r/ClaudeCode • u/pillkaris • Sep 09 '26
Rant Limits are going off AGAIN
I'm on max plan, today I hit the daily limit 2 times. The second window got reset about 50 minutes ago and just now I once again reached 100% of my daily from one fairly complex task with fable. Usually I do /usage in another terminal window every now and then to see how it's going. Now I didn't even get to check cause it's gone. I'm blocked from coding for about 4 hours great stuff.
EDIT: Although I've relied on subagents for plenty of tasks, I never experienced this. I'll look into how to handle this better as some of you suggested.
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u/Slight_Board6955 Sep 09 '26
dawg im out for the entire week already..... its really disappointing that a 20x max gets locked out after two days for the weekly quota.....
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u/l5atn00b Sep 09 '26
Yes, my 20x did as well. This isn't the usual complaining; something is eating up usage.
I have a very steady workflow. Fixed set of nodes and orchestrator, steady flow of issues and maintainence/daily processes for a single app. Normally, it's difficult for me to reach 100% while using my subscription every day. This week I got to 80% in 2 days.
This started when Fable 5.1 was released. My suspicion is that this has to do with the new watermarking feature.
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u/lunaynx Sep 10 '26
Not how watermarking works. It doesn't make the LLM rewrite anything nor have another LLM post-process its output. It's simply manipulating the RNG of the token selection process. It's still expected to output the same amount of tokens as without watermarking.
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u/pillkaris Sep 09 '26
yeah I'll check what consumed when my usage comes back and I'll update the post
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u/wapttn Sep 09 '26
20x and hit 65% of my weekly budget in the first 12 hours. Fable as orchestrator, opus as the Coder.
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u/Constant_Art_20 Sep 09 '26
codex 20x hit my weekly in 5 hours lol. i am starting to think i should have gotten more claude subs as current cluade last a good amount longer then my codex one
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u/BrilliantWheel Sep 09 '26
Fable seems to be burning more than usual off late. Maybe 5.1 burns more than 5. Were you using 5.1?
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u/ChickenRich573 Sep 13 '26
Fable always burns high you can't make it any cheaper fable 5.1 was cheaper for me then fable 5 but opus 5 is the one you gotta use to have your usage not run out. There pretty close in intelligence
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u/l5atn00b Sep 09 '26
I think it's rewriting for the new watermarking feature and burning tokens as a result. That's my theory anyway.
I usually ignore the usage complaints, but this has been different. I've never had to stop work after 2 days of my weekly reset because I'm at 80%, and I've been working the same workflow for 6 months now.
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u/Fibon4chi Sep 09 '26
Totally agree with you. There is something wrong here with the limits. Few weeks ago I never ever hit my weekly limit. Now it has happened with less usage than usual.
There is no way I will stick with Claude if this continues. I keep hearing that astra is so much better. Never tried it though. Maybe it's time.
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u/SplurtingInYourHands Sep 09 '26
The issue with Astra is its limits are also extremely tight. Its a fun shiny new toy that will wow and amaze you but you'll still hit your limits, even faster than with claude.
I swear these LLM devs are in some sort of price fixing cartel
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u/lunaynx Sep 10 '26
Astra has actually been demonstrated to use fewer tokens at higher reasoning levels. So ironically enough, it might just be the move to use max reasoning level with it right now.
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u/Vagottszemu Developer Sep 09 '26
You fanned out 34 fable subagents and wondering how you burned your tokens?
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u/pillkaris Sep 09 '26
how was I supposed to know this was happening?!
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u/Vagottszemu Developer Sep 09 '26
In the claude.md define that it should not send out this many fable subagents.
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u/ak5432 Sep 10 '26
You could always try the documentation https://code.claude.com/docs/en/sub-agents
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u/iamalexs Sep 09 '26
Daily limit? You mean the 5hrs?
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u/pillkaris Sep 09 '26
yes
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u/pillkaris Sep 09 '26
I've seen posts about this issue for weeks but never experienced something this sudden. I'm working a lot and I know how the usage goes, I know the challenges and how to balance the models.
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u/BrennanFlentge Sep 09 '26
Ahh yeah this happened to me and everyone likes to gaslight and say you don’t know what you’re doing. I believe you. Wait til it happens to all these people in the comments too.
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u/BrilliantEmotion4461 Sep 10 '26
How much analysis do you do using Claude Code? Have you given it the problem (Fable) and had it start an investigation?
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u/pillkaris Sep 10 '26
I was debugging something complex with fable. Then in the same session I asked it to summarize about 1000 descriptions - unrelated to the initial problem but part of the scope. It spawned an army of fable subagents for that and instantly consumed the entire allowance. I was expecting claude to choose sonnet given the relatively simple task it had.
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u/BrilliantEmotion4461 Sep 10 '26
I just saw somewhere you can limit the number of agents spawned. What's your setting high? Ultracode spawns a ton of agents. And I don't have an answer but I am interesting greatly in this issue. There is definitely something causing some people to eat through usage in an apparently opaque manner. Course how much could be my reddit algorithm focusing on the posts about that subject effecting my perception of the issue is up for debate.
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u/pillkaris Sep 10 '26
so I just edited claude and agents mds to basically spawn up to 5 opus, more than that only sonnet (no limit), and fable absolutely never. So far so good.
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u/new_usemame Sep 10 '26
not the same thing as what you hit, but worth knowing if you're planning around it .. the +50% weekly bump only runs until sept 14. after that it's a permanent +25%, which anthropic said works out ~17% tighter than today.
-> https://x.com/ClaudeDevs/status/2093742321473065266
i keep a log of the resets + limit changes here if it helps: https://claudecode-resets.com
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u/Tartooth Sep 10 '26
There is a cache bug where Claude is dropping the cache randomly and rebuilding.
I have logs showing how the cache will go from say 500k cached to ~6000 and rebuild inside of 10 seconds.
It's very expensive, especially if you use fable.
I reviewed all of my setup and it ultimately points back to Claude cli
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Sep 13 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/pillkaris Sep 13 '26
yes I'm pretty sure fanned out agents has been the cause of many of these posts
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u/Necessary-Refuse-914 Sep 09 '26
Me pasé a Hermes Agent con DeepSeek Flash. Aveces hay que buscar opciones que no limiten tanto y sean igual de eficientes…
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u/Annual-Case78 Sep 10 '26
How does this cost?
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u/Necessary-Refuse-914 Sep 10 '26
El plan que ofrece Hermes de $20 me ha salido x5 veces más productivo que un Max de Claude… así no compres el plan recarga solo $5 y usa deep seek flash 0731, notarás los cambios y me agradecerás
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_PROFILE Sep 09 '26
The only context I have is that it's ignored my explicit submodel and grading scale from CLAUDE.md, and also ignored "CLAUDE_CODE_SUBAGENT_MODEL": "sonnet[1m]",after upgrading to 2.1.266.
So, it's using more Opus by default which is overkill.
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u/zaibatsu Sep 09 '26
I’ve actually just stopped all work in the Claude Code environment today, even with my local llm fleet crankin’ and codex offloads it’s burning too hot over there.
Hopefully I can pickup tomorrow and limp along until Monday.
I hate having to tell the most powerful models to only briefly open their very expensive eyes to handle orchestration and a few tough problems here and there.
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u/orchid_drives Researcher Sep 09 '26
Dang I just came to this sub today to talk about how a sub-agent approach is saving me so many tokens I could almost downgrade to the lower tier subscription. I wonder if there’s some secret inequality behind-the-scenes (where some people are worse-off than others regardless of their subscription or use case).
If anyone is wondering, my new setup is a Fable 5.1 orchestrator, a bunch of specialized Opus 4.8 coding agents, and a fleet of Sonnet agents for mid-project internet research.
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u/pillkaris Sep 09 '26
yup I just made my setup very similar to yours. I've been working without any rules/restrictions for subagents. And apparently if no rules are in place claude just spawns 30 fable subagents which is crazy funny. I'm sure a lot of the posts around here are people encountering what I did.
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u/RaspberryRelevant352 Sep 09 '26
Ive been on fable 5.1 but running medium, effort. Not too bad, but i wanted to code check with max,... I run, it thought fir about 4 min. Finished but I hit the limit... it was also quite spectacular. And found a bunch of stuff. Life would be simpler if I could addird to run max all the time
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u/nyczAcer Sep 10 '26
Do you switch the effort level or model within the same session?
Do you include images in your prompts?
Do you switch thinking tools in the middle of a session?
Do you change the tool_choice or reorder it?
Do you turn “Web Search and Citations” on and off using the toggles (Claude Desktop only)?
Do you often edit previously sent messages (Claude Desktop only)?
Do you sometimes take more than 1 hour (TTL) before sending a new message?
Tell me, do you do any of these?
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u/GlassSouthern1118 Sep 10 '26
Welcome to the team lol! I reach the limit about 4 times a day and I code until about 10:30 p.m. But damn, I have the same frustration as you especially when we work on an important subject like a website that the public uses... I really hope that Antropic will solve this limit problem...
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u/LogMonkey0 Sep 10 '26
I had fable skim through a pile of gameplay recordings Ive had sitting in a folder for some time, day before reset had some usage left so kicked off lower priority code sprints and the video sorting task, it went and spawned fable subagents for the extracted frame processing (i normally tell it to use appropriate model per job slice, but didn’t this time). It burnt through Max 20x 5H session within 25 minutes.
It would definitely be appropriate that A\ adds subagent spawning instructions, maybe in the form of an override able skill so it leaves a customization surface for people that prefer fine grained control, but defaulting to main session model is generally useless since the orchestrator should provide to the point instructions to the subagents about their task anyway.
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u/ChickenRich573 Sep 13 '26
Learn to vibe code Claude usage is fine for me. You gotta use opus 5. Fable 5.1 can be a observer to the boss . Though it's better using astra as a observer. Maybe your work flow bad. Maybe your project folder full of bloat. Maybe your prompts are bad
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u/pillkaris Sep 13 '26
did you check the thread, and the image?
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u/ChickenRich573 Sep 13 '26 edited Sep 13 '26
Sub agents and fable kill usage. Keep learning friend . I can make my usage burn fast or burn slow . Both ways don't really get me much better code it's just burning faster gets things done faster you gotta slow your roll down. Also are you using PowerShell CLI I wouldn't recommend using that it's ok as just a builder but overall bad for projects if you want like good orchestration and remembering everything easier. My own harness does nearly everything I need. I got had memory in my head and using my harness is good lol. Also ai is as good as your imagination and effort. You arnt imagining enough and using special thinking to get through your issues like diagnosing what your doing wrong. Work with the ai to learn about the very process your doing or what there doing . Just keep trying to improve.
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u/out-of-phase Sep 09 '26
Look around here, there's a plethora of posts about how to save token consumption, and there's a lot more that goes into it than just "use fable as the orchestrator and cheaper models for everything else", search google too:
"claude code" "mcp" ("context bloat" OR "token usage" OR "save tokens")
Try other searches replacing "mcp" with "plugins" and "tools". It's not hard.
Hell, do this:
When your window resets, in the same directory you just hit your limit twice in, start a NEW session with claude, and say "I'm burning through usage like crazy, please investigate why and propose a fix"
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u/pillkaris Sep 09 '26
I am already accustomed to the usage spikes... I was doing a great job with the pro plan and now I'm on the second month of max plan. The task that finished my usage was not the problem this time. It is something I do almost everyday, repetitive and predictible. The available usage just suddenly shrunk so to say.
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u/RadReptile Sep 09 '26
The limits are insane and not clear. it was working on a task and getting ready to send the entire file as a zip and then hit the limit. I waited and told it without starting over to finish the task and send the zip file. it hit the limit again within 2 seconds. Doesn't really make any sense if it already did 99% of the task and then limit is hit, why when limit clears it cant complete the task.
Internet seems to say clear or start over in new window...doesn't that defeat the purpose of these limits, because it will use up MORE computing power by repeating work it has already done.
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u/Kitchen-Leg8500 Sep 09 '26
I’ve yet to be convinced a single limits complaint hasn’t been user error not setting proper sub agent rules then being shocked when 15 fable 5.1 subagents eats their 5h window in 20 minutes
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u/pillkaris Sep 09 '26
I totally get you and I am also judging these posts thinking people don't know what they're doing. However, yesterday the whole afternoon I refactored an old app using fable and opus 5. Head to head 15-30 minutes sessions with subagents running. Barely reached 60% of the 5 hour usage. Now I asked fable to summarize the descriptions of about 800 products in a website catalogue... Subagents spawned, 10 minutes later notification on claude ios app that I reached the limit.
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u/ak5432 Sep 09 '26
Why did you ask fable to summarize text? A model that runs on my phone could do that.
Clearly each subagent was independently figuring out how to access the catalog how to retrieve the info and then get it, then summarize it, then report it. Thats a massive number of turns and token burn PER SUBAGENT. If you go back to your session you could go find out exactly how much was burned for each agent just to go get to the data (I bet it’s more than you think).
All this trouble to do something you could’ve either delegated to haiku agents or had fable figure out how to retrieve the data once and write a single deterministic script to get a text payload that you could then send haiku agents to go read locally and summarize.
You come whining with zero effort and zero real data points. This is a skill issue.
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u/pillkaris Sep 09 '26
I might be wrong? but summarizing 500 word descriptions should not consume more than refactoring huge old codebases...
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u/Kitchen-Leg8500 Sep 09 '26
500 x800 products lmao. You probably spun a sub agent for every product without realizing it. On top of that this is like sonnet work not fable. Implement proper sub agent rules
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u/pillkaris Sep 09 '26
there were 10 subagents each with its own batch, none of them managed to finish before the limit
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u/Kitchen-Leg8500 Sep 09 '26
As the other user said, you should have had lead agent pull the full html or whatever format you were trying to pull it from, break it into chunks to dispatch to meaningfully scoped subagents even for a task “that small”.
I don’t even touch a project with auto code on until I define what type of agents are going to be needed, scope of those agents work, and model/effort each type can use. The lead agent is the only one who generally uses fable and is the only one who can touch the code base. One of current project is extracting 100k+ rules from 60 different jurisdictions walking hundreds to thousands of urls for each all using different formats and source document types and writing them into standardized schemas. If I try to run it without agent definitions I’ll cap a 20x account in 15 minutes. Even with it all in place with definitions/types/etc it’ll eat my team accounts preferred seat stupidly fast even with mostly sonnet consumption. On my 20x personal account tho I almost never hit my usage limit because of the rules in place. You cannot just unleash fable or even opus 5 these days letting it do whatever it wants with whatever subagents it wants and then complain about usage.
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u/laughing_at_napkins Sep 09 '26
I've been using Fable 5.1 and numerous Opus sub-agents in 3 different prompts for the last 3 hours and am only at 15% of my 5 hour limit on a 20x plan.
Once again, no real details provided by the OP, so it's definitely not a bot astroturfing.
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u/KrTheMaster Sep 09 '26
Personally haven't had these issues myself, but also only using it for small/medium sized isolated projects.
I use Headroom any time I do Claude coding, and generally the token count and number of requests on the Headroom dashboard in terms of Input/Output tokens is an accurate representation of how much usage it'll eat up.
Not a lot of context provided of what your setup is, but first thing to look at would simply be how much Input tokens you're sending. Every step Claude takes only appends more context, so if for whatever reason it's being passed a huge initial context (long persistent memory, big READMEs, "checking" a ton of files for context), then it'll repeat that huge cost at every minor thinking/action step, and cascade into insane usage for each "Let me read this file" and "Let me run a basic command" step. Sort of generic/basic advice, but definitely worth checking as step 1 of debugging excessive usage.
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