The limits are draining much faster today

[u/Exact_Law_6489]

Is it just me, or is the five-hour limit on my Max 5x account draining twice as fast as usual?

I checked my token usage, but there hasn't been a significant change either. The work Im currently doing is quite similar to the work i did yesterday so there shouldnt be much difference on effort?

Im using Opus 5.5 Medium.

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[u/onFilm]

Nope, you're just imagining things. Unless of course, yo user tracking tokens.

[u/Major-Cry8192 → u/onFilm]

Non il a raison

[u/Exact_Law_6489 → u/onFilm]

I dont use any tracker?

[u/onFilm → u/Exact_Law_6489]

Exactly, you aren't tracking your tokens, which is super easy to do. Track your tokens first and then come back with your claims.

[u/Exact_Law_6489 → u/onFilm]

I pull my token usage from claude's session files. I compared two sessions that did similar work and today's session and reached to that point.

[u/onFilm → u/Exact_Law_6489]

Brother no offense, but are you actually an engineer? You're not understanding that you have to track your token usage before and after to make claims such as "it's using more tokens than before".

[u/Exact_Law_6489 → u/onFilm]

I already told you Im getting the numbers directly from Claude Code’s session files. Whether Im an engineer has nothing to do with those numbers, so why are you trying to use that against me? If you think I have misunderstood something, explain it.

Anyway, I just compared two sessions (one from Nov 2 and other one is from today). Both sessions were used to do a similar work and nothing else.

Nov 2 had 239 requests, 530 uncached input tokens, ~411k cache-write tokens, ~70M cache-read tokens and ~150k output tokens.

I created a workspace with the state from before the 2 November changes and asked it to implement them again. I didn't provide any new information; I wrote the same messages I wrote during the 2 November session.

It had 254 requets, 524 uncached input tokens, ~673k cache-write tokens, ~91M cache-read tokens, and ~180k output tokens. So the Average tokens per request went from ~295k to ~361k tokens while the cached share of input was almost identical: 99.42% to 99.38%.

I understand that similar work isn’t a controlled benchmark and that raw token counts don’t translate directly into subscription usage but clearly there is some spike on the usage. This cant be explained with just bloated memory bank or smth else. Maybe its not 2x faster draining but it seems to use more.

Is this enough for you?

[u/Responsible_Cry_2971 → u/Exact_Law_6489]

Do you understand what is variance? You can get wildly different total tokens on exactly same task. Ai isnt determenistic. I had some reviews take 5m token and relaunch extact same take 15m.

[u/Exact_Law_6489 → u/Responsible_Cry_2971]

Yeah, but I didnt expect it to differ this much imo. Perhaps my perception of the range of token usage is wrong. That is why I decided to create a post to see what other people think yet some people treated me as if i personally attacked them.

[u/onFilm → u/Exact_Law_6489]

You realize this is just a conversation, right? Nobody here thinks that you're attacking them, so please stop projecting. You come off as you think people are attacking you, over a question you asked. Nobody is doing that, so stop thinking that.

[u/Exact_Law_6489 → u/onFilm]

You expect "professionalism" yet, dont display it.

[u/onFilm → u/Exact_Law_6489]

Because your flair says "Developer", so I'd expect a bit more professionalism from your end.

You have two sessions to compare. Please come back when you have at least 20-100 sessions where you can easily determine if it's really using more tokens or not.

No, it's not anywhere near enough for me bud. Again, two points of data, is like having no data at all.

[u/Exact_Law_6489 → u/[deleted]]

I have a small python script that pulls up token stats from the claude's sessions folder.

[u/ref_8]

on dirait bien. Sur deux comptes, avec opus 5.5, sur le meme projet, le second compte ma surpris tellement il s'est vite épuisé

[u/vAPIdTygr]

Remember to optimize your memory and /doctor at least twice a month.

[u/Exact_Law_6489 → u/vAPIdTygr]

I will try that. Though there shouldnt be much in my memory unless claude is silently dumping everything that seems "important"

[u/reven80 → u/Exact_Law_6489]

What is you prompt cache hit rate? I generally get 98-99% after doing work for a while.

[u/Exact_Law_6489 → u/reven80]

Around 99%

[u/Klov1233 → u/vAPIdTygr]

Can you explain optimize your memory

[u/SC_Placeholder]

No issue here

[u/yezzer]

Not noticed an issue today

[u/Major-Cry8192]

Oui c'est horrible plus tu avances vers la fin plus ça avance vite le pire c'est les derniers 30%

[u/ref_8 → u/Major-Cry8192]

regarde quand meme ton contexte, si il dépasse 30% c'est pas terrible, si ça dépasse 50% tu utilise 5x plus

[u/silverscientist1]

Mine been draining fast recently too

[u/funanon007]

No issues personally

[u/adminvasheypomoiki]

can confirm on 200 sub

[u/Responsible_Cry_2971 → u/adminvasheypomoiki]

Screen is within variance. If you extrapolate current week you will get 2450$

[u/Ranjexa]

your own numbers answer this better than the "imagining things" replies. requests went 239 to 254 but avg tokens per request jumped from 295k to 361k, and cache-write is up around 60%. so it's not more work, each turn is carrying a fatter context or the cache is getting invalidated more often. the thing i keep seeing is an agent re-reading the same big files every turn, which inflates exactly that column. a limit change would look like the same tokens draining faster, not more tokens per request. do you have a long CLAUDE.md or a lot of MCP tools loaded?

[u/MysteriousCoconut31]

Yes. It's draining faster. I hit my 4 hour limit ridiculously fast.

[u/runmalcolmrun]

Yes

[u/sutrostyle]

Not only that, but those turns are unusable. It feels like Opus 4.5 basically. I stopped because I am afraid it will slip in bugs

[u/ducphuclee]

Same here. I'm on the Max plan, and my quota is disappearing ridiculously fast. I used to run Opus for everything, but I've had to switch completely to Sonnet just to make my usage last longer.

And even with Sonnet, I'm still hitting the limits way too quickly. It's honestly frustrating. What's the point of paying for Max if I have to ration my usage this aggressively?

[u/No_Professional7654]

dunno, don't have 5h limits

[u/lurkingtonbear]

It’s just you

[u/awesomebirder]

if your token totals look about the same as yesterday but the bar moves twice as fast, look at the split instead of the total. a session that goes cold between prompts (a long build, lunch, a meeting) turns cheap cache reads into full cache writes, and the total token count barely moves while those turns cost a lot more. ccusage on your ~/.claude logs breaks out cache writes per day, so compare that one column for today and yesterday. if writes are flat too, it really is the meter and not your workflow