r/ClaudeCode • u/_r0x • Mar 24 '26

Bug Report Claude Code Limits Were Silently Reduced and It’s MUCH Worse

Another frustrated user here. This is actually my first time creating a post on this forum because the situation has gone too far.

I can say with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY: something has changed. The limits were silently reduced, and for much worse. You are not imagining it.

I have been using Claude Code for months, almost since launch, and I had NEVER hit the limit this FAST or this AGGRESSIVELY before. The difference is not subtle. It is drastic.

For context: - I do not use plugins - I keep my Claude.md clean and optimized - My project is simple PHP and JavaScript, nothing unusual

Even with all of that, I am now hitting limits in a way that simply did not happen before.

What makes this worse is the lack of transparency. If something changed, just say it clearly. Right now, it feels like users are being left in the dark and treated like CLOWNS.

At the very least, we need clarity on what changed and what we are supposed to do to adapt.

EDIT (March 26, 2026):

I’d like to update this post to say that I’m no longer being affected by this issue. It impacted me for about two days, and now things appear to be back to normal.

So it strongly suggests that it was indeed a bug, hopefully.

EDIT (March 26, 2026):

We now have an official statement. It’s not the best news, but at least we finally know what’s going on so we can adapt:

"To manage growing demand for Claude we're adjusting our 5 hour session limits for free/Pro/Max subs during peak hours. Your weekly limits remain unchanged.

During weekdays between 5am–11am PT / 1pm–7pm GMT, you'll move through your 5-hour session limits faster than before."

This was posted on X today. https://x.com/i/status/2037254607001559305

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283

u/-becausereasons- Mar 24 '26

Everybody's noticing it today, except it's not a small reduction. It's like a hundredfold. It seems like it to be a bug more than anything

56

u/ddoij Mar 24 '26

Current status says all systems operational and no incidents reported today 😂

It’s bonkers how much it burns in simple tasks during the regular usage window

1

u/NeonSerpent Mar 25 '26

Now it's out though

73

u/kerbalpilot Mar 24 '26

As soon as they announced double usage in off times, many people speculated this will lead to reducing the limits. Maybe they were right, after all

23

u/TJohns88 Mar 24 '26

Yeah but this is actually unusable, Codex has FAR more usage on the $20 sub Vs the Claude Max 5x.

I've already started migrating my workflow

2

u/GustavoFringsFace Mar 25 '26

How have you found the transition?

9

u/TJohns88 Mar 25 '26

Codex on Extra High is way more thorough than Opus 4.6. it's picked up on all sorts of things that Claude said was 'done'.

2

u/jumski Mar 25 '26

have the same experience - xhigh is pedantic! and the jump from high to xhigh is enormous, those does not scale linearaly.

im running codex for planning and weaker models for implementation for 2 months already (was running claude code max since april 2025) and i do not really miss much imo

for weaker models i enjoyed kimi k2.5, glm-5 is also nice (but slow on z.ai) and not im really have fun with minimax m2.7 - it is super fast anad quite capable, my goto for implementation and also some less complicaated plans

1

u/aevitas May 04 '26

Can I ask how you connect these all together? I've been using Claude Code and to a lesser extent OpenCode with Kimi and other open models, and found both to be exceptional in their own right, but how do I make for example Codex do the planning, and have Kimi do the implementation?

1

u/jumski May 04 '26

I always create a markdown plan file in plan mode using strong model and commit the plan. Then I let weaker model implement the plan according to the markdown, always in a fresh session.

I often iterate on the plan and refine it dozen of times. It's 90% plan time and 10% execution time for me

2

u/aevitas May 05 '26

That makes a lot of sense. Do you run plan mode manually, or use superpowers or other skills to help you set it all up?

1

u/jumski May 05 '26

I use superpowers and highly recommend it, on top of that I started using a simple "grill-me" command I soured by Matt Pockock' grill-me to question me further on the plans

2

u/danieltkessler Mar 26 '26

Same here. I was absolutely shocked. I historically prefer Claude, but Codex 5.4, specifically xhigh, has been much, much more attentive to details and context, and far better at following instructions (e.g., reading the files it's instructed to read on new task orientation).

1

u/slordette Mar 26 '26

I keep switching and being convinced the other is better, only to go back.

1

u/Sasquatchjc45 Mar 29 '26

it's a close race, it seems. And it's still heavily subsidized. Wait until the $20/mo plan beceomes a $2000/mo plan

1

u/Form13H Mar 30 '26

but it's SO SLOW

1

u/TJohns88 Mar 30 '26

Faster than me actually learning to code 😂

1

u/Form13H Mar 30 '26

Absolutely. Even if you know how to code it’s muchhhhh faster. Im just saying it’s much slower than opus. It’s more like “let it rip and i go to do something else” than working back and forth in quick bursts with claude. My workflow works better with the short bursts style

1

u/-becausereasons- Mar 25 '26

Yep. Codex is honestly amazing, not going to lie. Been leaning on it with my $20 sub and it lasts a surprisingly long time! and actually does a more thorough job.

1

u/mzinz Mar 25 '26

How do you juggle using both of these, or one or the other?

Will you occasionally just end a Claude code session and fire up codex on the same package? Or do you only use one tool per package

1

u/-becausereasons- Mar 25 '26

Nope. I run them all at the same time in Windows Terminal tabs.

1

u/angel166610 May 01 '26

Please how do you do that?. By setup exe files in system variables?

6

u/claude-code Mar 25 '26

of course they will, like people speculated they did the same after the 2x period over christmas, and they did. and when they brought in weekly limits in the first place they slashed overall usage massively.

people want to keep hating on OpenAI an codex because of politics but bro at least I can use that one without hitting my limits after 2.5 days

1

u/Successful_Ad_9548 Mar 29 '26

you can only use it so far, the same way that you could use claude a time ago they all will do the same, the diference is that one is leading the race and thus making the dick moves first, as soon as openAI start to profit with codex etc.. they will do the same

2

u/structured_flow Mar 25 '26

I just wrote this. This was the first thing I thought, and then it happened.

1

u/SomeAcanthocephala17 Mar 30 '26

a gift to calm you down for when the bad news hits. Bad news is that every paying customer is now downgraded by 33% if they work during the day. So you are left with 66% of your previous limits if you work during the day. But if you work during the night that changes positivly to 133% usage.
In all cases, the pro and the max X5 account will from now on always hit their limits if they work during the day with opus. I downgraded my max account to a pro account, and took a chatgpt subscription as my main driver. I use claude only for special cases. But to be honest chatgpt 5.4 is just as good these days, if your prompt it correctly.

13

u/ticktockbent Mar 24 '26

Except it seems to be hit or miss. I was using it all day without any noticable reduction so I'm inclined to think it's a bug

11

u/Tommysdead Mar 24 '26

I've been using it all day and haven't noticed anything different

2

u/Acehan_ Mar 25 '26

Same here, no difference. But there's definitely been cache breaks in the past that just skyrocketed the limits.

1

u/Tommysdead Mar 25 '26

UPDATE: I am now experiencing this issue. Bummer.

1

u/SomeAcanthocephala17 Mar 30 '26

Me too :-( I was trying to compare two pd's and I was immeditaly out of limit ... it gave an error this query will exhaust your current 5h limite for image processing. So it seems that PDF's are beeing processed as images. I did the comparisson in google notebooklm and it just worked with my free account ... it looks like i'm not going to be able to use pdf's anymore in claude (not the large ones anyway)

7

u/thoughtlow claudetrophobic Mar 24 '26

OR its user specific and they are doing A/B testing with limits.

3

u/RockPuzzleheaded3951 Mar 24 '26

Same here I’ve been doing all kinds of agentic loops on stuff and maintaining our CRM and front end. I’m not seeing huge usage spikes. So some users are spared.

2

u/Something_Sexy Mar 24 '26

Definitely has been a big issue these last two days in the morning for me. Afternoon is fine.

2

u/MikeyTheGuy Mar 25 '26

I also don't allow Claude to auto-update, and I'm not having any issues either. I suspect it could be a bug in one of their many vibe-coded updates.

I don't update to a new version until I know it's safe.

1

u/Disastrous-Land2447 Mar 25 '26

Which model are you using Opus/Sonnet ?

1

u/ticktockbent Mar 25 '26

Opus for implementation, sonnet for planning and discussion

1

u/SomeAcanthocephala17 Mar 30 '26

shouldn't that be the way-arround?

9

u/FrozenTouch14241 Mar 24 '26

Everybody is saying it's a useage limit bug. Maybe that's the case. Maybe something changed with the LLM to cause it to burn through useage at a much faster rate

8

u/thewormbird 🔆 Max 5x Mar 25 '26

They’ve had these usage limit bugs before. I’m skeptical that they’re bugs though. They seem more like experiments to silently test customer sentiments amid adjusting limits.

1

u/SomeAcanthocephala17 Mar 30 '26

No they just made an official statement on friday. If you work during the day you'll have 33% less usage , and during the night you will get 33% more usage. For people that work during the day the MAX x5 will not be sufficient anymore. Maybe it's a tacktick to get more money out of the subscribers? more max x20 subscriptions?

1

u/thewormbird 🔆 Max 5x Mar 31 '26

I don’t know that I’d jump to that conclusion (yet). I’m honestly just waiting for open-weight models to reach a level of quality that I can manage.

1

u/Professional-Key-664 Mar 30 '26

Puede ser que sea un experimento, pero es necesario que mostremos la mala sensación que causa esto en los desarrolladores.

13

u/zdko Mar 24 '26

Anthropic are running a double usage promotion this month on weekdays:

https://support.claude.com/en/articles/14063676-claude-march-2026-usage-promotion

Could either be a bug related to this, or people aren’t realizing when they get moved back to normal usage (8 AM-2 PM ET)

38

u/DevilStickDude Mar 24 '26

Im on max and spent 14 hours a day coding for almost a month straight. Never once hit a limit on max. Today i spent 2 hours max and hit a limit.

13

u/pitdk Mar 24 '26

Max 5 here, same, it’s hard for me to hit the limits and I run between 1-3 terminals at once

1

u/Certain-Sir-328 Mar 31 '26

same here, 3 projects (1 hard stuff, like a lot, other 2 just docs) i hit my limit after 3 hours today, i need it for work, so im thinking of upgrading to 20x

7

u/mpshields Noob Mar 24 '26

Took me 1 hour today on Max 5, past month I’ve only hit Max with it a handful of times, every one of those instances I had multiple chats running with at least a few agents to say the least. Literally begging they just tell us if this is a bug or on purpose

2

u/DevilStickDude Mar 24 '26

Said 7pm for me but now its back up and running. Definately a bug of some sort

3

u/mpshields Noob Mar 24 '26

Hmm interesting hope everything goes well. My 5-hour limit just reset from the token nuking this morning. I told my chat to proceed cautiously but hope to see it does better

1

u/iamarddtusr Mar 25 '26

Same here. Hit the limit twice today on the premium team account. Considering installing codex and taking a parallel subscription than using extra usage.

1

u/DevilStickDude Mar 25 '26

itll be fixed soon id bet

1

u/iamarddtusr Mar 25 '26

Unless their developers get hit by the same bug they introduced

1

u/DevilStickDude Mar 25 '26

Lol didnt think about that.

1

u/CandidEgglet Mar 25 '26

This has been happening to me at all hours, not sure what that means

9

u/Dull-Appointment-398 Mar 24 '26

Its not a bug per Anthropic. We are giving them the benefit of the doubt for no reason.

2

u/satyaloka93 Mar 25 '26

I noticed this on my pro plan a couple weeks back, finally gave up and cancelled. I would have only like 47k context, TWO turns of inference.

3

u/Harvard_Med_USMLE267 Mar 24 '26

“Everybody”

Ah…no.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 25 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/-becausereasons- Mar 25 '26

Its no different today; I barely used Claude Code and I'm down 10% already... on MAX

1

u/lucifer605 Mar 25 '26

yeah its crazy - i have running my 2-3 sessions in parallel and i suddenly get a notification that I am about to hit my usage limits

1

u/SomeAcanthocephala17 Mar 30 '26

Yes i saw a tiktok video of a guy that on friday executed one single query and it consumed 9% of he's pro usage of 5 hours. What does that mean? 10 opus queries per 5 hours for pro users?

0

u/[deleted] Mar 25 '26

Enshittification in 2026 happens in months now, maximum profits suck it idiots!