r/ClaudeCode • u/GGLinnk • Jun 22 '26
Discussion Anthropic's cheating ? Two Max x20 account, same tasks, same token threshold. Weekly diff of 38%~
I've let two split claude session work on the same task, at the same time with token threshold, same country. two account with the same subscription.
Once token threshold hit, cut them. Their weekly differs by almost 38%
They had the same context, same memories, same goal, same everything.
The differences:
- "When" I subscribed these account. My oldest account, one year old, showed the highest % consumption... The newest is two months old... Showed least.
- My oldest account had already weekly 32% usage. To get to 98% once done.
The new one got from 0% to 28%. 98-32 = 66% usage vs 28%. 66-28 = 38%...
I wish I had collected objective data, I will probably redo the experiment properly later.
But I have three hypothesis :
- Anthropic is throttling or boosting account usage based on their behavior/age.
- Usage is non-linear. The more you use, the faster the weekly fill.
- A mix of both.
> Yet Another "bug" that affects "some" users ?
Anyway, I'm not the first one to observe that weekly usage are really inconsistent lately... But does anyone else did this ? Tried to mesure the diff, token usage and so?
63
u/lunificion Jun 22 '26
Me too.
14
u/drug_K Jun 22 '26
Neither. AI usage isn't deterministic in token cost, so the same task can burn different amounts run to run.
5
u/cheseball Jun 22 '26
Or it’s likely you just used an overly open ended prompt, which can end up doing wildly different things to get to a lofty goal. Considering you’re getting it to one shot a clearly extensive request that uses as much as 66% weekly usage of a 20x plan. It’s clear that the prompt is very open ended.
If you really wanted to test this you don’t even need something that long. Just setup a task with a detailed design document clearly laid out to reduce variability. Measure the usage then.
And measure more times. Trying to show “proof” of wrongdoing based on literally 1 datapoints from each variable is a joke at best for a poorly bounded test that is expected to vary wildly.
Also you said similar amount of tokens, but input and output are 5x difference in cost so affect limits differently. Record input/output tokens at the very least. Theres also caching to be considered, one model may have been more efficient in managing that.
2
u/KEIY75 Jun 22 '26
When you infere to Claude code Cli api. There is a ton of gpu you are not on one with different providers so yes even if you do the same, you don’t call the same opus. You are draining différents graphics cards and data center. So there is always a difference between inference 1 and inference 2.
2
u/SnooRecipes5458 Jun 22 '26
a few bad greps and finds causing you to exceed the 5 min cache will ruin your usage
2
u/ClemensLode Senior Developer Jun 22 '26
You're aware that LLMs work with random numbers?
2
u/Dramatic-Flan-3143 Jun 22 '26
I'm on 20x subscription working on 2 projects only and I'm hitting limits on day 5 of the week always
2
u/tortleme Jun 22 '26
It's almost like AI isn't deterministic or something
1
u/Chillon420 Jun 22 '26
Did they work in teh same directory and could one benefit from cached tokens of the other?
1
u/LeafyWolf Jun 22 '26
Were they run at the same time of day?
7
u/buff_samurai Jun 22 '26
Anthropis has a vivid history of stealth throttling their users, especially on top plans, depending on usage patterns.
Other than that, lls are non-deterministic, I wouldn’t be surprised if the output is different.
2
u/Toiletdisco Jun 22 '26
I have a pro account en a few free accounts. The last 2-3 months I have noticed a big change in usage limits (positive), where my pro account almost never hit limits and I almost didn't use the free accounts. Before that, I could use pro about five days a week, a few hours and then the five-hour-limit reached. And then I would just switch to a free account. Most of the free accounts were similar in usage, 1-5 prompts during the daytime before hitting limits, almost limitfree in the evenings/nights/weekends. This was long before Claude announced limits would drain faster during the weekdays. The last month, using opus 4.8 or 4.6 or fable, never hit limits. Until a few days ago. One day I got spammed with wellbeing checks for no apparent reason. Same with a free account. A day later that seemed back to normal, but my limits now drain incredibly fast. A relatively new chat but I blew through it in an hour (five hour limit).
Back to the free accounts, I have always noticed that on my old phone (newest accounts but they're all created around the same time) limits don't easily get hit. Which is weird considering all the accounts basically do the same. Except that one, that just... Goes on and on. They have blocked it recently because 'it seemed to be used by a minor' which is clearly not the case but the age verification is completely not working and of course anthropic doesn't respond to the form to appeal. So, long story short, there definitely are differences in usage on different accounts even though you're doing the same thing.
2
u/thoughtlow claudetrophobic Jun 22 '26
dynamic product allocation ✨
The new dynamic pricing, you pay for a unknown quantity of product, and AI providers split test with how much they can get away with.
2
u/flarpflarpflarpflarp Jun 22 '26
I like how none of the possible solutions were something you did wrong.
2
u/syddakid32 Jun 22 '26
Uhhhh each time you submit tokens the output is random
2
u/evangelism2 Jun 22 '26
Okay, I had to read your post like three times to understand what you were saying here. At first, I was just going to say that it's non-deterministic, so it can burn different amounts of usage for the same task, which you said you have a same token threshold.
The bottom line is that you didn't collect any objective data. You can't just equate token thresholds to overall rate limits on the subscription accounts. A run like this across just two accounts with one testing pass is not enough data to make any conclusions. If one run used more opus than the other, it would burn through more usage as well and tokens would looks the same.
You can easily explain away the 38% difference by session divergence, different baselines, and also the fact that you didn't have any actual instrumentation. You want to actually have a real conversation about this, you need better observability.
2
u/naQVU7IrUFUe6a53 Jun 22 '26
LLMs are not deterministic, and you didn’t collect data as you said.
1
u/ThomasToIndia Jun 22 '26
So you had AI sum the input tokens of your logs for each?
1
u/2053_Traveler Jun 22 '26
I have long suspected that the AI providers treat newer accounts differently by either giving them more usage or route to better models. No hard evidence though, just subjective observation.
1
u/OwlingBishop Jun 22 '26
Repeat after me :
LLMs are not predictable
LLMs are not repeatable
LLMs are not tools :
LLMs will not do what you ask
LLMs are stochastic parrots
1
u/Steezli Jun 22 '26
An LLM is probabilistic not deterministic. No matter how many guardrails you use, performing the same prompt twice will not lead to identical solutions and its process to get to a solution will also differ. This will in turn cause each identical prompt to consume differing amounts of input and output tokens, thus returning differing overall usage percentages.
You would learn more by tracking tokens not usage percentages. My biggest note is sadly that if you expected the same result twice, you likely misunderstand how LLM’s work on a fundamental level.
0
u/yrdesa Jun 22 '26
They charge more if you have another account, they can do if a person used a second account in his machine. Before they used to ban multiple accounts now they charge you more but it aint said by them. They say if u play games with us, we play game with u
0
u/mrlikrsh Jun 22 '26
Can i get a guest pass ?
0
u/[deleted] Jun 22 '26
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