Anthropic Cuts Claude Code’s Usage Limits by 17% After Slashing Promotional Boost

Anthropic is reducing Claude Code usage—despite describing the change as a permanent increase to its standard weekly limits.

Starting September 14, Claude Code will receive a permanent 25% increase to its standard weekly usage limits for Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise plans, Anthropic said. 

However, the company’s current limits are temporarily 50% above the original baseline, meaning users will effectively have 17% less weekly capacity than they have today.

Anthropic initially introduced the higher limits earlier this year as part of a broader effort to expand Claude Code capacity. The company subsequently extended the temporary weekly usage increase through August. 

Claude Code does not give users a fixed number of prompts each week. Instead, Anthropic uses a combination of rolling five-hour limits and weekly usage limits. The five-hour limit is effectively a rolling window that resets as usage ages out, while the weekly limit provides a separate ceiling on total usage. 

How quickly a user reaches either limit depends on factors including the model being used, the length and complexity of tasks, and how much compute Claude uses to complete them.

The company only recently said that it was hoping to make the 50% increase a permanent change, although warning that ‘strong demand for its models could constrain capacity in the coming weeks.’

Anthropic continues to invest heavily in computing infrastructure to support rapidly growing demand for Claude and Claude Code. The company recently agreed to spend $45 billion to rent AI computing capacity from Nscale over six years, while also committing substantial resources to infrastructure through other providers.

The company recently said Claude Code users now spend an average of 20 hours per week using the tool. The tool also now generates more than $2.5 billion in annualised revenue for Anthropic. 

However, some Claude Code users are increasingly looking toward OpenAI’s Codex as an alternative. 

Frustration over Claude Code’s usage limits and recurring service disruptions has led some developers to advocate using competing products.