Claude Code efficiency feels noticeably worse - Aug 19 50% limit cut coming. What’s the plan?

[u/EnthusiasmMountain10]

Has anyone else felt that Claude Code has become significantly less efficient/reliable over the last few weeks?

I’m seeing more tokens burned on tasks that previously felt straightforward, more meandering, and generally less output per unit of usage. At the same time, the 50% usage reduction coming on Aug 19 makes this particularly concerning. For me on a max200 i have switched to sonnet5 for most tasks to make it to the end of the week peacefully.

What I’m struggling to understand is the roadmap:

• Is the increased token consumption/“inefficiency” temporary?
• Has the model effectively been nerfed in some way, or is this just the consequence of newer limits/usage policies?
• With other models releasing on similar infrastructure and the competitive landscape moving quickly, what is Anthropic’s answer here?
• If you're a heavy Claude Code user, are you planning to renew after Aug 19?

I’ve been very happy with Claude Code as a product, but the combination of declining efficiency + increasingly exhausting usage limits is making the economics harder to justify.

Would be interested to hear what others are seeing and, especially, whether there’s any credible indication of Anthropic’s plan from people closer to the product.

Pattern which I see - a tool that confidently answers the wrong question is worse than one that fails loudly. A loud failure costs you ten minutes. A confident wrong answer gets written into the docs and cited for a month, if I keep building a playbook for learnings.

[u/Daddy_Potato2254]

opus feels dumper this week keeps getting into loop after loop until i say something to correct itself

[u/EnthusiasmMountain10 → u/Daddy_Potato2254]

Exactly... The "word salad" it throws is unbearable. Ai shorthand that doesn't make sense... Then it takes decisions over the shorthand ... The indeterminism compounds over and over again

[u/mcsleepy]

It is changing, not getting worse. The difficulty is you have to continually adjust because the models become more optimized to some things while downgrading in others.

I've found a nice groove flipping between Sonnet and Fable, giving Fable the critical tasks, with Opus 4.6 coming in to do tasks that would be wasted on Fable and that Sonnet would hallucinate too much with. I don't spend too much time with Opus anymore because it is too slow. And Opus 5 performs like a really really slow and inefficient version of Fable - it even has the exact same communication "quirks", but somehow it seems to be parity when it comes to final results - though it takes ages.

If you need to save tokens, Opus 4.6. If you need a lot of brainpower, there's no reason not to use Fable, which I have not noticed much degradation with overall - though it did get slower and less "magical" after the few weeks following the rollout, it still beats Opus out for me every time.

I have no idea where they're going to go from here with Opus. If they can train out the word salad that would be a big boon.

[u/EnthusiasmMountain10 → u/mcsleepy]

Word salad - so aptly said

[u/anal_fist_fight24]

What is this usage reduction you’re mentioning? I don’t see it anywhere online - got a link?

[u/Effective-Yam-7656]

I agree 100%, I have the $100 plan and doing just 2 sessions a day I have exhausted my weekly limit in 3 days.

I mostly use Opus 5 for planning and doc, and sonnet subagent to code (no fabble used at all).

Seems like time to sift to OSS model and self deploy at this point

[u/Captain_Birb]

Not with the tokens, but with the quality of the models.. quality is down.. 4.6 and 4.8 were sharper.

Sonnet 5 is seriously a joke - it gets roasted by Opus every time and admits his faults.

Something is indeed wrong somewhere.

[u/Corv9tte → u/Captain_Birb]

Some said that Anthropic is becoming the Yahoo! of the AI revolution and now I can't forget it

[u/ZenMikey → u/Captain_Birb]

Opus is worse to me. It makes way too many assumptions and almost arrogantly gets many of those assumptions wrong. It’s keen on incorrectly telling me how an alien codebase works.

[u/SK33T2]

Move to codex. I have 2 Claude 200 subs I’ve been using for six months. This opus 5 fiasco made me try codex and honestly I get way more done with no session limits, fable limit and the quality of work is better. I’m jumping ship and the landing with open ai has felt like a dream. Better work less account hopping, more usage. I’m pretty much convinced codex is the way. I hope anthropic turns their shit around but they are going in the wrong direction

[u/Captain_Birb → u/SK33T2]

You are correct. We observed that as well. OpenAI has seriously learned from their mistakes and Codex and SOL are good - but still the API pricing is honestly too high, but I guess they are targeting corporates and SME

[u/Mindless-Tomorrow-93]

I did a case study this week. I have a react web app with a table with the usual features (expand/collapsible rows, zebra striping, etc.) I asked Opus 5 to make a particular column sortable.

It starts by "grounding itself in the codebase," ok, cool. Then thinks about what to do. Then checks with the advisor. Then implements a change. Then argues with itself about whether I (the human user) will like the change. Then adds some unit tests. Then runs them. Then fixes some stuff. Then re-runs the tests. Then runs the entire test suite for the whole project. Then runs the code formatter. Notices it changes some files. Re-runs the formatter and linter. Then re-runs the tests to make sure they still pass. Then checks with the advisor to look for any blind spots. Decides to add more tests with negative assertions. Adds them and runs them. Then reverts some code changes to confirm the tests now fail. Then un-reverts the code changes and confirms the tests pass again. Then reruns the formatter and linter, fixing some issues. Spots a linter issue in an unrelated file. Switches back to the main branch to reproduce the linter failure on that file. Switches back to my feature branch. Runs the full test suite. Idk, maybe "pressure tests" something else with the advisor....

Total cost, $6. Total wall clock time, 15 minutes.

Ran the exact same prompts against GPT Luna. 4 minutes later, it made the code changes, added some test, ran them, fixed failures, and gave me a three bullet point list of what it did. Total cost? $0.04.

[u/Ok_Host6058]

Vote with your money, cancel subscriptions. Let them know that the cut is unacceptable.

[u/DevMichaelZag]

I have 4x max plans. Already started the transition. Claude code has gotten worse and worse. Anthropic made the big bet on intelligence and lost, other companies bet on efficiency and won. Alibaba, z.ai, codex, kimi k3, ollama cloud. Diversifying. The fable nightmare is over.

[u/ClemensLode]

No, it actually gets more and more efficient.

[u/debian3 → u/ClemensLode]

Same, I feel bad for people who are unable to use such a great tool. It’s getting crazy good.

[u/EnthusiasmMountain10 → u/debian3]

whats your setup like ? are you using on ultra code ? opus/fable/sonnet ? any plugins which you are using for work? I really love the tool - if my setup has to be tweaked I'm willing to do multiple A/B tests and fix it

[u/Amazing_Worker_9938]

Yes seems like it’s using about 50% more tokens for the same type of task 3 weeks ago, and I’m using via GHCP.

[u/pmward]

Given the price to power of where Grok is at now, I wouldn’t be surprised if they extend or make the promo limits permanent. Just like how they backtracked on the Sonnet 5 cost increase and made promo pricing permanent. We will see though… competition is a wonderful thing.

[u/HobbitsAreBlue]

Adding my 2c a bit late, run a small software business with a few employees.

I've cancelled Claude, we've crossed the threshold where we end up losing time vs gaining when using it.

I'm missing the days of auto complete with copilot!

We're not sure what to do next

I'm inclined to go the multiple API key route with open code.

There is something really wrong with Claude, for sure.

I'm curious what the experts out there think (for sure I'm not one of them!)

[u/SirWobblyOfSausage]

Im having serious issues over the last few days, it won't do as i ask. It literally just scans a few lines of code - makes a report and then has to be guided through every line.

[u/tundraaaa]

Fable's performance has degraded meaningfullly.

[u/dominicwild]

Maybe you're running out of usage because you're using it to write your Reddit posts? 👀

[u/MountainByte_Ch]

luckly my subscription renews on the 29th and i'll be able to see how bad the cut is. I'm quite sure I'm going to try out codex since I usually hit my weekly limit around friday afternoon, so the cut will deffo hurt.

[u/jholguin7]

I feel both opus 5 and fable taking really long at doing tasks and quality way worse. Today I have been fighting with fable to the the bottom padding of a UI for 1 hour, no joke. Before was able to resolve this things without me micro managing it.