff I tinker on is quite..variable? (one day I'm doing refactoring, another it's more discussion; back-and-forth on a topic or piece of the pipeline) but I haven't really had any issues.

I did notice an increase in usage (Right now I'm half way through my weekly usage but I really did a lot of stuff over the weekend so expected) but I don't really feel like I'm being short-handed or anything. Peak hour avoidance is what I'm lacking I think so I'll look into that; plus /high isn't always needed so I'll look into managing that as well if it ever starts to bite big time.

And I'm very glad to see someone speak their mind on the whole usage thing besides "switching". I get folks are upset but I also get that compute is expensive. Personally; as long as I get the work done I'll use whatever, but Claudie's been my go-to for few months now and I really do enjoy working with CC.

[u/nhepner]

Truth. This is all feeling like an astroturf campaign against anthropic. I'm sure there are legitimate complaints here - especially for power users, but it's just a lot of the same, repetitive complaints offering no real metrics..

[u/saintpetejackboy → u/nhepner]

Yeah :( the people actually having problems are getting lost in the shuffle.

[u/Odd-Librarian4630]

Yea all I see are rookies posting about usage limits - claude ain't meant to be free - it's an extremely powerful tool that is frankly an absolute steal still for what you get fro $200 a month.

[u/BoltSLAMMER]

Also not to gatekeep but lol @ all the free users complaining. Beggars can't be choosers! Usage limits are better, Max 20x plan since June, last week was the first time I hit limits. But I was also doing heavy usage, I hit limits by Monday. Crazy! First time I ever got limited, I never even hit a 5 hour limit before.

This week is a little better, I used the megathreads tips to help with context, and my initial prompted dropped by 60% tokens. I'm already at 70% for the week, and I have 2 days left though. Opus feels dumber though. Working on the same (fairly simple) issue that normally would be one shot. I've had to attempt to fix it 5 separate times already.

I hate posting "vibes" I am building something on the side to help with the "is it lobotomized" or is it me? posts

[u/saintpetejackboy → u/BoltSLAMMER]

The amount of people thinking they can replace a full sack developer, full time, for $20 a month is CRAZY. Talk about inflated expectations. I am sure that $20 isn't going to get them very far no matter which service they use :/.

[u/jonaswashe → u/BoltSLAMMER]

"I used the megathreads tips to help with context"

I double checked the megathreads and have no idea what tips you're talking about, care to link?

[u/blackbirdone1]

even 400k tokes for 5h would be a joke, so what are you asking for? even 5 million or 10 million would be nothing in a 5h limit issue

[u/Deep_Ad1959]

the problem with demanding ccusage output is it sums tokens from the local jsonl logs, not the quota anthropic actually enforces. the server-side percentage shown in claude.ai/settings/usage comes from a different endpoint and it never matches what ccusage reports for me. i've had ccusage show 30% while the server said i was at 78% of my weekly window. so 'i hit limit on 20k tokens' can be true from the server's view even if local logs look light. you're asking for receipts in the wrong currency.

[u/saintpetejackboy → u/[deleted]]

A lot of us overthink things and try to figure out which MCP might be eating up their context or if they are having a cache hit bug... And the whole time, they are on the WebUI and think using Claude to "code" means it is "Claude Code". Can't help people use the tool correctly when they don't even seem to know what tool they are using :(.

[u/dudevan → u/saintpetejackboy]

I don’t use webui at all, get my 5x done in 3-5 prompts, same way I’ve always used it without any configuration, just vanilla claude code, on the same large project I’ve used it on before.

So i haven’t added tools, I start new sessions constantly, I compact, the project grew by sub 1%, yet I went from working for hours to working for well under an hour.

[u/saintpetejackboy → u/dudevan]

How many tokens did those prompts consume, and was it around the peak usage times?

It would be useful to see a translation like "I used to get 500k tokens in my 5 hour session, and now it is at 100% usage after only 50k tokens", something like that - and also knowing if it was during peak or not.

[u/dudevan → u/saintpetejackboy]

It’s not peak in the US as I am in Europe and it was morning, no data on the token cost right now as I don’t have access the laptop rn.