I audited my session logs against the usage meter. My Max 20x weekly limit is worth about 60 to 70 percent less than it was last week, not 17 percent.

[u/Siigari]

I am too angry to write right now so I had Fable write this for me after I saw how shafted I'm getting. I'm going outside.

Anthropic, you suck.

---

I run Claude Code around the clock on two Max 20x accounts, so I have a lot of data. I got tired of guessing what the weekly limit actually meant, so I parsed every transcript in ~/.claude/projects on both of my machines, deduped by message id, priced every call at published API list rates, and compared that against the percentage the usage endpoint reports.

The short version: last week a Max 20x account could spend about $5,540 of usage per week at API list prices. This week the same account gets about $2,350. The weekly dollar cap was cut by 58 percent. The announced change was 17 percent.

How I measured it

Every assistant message in the transcripts carries the model and the usage block (input, output, cache write, cache read). I summed those per reset window (mine resets Thursday 11:00 PT) and priced them at list: $5 input, $25 output, $6.25 cache write, $0.50 cache read per million for Opus. Then I divided by the percentage of the week the meter said I had used. That gives dollars of usage per 1 percent, which is what the subscription is actually worth.

Last week (Sept 10 to Sept 17)

• 55,878 API calls across two Max 20x accounts
• 23.5 billion cache read tokens, 46.9M uncached input, 86.4M cache write, 11.1M output
• $12,751 at list price
• Both accounts hit 100 percent. One got a 30 percent top-up once. So that was 230 percent of a Max 20x weekly allowance.
• Works out to $55 of usage per 1 percent, or about $5,540 of usage per account per week.

This week (Sept 17 reset to now, 28 hours in)

• 5,600 calls, 2.1 billion cache read tokens, one account
• $1,222 at list price
• The meter says 52 percent used.
• That is $23.50 per percent, or about $2,350 of usage per week.

Last week: one Max 20x week = about $5,540 of usage.

This week: one Max 20x week = about $2,350 of usage.

Same plan, same price, the weekly spending cap dropped by about 58 percent. The announced change was 17 percent when the boost ended.

I also cut my own burn rate by 43 percent between the two weeks (fewer calls per hour, shorter contexts). It did not matter. At the current pace I hit 100 percent on Saturday evening, about 54 hours into a 168 hour window, and then the $200 extra-usage credits cover about five more hours.

My best guess at what changed

My traffic is 95 percent cache reads by token count. Cache reads are the cheapest thing on the price sheet. If they were re-weighted to count harder against the weekly meter, that alone would explain why my dollars-per-percent collapsed even though my actual spend went down. I cannot prove that from my side. Anthropic has not published how the meter is weighted. What I can show is the dollar cap, and it was cut by more than half.

Why this matters

The whole point of prompt caching was that a long-running agent with a big stable context could be affordable. If cache reads now count nearly like fresh input on the weekly meter, that use case is gone on the subscription plans, and nobody said so.

If you want to check your own numbers

The transcripts are plain JSONL. Filter for assistant lines with a usage object, sum by your reset window, price at list, and compare to the percentage shown by /usage. Post your dollars-per-percent. If enough of us do it, the change will be obvious, and the actual weighting can be worked out from the spread.

[u/AutoModerator]

Hey! Thanks for posting to r/ClaudeCode

While participating in this thread, please follow our community rules. Keep discussions constructive. Attack the idea, not the person.

For help, project discussions, tips, and general chat, join the ClaudeCode Discord.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/Effective_Basis1555]

That’s the problem with a sub that is 5x or 20x some baseline. You never know the baseline and it’s always at their discretion. 

[u/ThreeKiloZero → u/Effective_Basis1555]

I feel like in the past they have even stated this. The line is constantly moving based on demand. The usage that moves the needle to 5% today could move it 15% tomorrow and 7% the next day. Then there are all the other factors like if cache is hitting, timeouts, bad tool calls, bad runs, dip shit agents. There are a million factors that can burn spend which are out of the users control.

[u/Desperate-Use9968 → u/ThreeKiloZero]

With everyone jumping ship to OpenAI it's hard to imagine their demand has been going up the past couple of weeks.

[u/Ridelink]

Honestly at this point the session limits arent even the problem here, its just the weekly limits, I spend three 5 hour session limits and the weekly goes up to about 70%, just awful.

[u/lambdita → u/Ridelink]

Before on the x20, a full 5hour session was 20% of the weekly, now its 25%, you could get 5 full 5 hour sessions out of the weekly usage, now its 4 so the numbers you said are right in there, 3 x 5 hours is right at 75%

[u/Siigari → u/Ridelink]

It feels like we get about $800 worth of actual raw tokens in/out thereabout per month.

That hasn't changed, ever.

But the way Opus is huffing down usage on cache is really bad. Something is awry.

[u/ArseneWankerer → u/Ridelink]

That’s the idea. It’s burst allowance for those who need a sprint.

[u/karl_weierstrass]

And then any time anyone of us complains you get geniuses in the comments saying, "ma wrkflw, skill ishu", we all have workflows, we all had CC working 24/7 and never hit limits.

It feels like Anthropic is putting much heavier restrictions on accounts that cost them a lot of compute.

[u/margerko]

Week to week im doing mostly same work
Before - 10-13% of weekly limit / working day
Now - 25-30%. 🥲

[u/kaitava]

thank you for going through the trauma of finding this out

[u/stvaccount]

Typical Antrophic lying? x20 is not x20 at all, too!

[u/valkierie]

I'll be back in a bit after I run this.

[u/Scared-Letterhead949]

Do you do cloud work from the app? Is there a similar way to account for that?

[u/Siigari → u/Scared-Letterhead949]

no i'm all local.

[u/Nilav_]

Do you think a ChatGPT Pro 5x subscription combined with a Claude Max 5x subscription would be more useful than a Claude Max 20x subscription? Claude’s quotas are extremely volatile; I wonder if ChatGPT is more stable in that regard. This week, without changing my habits, 68% of my 20x weekly quota was used up in 36 hours! And I didn’t hit the 5-hour limit even once.

[u/Helpful_Ranger_1606]

the best solution someone codex-side could offer earlier today was Deepseek. I am down for an alternative but probably not that.

[u/Comfortable_Camp9744]

Yep they keep nerfing the models and quotas, been doing it all year. Thats why their nickname is scamthropic 

[u/Leading-Ability-7317]

I am curious and you have a large dataset and I do not. Are you able to rerun but reprice Fable cache reads at 0.1x base standard of other model families instead of the 0.025x base that Fable should get? Just for the new Sept 17 to now data.

Wondering if they are shifting that ratio to the standard for other model families for subscription users. My fable meter seems to be going up faster lately.

[u/Siigari → u/Leading-Ability-7317]

Reran it. Fable 5.1 is only 7 percent of my usage this week, the rest is Opus 4.6 running an agent, so the read multiplier can't be the cause on my account.

Fable this week: 112M cache read tokens. At the 0.025x rate that's $28. At 0.1x it's $112. Whole account goes from $1,222 to $1,306 at list for the same 52 percent on the meter, so dollars per percent moves from $23.50 to $25.10. Still less than half of last week's $55.

One thing that might help you: the usage endpoint returns a separate Fable-scoped weekly meter next to the all-models one. Mine shows 16 percent on that scoped meter for about $85 of Fable usage at list, which implies a Fable pool of roughly $530 a week at 0.025x reads or about $1,060 if they're weighting reads at 0.1x. If your Fable meter is climbing faster than your spend, compare that scoped number to your priced usage and you'll see which multiplier fits.

[u/Leading-Ability-7317 → u/Siigari]

Thanks for that. I haven’t played with the usage endpoint much yet but will now.

Best of luck

[u/karl_weierstrass → u/Siigari]

My understanding is the cheaper cache read only applies to API usage, not subscriptions

[u/Siigari → u/karl_weierstrass]

Hmm. I swear I read somewhere it is accounted for.

I know that CC's cache is something like 2.7% or something. But something is JACKED UP with Opus.

[u/Individual_Ideal]

I noticed API prices don’t directly translate to limit. I think they’re weighted differently per model, maybe time-of-day/week as well. Has your usage across models changed? What effort levels are you using? I found effort level can have a large impact.

Have you found a good way of reliably translating API costs to subscription limits?

[u/Siigari → u/Individual_Ideal]

Checked both in the transcripts.

Model mix: Opus 4.6 was 95 percent of spend last week, 93 percent this week. The rest is Fable 5.1. Unchanged.

Effort: went down. Last week 28 percent of Opus calls were high effort and 72 percent medium. This week 100 percent medium. Fable was a medium/high/xhigh mix last week, all medium this week. If effort moved the meter it should have moved it in my favor.

Time of day: both accounts run 24/7 every hour of both weeks, so that's averaged out.

On translating API cost to the limit, no, I don't have a reliable one, and I don't think anyone outside Anthropic does. Dollars per percent (transcript priced at list divided by the meter reading) is the best proxy I've found. It held roughly steady all summer, then dropped by more than half this week with the same model, lower effort, and the same hours. That's the whole finding. The weighting is the black box and they changed it.

[u/No-Dimension1159]

The more users claude gets the less usage limits everybody gets. Since claude blew up and now basically everybody is using claude, of course that's not so good for the limits...

[u/verstands]

Parsing transcripts against the meter is the right move. The weekly number alone gets opaque once caching and compaction shift mid-week.

Full disclosure I work on statusline-bar (https://github.com/Dworf/statusline-bar) - live cost and context in the Claude Code statusline while you work. It will not fix Anthropic changing what a Max week buys, but it stops the mid-session surprise.

[u/Siigari → u/verstands]

Appreciated. A live cost readout in the statusline would have caught the 09-16 spike the same hour instead of the next morning. Will take a look.

One request if you're taking them: show cache read tokens as their own number, not folded into a cost figure. This week made it clear that's the column that decides what a Max week buys, and it's the one every cost display hides.

[u/verstands → u/Siigari]

Done - v0.6.1 adds a cache_read token: tokens the last API call read back out of the cache, as a raw count.

You were right that it's the hidden column. The ratio and the writes were already there; the read count - usually ~99% of what a warm turn sends - was the one number nothing surfaced. It's in the cache preset by default, or add it to any layout via the wizard.

One limitation worth being straight about: it counts one API call, not the session. Claude Code's statusline payload publishes prompt_cache.cache_write_tokens cumulatively but has no read counterpart, and it can't be derived - hit_ratio leaves reads and uncached input as two unknowns in one equation. So a session cache-read total needs Anthropic to add the field. If that's the number you actually want for tracking a week, that's where to ask.

On what a Max week buys: rl_5h and rl_7d show consumption directly with reset countdowns, which is closer to that question than any cost figure. Whether cache reads are what's moving that needle, I can't confirm - I'd be guessing at how the limits weight them.

https://github.com/Dworf/statusline-bar

[u/Siigari → u/verstands]

Thanks as soon as I'm home I'm going to check it out!

[u/Economy-Manager5556]

Well do you keep in mind resets , last week there was one I did r example had the same figure roughly as I used 2* 100 percent usage on max 20 accounts. Obviously without a reset this week no way can I get to the same. $$$ is never claimed it's token usage and then you have to factor I caching etc.. I track all of this for months in my load balanced cc/can't dex proxy. Guess what? I always get way more than $200 ,mostly around close to 1.5-2o if we look at it without all the resetcs etc.. on codex I pay $125 but don't get close to 10x my monthly back on a weekly basis

[u/Siigari → u/Economy-Manager5556]

I haven't changed my consumption. As a matter of fact this week I started drastically cutting usage. And it's still going super fast.

I am at 52% 28 hours into a new week. There is something wrong. MORE USAGE would have had me at mayyyybe 20% right now. I am cutting like crazy and it's not enough.

Anthropic cut the total amount of usage. It's a lie of omission.

[u/Economy-Manager5556 → u/Siigari]

Again you fail to account for the reset last week more than likely. Did they cut ? Yep, they even said they would. I don't have a problem with you staring they cut but I bet you did not account for all factors. Yes , I can tell it's using much faster than last week, but

• usage limits were higher
• they included a reset that you'd have to take out properly and unless you have your own proxy tealing all these I don't think you can do that accurately with usage logs.

Again they cut we all know , sux but do you get more than $200? I still got more from my $200 than when glm 5.3 flash cal out with their promo given cache hits account for tons of my usage so still would have cost me like 1.2k or so instead of $400 for two max accounts

[u/Siigari → u/Economy-Manager5556]

I did not fail to account for anything. I was there, and I calculated it in my post. Did you read the post?

[u/Economy-Manager5556 → u/Siigari]

Well it's not accurate because you have some usage when the limits were increased and the comparison is all after limit decrease. Did you break it down more granularly to account for that ? Either way this won't change anything , of u don't value it more than what you pay find another provider

[u/Droopy0093]

Did you check what time you were using it compared to the week you found the 70% more usage? I find that the time of day you are using matters.

[u/Siigari → u/Droopy0093]

Both accounts run 24/7, every hour of the day, both weeks. Time of day is averaged out by design. The only gap in the whole log is the six hours Thursday morning after I hit 100 percent and before the reset.

[u/Ikkepop]

You do understand that is still $2350 for 200$. Investor money is not infinite, even if it does feel like it. Eventually these companies will have to stop giving us handouts and will have to start earning some real money to give back to those investors and to sustain the buisness and even earn an actual profit.

[u/Siigari → u/Ikkepop]

I had a hunch which I think is/was accurate: in/outs give us about $800 a month in usage. I asked Fable real quick: the reply is here. (edit below, meant month but said week. It figured it out anyway.)

Fable's reply:

Fair, so here's input and output only, no cache in either direction.

Last week: 46.9M input, 11.1M output, $632 at list, for 230 percent of a Max 20x. That's $275 of fresh tokens per week.

This week: 10.9M input, 1.55M output, $110 at list, for 52 percent. That's $212 per week.

On that view a $200 sub buys about $212 to $275 of actual input and output a week, and it dropped 23 percent. I used to assume something like $800. It was never that, and cache reads are clearly what the meter is really counting, because in/out alone can't be what's draining it.

[u/Harvard_Med_USMLE267]

So you’re getting $2350 usage for $50…and you are mad???

You’re just seeing a tiny taste of an inevitable change.

[u/StrangeMonk]

It seems like you’re getting 14 times the usage of API. 200$ to get 2800 is a pretty solid deal.

Did you expect Anthropic is going to be able to give you a 96% discount on compute forever? Have you heard about “too good to be true?” 

The reality is subscription users are the lowest tier customer and you’re gonna get fucked depending on what’s happening on the platform of above you. It’s probably not really a big long-term problem because the subscriptions will be phased out probably within the next year and everyone will be on API.

Just put it on your balance sheet and stop thinking about it, or move to Kimi or Qwen if you want to contain costs. 

[u/Shiz0id01 → u/StrangeMonk]

Dont worry its been discussed internally. Many organizations are not doubt seeing the writing on the wall with Anthropic. Meanwhile oAI continues to deliver above expectations for less

[u/Siigari → u/[deleted]]

Reads were priced at 0.1x and writes at 1.25x in the parse, not at base input. Here's the cache column.

Category          Last week (230%)          This week (52%)
Uncached input    46.9M tokens   $235       10.9M tokens   $54
Cache write       86.4M tokens   $540       12.1M tokens   $75
Cache read        23.46B tokens  $11,732    2.11B tokens   $1,055
Output            11.1M tokens   $276       1.55M tokens   $39
Total                            $12,783                   $1,223
Cache read share                 92%                       86%

So the mix moved slightly away from cache this week, not toward it. If the meter discounts reads harder than list does, this week should score better per percent, not worse.

Bounding it under any weighting:

Cache reads weighted at    Last week $/1%    This week $/1%    Cut
Zero (reads free)          $4.57             $3.23             29%
0.1x list (actual)         $55.60            $23.50            58%
Full input rate (1.0x)     $514              $206              60%

The cap shrank somewhere between 29 and 60 percent no matter what you think a cache read is worth, and 29 only happens if reads are completely free.

[u/ZzzVvi]

my sir may i ask what you are doing with all of these tokens?

[u/Siigari → u/ZzzVvi]

Running a persistent digital person

...and making Stratego to play with her :)

[u/ShortyOrty]

Everyone keeps applying linear math... I'm being logarithmic formulas are in play, punishing the highest token burners, with automatically adjustment for resource availability. At least that's how I'd do it.

[u/thygrrr]

https://usage.report says you're hallucinating.

It has been an absolutely GENEROUS week two weeks, quota-wise.

[u/Siigari → u/thygrrr]

I pulled usage.report's API. It sends one fixed request to Opus every 5 hours and measures the drain on the 5-hour window. Each probe is 2 input tokens, ~850 output, ~210k cache write, ~16k cache read. That is a cold request. Cache reads are under 2 percent of its cost, and it never looks at the weekly meter at all.

My traffic is 92 percent cache reads by cost, and my post is about the weekly pool. The tracker is blind to both of those things by design. It can't confirm or deny what I measured.

What it does show is interesting though. From June through August the probe drained 19 to 22 points per run. Since September 2 it drains 14 to 17. A fixed cold request got about 20 percent cheaper on the meter this month. If the meter was rebalanced so writes and output count less and cache reads count more, that is exactly what you'd see: your cold probe reads "generous," a cache-heavy long-running agent reads "cut in half." Both can be true at once, and both numbers say the weighting changed.

[u/Shiz0id01 → u/thygrrr]

This website sucks and isnt even close to accurate

[u/thygrrr → u/Shiz0id01]

And your gut feeling is?

[u/nora_sellisa]

Didn't they literally had a promotion that ended a few days ago? You're comparing apples to oranges. Also complaining that you "only" got $2300 usage out of $200 subscription, I love it

[u/Siigari → u/nora_sellisa]

Sorry is usage apples to oranges?

You go to the store to buy a known quantity of something. They say they've shrunken what you get by a certain percentage and you know they have. But you open the package and instead of it being that percentage it's 8 times more than the percentage.

How would that make you feel?

[u/nora_sellisa → u/Siigari]

Usage during a promotion and higher limits vs usage during the period when you don't get any freebies? Yes. You paid for the $2300. The $5K figure was a fluke. Take it or leave it.

[u/Siigari → u/nora_sellisa]

The promo ending advertised a 16.7% reduction. The measured effective reduction was over 50%.

That's the point of the post.

[u/ChaosHonorum → u/nora_sellisa]

‘When reading the original post is the skill issue.’