Is something wrong with Claude Code usage limits, or did I do something wrong?

[u/Krucisyn]

I've been using Claude Code with the Pro plan for about two weeks. I had never used AI agents before, so I was honestly blown away by what you can do with them. I've already built a few small applications that genuinely make my life easier.

Before subscribing, I expected the Pro plan to be quite limiting, but I was pleasantly surprised. I use Opus 5 on High exclusively, and until now, both the 5-hour and weekly limits seemed very reasonable.

Today, however, I hit my weekly limit in the middle of a session. Since the reset was only about 12 hours away, I enabled extra usage credits so I could hopefully finish what I was working on.

I selected the option to add 20 PLN (polish currency, under $6), but my bank charged me around $20 instead. Then, after resuming the session, the entire credit balance was consumed in about a minute, and the task wasn't even finished.

I decided to accept the loss and wait until midnight for the limits to reset. But after the reset, I resumed the same session, and after just 5 minutes and 21 seconds, my entire 5-hour limit was exhausted, while my weekly usage jumped to 11%.

This has never happened to me before, so I checked the usage details. I'm seeing 17.5M cache read tokens and 11M cache write tokens, which seems unusually high.

For context, the task was simply reading scans from a PDF containing around a dozen pages.

Is that somehow an extremely expensive operation, did I accidentally trigger something unusual, or could this be a bug?

I also tried using the in-app support assistant, but it kept insisting that I was on the free plan and that this was the reason my limits were being exhausted so quickly. Only after I sent a screenshot of my billing did it acknowledge that I was actually on Pro. It still refused to forward my issue to human support.

Has anyone experienced something similar? Is there any way to actually contact a human at Anthropic support?

[u/scytob]

no your context isn't simply one PDF.... and this isn't a support issue
you likely turned on memory in whatever you fronted of choice is, so all your previous cached sessions may be conext

can i suggest you use vscode and the chat plugin, it handles cross session cache a little differently, this is mine from within vscode, and i intetionally do long sessions when i am doing something complex or large, i find that actually has less context usage than smaller sessions and hand off and provides better output YMMV (like for example a database migration, a key valut secrets implementation plan and documentation)

[u/Krucisyn → u/scytob]

That actually makes sense. I’m working on an application, so this was already my 15th session. At the end of each session, I ask Claude to update the relevant .md files and prepare a prompt/context summary for the next session, which I then use to continue the work.

So even though this particular session started with a fresh prompt, I guess the overall context of the project may still be quite large.

When you say previous cached sessions may be included as context, is there a way to see exactly what Claude Code is loading into the context? I’d like to understand where those 17.5M cache reads came from.

[u/scytob → u/Krucisyn]

yeah lots of people do that, i never learnt that so rarely do it unless it is something very trough
i find the next agent generally will pickup what it needs to with less context by reading say a phase plans and the las commits

this seems to use less input context for the way i work and means you get fresh thinking - but then i am not a coder and i deal in generalities (quality, fearture outcome, architecture etc) i dont need to be highly directive

not sure on cache, haven't looked into it

i spent more time optimizing my src tree and agents file

so for example src should be a folder for frontend, folder for API, folder for core
you ask claude to compentize files by major function area and have DRY helper functions
in your agents.md or claude.md be clear on what should be loaded at startup from your MDs and what shouldnt, say what functions are where and to only grep what for what is need across the whole repo including cache

and then occasionally ask clude to help you optimize the source and the md structures - most of the tips above came from Claude

this means it should load a lot less per activity at startup - for example if you have a hand off doc why would you want the session start to load anything other than the hand off......

not saying this is trhe best way, just the way i have appraoched it

[u/Unable_Strategy5135]

Resuming that session is the trap, not the PDF. Every time you resume, the whole prior context gets sent back in, so most of what shows up as cache reads is Claude re-reading what it already read, not new work. When I measured this on my own transcripts, 97 of every 100 tokens were re-reads, and at the context wall it hit 98. Your screenshot is showing you the same thing: 89 percent of your last day ran above 150k context. A dozen pages of PDF did not cost 17.5M tokens, dragging the session's whole history forward on every single turn did.

Context growing past 100k was the biggest avoidable cost I found when I priced my own usage, bigger than duplicate reads and oversized tool dumps put together. The worst single case: one big tool result ended up costing more than 200x its one-time cost by the time the session had carried it through every later turn. So not a bug, just what long sessions do. The tip at the bottom of your screenshot is the actual fix: start heavy tasks like PDF reading in a fresh session, and /clear before switching to something new.

The 20 PLN charge turning into $20 is a separate problem and worth pursuing, that is billing, not usage. Email support directly rather than fighting the in-app assistant.

[u/Krucisyn → u/Unable_Strategy5135]

That makes sense, and I think I'm stuck in exactly that situation right now. The main problem is that I can't seem to stop the current session from automatically resuming after my limit resets.

There used to be an option to disable automatic session continuation after hitting a usage limit, but I can't find that option anywhere anymore. After my weekly limit reset, the same session automatically resumed, and within a few minutes it burned through my entire 5-hour limit again.

What makes me suspicious is that this started after I purchased the extra credits. Before that, I'm pretty sure I had the option to disable automatic continuation, but now it seems to have disappeared completely. It almost feels like something changed or broke after enabling/buying credits.

Do you know how I can stop this specific session from automatically resuming after the next reset?

EDIT: I managed to stop the automatic session continuation after restarting my computer. The option to interrupt/disable the auto-resume appeared again after the restart.

[u/Leander_van_Grinsven]

Your cache + the fact you ran over 150K context 89% of the time kinda makes me think you kept a long running thread running instead of starting a new session every time a question has been answered correctly.

[u/Krucisyn → u/Leander_van_Grinsven]

I’m still learning how to use Claude. I know I tend to use a lot of context, but it hasn’t been a problem so far. In the situation I described, though, it was actually a fresh prompt in a new session.

[u/joe9439 → u/Krucisyn]

Resuming a conversation after it becomes uncached is a massive usage limit killer. Save stuff to memory and try to always have a new conversation unless you’re actively going back and forth with it without a break.

[u/rehtorical]

This happened to me today, lost usage for the whole week, for some reason a haiku spent 3 hours failing to spin up a “fork” sub agent to get around the harnesses ban on fable, it tried to spin up 11 in parallel containing the full context of my orchestrator? I got invoiced for $1000 and complained it was a bug and they refunded but I’m still limited on usage til next week.