Anthropic, a prominent AI model provider, is introducing new weekly rate limits for its AI coding tool, Claude Code, effective August 28, targeting excessive usage by “power users” and preventing account sharing and reselling.
This move applies to subscribers of Anthropic’s $20-per-month Pro plan, as well as its $100- and $200-per-month Max plans. Existing usage limits, which reset every five hours, will remain in place. Anthropic is introducing two new weekly rate limits that reset every seven days: one for overall usage and another specifically for its most advanced AI model, Claude Opus 4. Max subscribers will have the option to purchase additional usage beyond their allocated rate limits at standard API rates.
The announcement follows a quiet introduction of rate limits for Claude Code weeks prior, with the company acknowledging issues related to demand and service stability. Claude Code has experienced at least seven partial or major outages in the last month, according to Anthropic’s status page, a situation potentially exacerbated by continuous, non-stop usage by some users.
Amie Rotherham, an Anthropic spokesperson, confirmed that “Claude Code has experienced unprecedented demand since launch.” She also noted that “most users won’t notice a difference,” as the new limits are expected to affect less than 5% of subscribers based on their current usage patterns.
For Pro users, Anthropic estimates they can expect 40 to 80 hours of Sonnet 4 through Claude Code within their weekly rate limits. Subscribers to the $100-per-month Max plan are allocated 140 to 280 hours of Sonnet 4 and 15 to 35 hours of Opus 4. The $200-per-month Max plan subscribers can anticipate 240 to 480 hours of Sonnet 4 and 24 to 40 hours of Opus 4. Anthropic states that usage may vary based on factors like codebase size.
There has been some discrepancy in Anthropic’s stated usage benefits. While the company previously claimed the $200 Max plan offered 20 times more usage than the Pro plan, based on the updated figures, subscribers will now receive approximately 6 times as many Claude Code hours as Pro users. Anthropic has not clarified if the 20x figure still applies when measured in tokens or compute.
The company has previously indicated that it faces significant constraints regarding computational resources, a common challenge for most AI model providers currently. Many AI companies are actively working to establish new AI data centers to meet the substantial demands of serving and training their AI models.
Anthropic’s decision to implement these limits mirrors actions taken by other AI coding tool providers. In June, Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, altered its pricing strategy for its $20-per-month Pro plan to curb abuse by power users, although it later apologized for poor communication regarding these changes. Replit, another AI coding tool provider, also made similar pricing adjustments in June.
In an email to Claude subscribers, Anthropic affirmed its commitment to “supporting long-running use cases through other options in the future.” However, the company asserts that these new rate limits are necessary to maintain reliable service broadly in the short term.
