Claude Code weekly rate limits • Hacker News Board

Re: Claude Code weekly rate limits

#251

Post by jononor » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 8:41 PM UTC

Twirrim wrote: post #71

andix wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but for most things it's not significant. For example Stack Overflow used to handle all their traffic from 9 on-prem servers (not sure if this is still the case). Millions of daily users. Power consumption and hardware cost is completely insignificant in this case. LLM inference pricing is mostly driven by power consumption and hardware cost (which also takes a lot of power/heat to manufacture).

> For example Stack Overflow used to handle all their traffic from 9 on-prem servers (not sure if this is still the case). Millions of daily users. Power consumption and hardware cost is completely insignificant in this case. They just finished their migration to the cloud, unracked their servers a few weeks ago https://stackoverflow.blog/2025/07/16/the-great-unracking-sa...

Would have loved to get some more insights. Cost estimates, before and after, for example. But also if any architectural changes where needed, or what kind of other challenges and learnings they got from the migration.

Re: Claude Code weekly rate limits

#252

Post by mattnewton » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 8:41 PM UTC

Can I have an option to easily "fall back" to metered spend when hitting these hard limits? I wouldn't mind spending $5-10 on api credits to not interrupt my flow one day, and right now that means switching to another tool or logging out and re-logging in when the rate limit switches back.

Re: Claude Code weekly rate limits

#253

Post by yumraj » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 8:41 PM UTC

> These changes will not be applied until the start of your next billing cycle.

If I’m on annual Pro, does it mean these won’t apply to me till my annual plan renews which is several months away.

Re: Claude Code weekly rate limits

#254

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 8:42 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #211

paxys wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 95% of users are under the limit then it isn't a "fake" plan.

That really depends. Like, if Opus can't make it through a full work week then at least for Opus the unlimited is pretty darn fake even if 95% of people are under that. I'm reminded of online storage plans with various levels of "unlimited" messaging around them that can't even hold a single medium to large hard drive of data. Very few users hit that, most of whom don't even have a hard drive they regularly use, but…

[deleted]

Re: Claude Code weekly rate limits

#255

Post by blitzar » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 8:42 PM UTC

jonas21 wrote: post #202

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #88

I'm probably not going to hit the weekly limit, but it makes me nervous that the limit is weekly as opposed to every 36 hours or something. If I do hit the limit, that's it for the entire week —a long time to be without a tool I've grown accustomed to! I feel like someone is going to reply that I'm too reliant on Claude or something. Maybe that's true, but I'd feel the same about the prospect of loosing ripgrep for a…

You can use an API key to get more usage on a pay-as-you-go basis.

You can set cash on fire if you want to.

Re: Claude Code weekly rate limits

#256

Post by draxil » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 8:43 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #88

I'm probably not going to hit the weekly limit, but it makes me nervous that the limit is weekly as opposed to every 36 hours or something. If I do hit the limit, that's it for the entire week —a long time to be without a tool I've grown accustomed to! I feel like someone is going to reply that I'm too reliant on Claude or something. Maybe that's true, but I'd feel the same about the prospect of loosing ripgrep for a…

Of course ripgrep runs on your machine and you control it.

Re: Claude Code weekly rate limits

#257

Post by margalabargala » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 8:43 PM UTC

belter wrote: post #87

jimbo808 wrote: post #22

I'm not sure how this will play out long term, but I really am not a fan of having to feel like I'm using a limited resource whenever I use an LLM. People like unlimited plans, we are used to them for internet, text messaging, etc. The current pricing models just feel bad.

The real bottleneck isn’t Jevons paradox, it’s the Theory of Constraints. A human brain runs on under 20 W, yet every major LLM vendor is burning cash and running up against power supply limits. If anything pops this bubble, it won’t be ethics panels or model tweaks but subscription prices finally reflecting those electricity bills. At that point, companies might rediscover the ROI of good old meat based AI.

Meat has far higher input requirements for good performance above raw energy

Re: Claude Code weekly rate limits

#258

Post by jononor » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 8:43 PM UTC

Jcampuzano2 wrote: post #171

jimbo808 wrote: post #22

I'm not sure how this will play out long term, but I really am not a fan of having to feel like I'm using a limited resource whenever I use an LLM. People like unlimited plans, we are used to them for internet, text messaging, etc. The current pricing models just feel bad.

My opinion is all of these tools should completely get rid of the "pay 20/month, 200/month", etc just to get access to some beholden rate limited amount that becomes hard to track. Mask off completely and just make it completely usage based for everyone. You could do something for trial users like first 20 (pick your number here) requests are free if you really need to in order to get people on board. Or you could do…

Investors love MRR/ARR, so I do not think we will see that as the main option anytime soon. That said, you can use the Claude API to get usage-based billing.

Re: Claude Code weekly rate limits

#259

Post by strictnein » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 8:44 PM UTC

foota wrote: post #234

strictnein wrote: post #114

Confused on the Max 5x vs Max 20x. I'm on the latter, and in my email it says: > "Most Max 20x users can expect 240-480 hours of Sonnet 4 and 24-40 hours of Opus 4 within their weekly rate limits." In this post it says: > "Most Max 5x users can expect 140-280 hours of Sonnet 4 and 15-35 hours of Opus 4 within their weekly rate limits." How is the "Max 20x" only an additional 5-9 hours of Opus 4, and not 4x that of "M…

You're paying for prioritization during high traffic periods, not for 2x usage.

That's not what they claim:

https://www.anthropic.com/pricing

   > Max
   > Choose 5x or 20x more usage per session than Pro*
   > Higher output limits for all tasks
   > Priority access at high traffic times

That first bullet pretty clearly implies 4x the usage and the last one implies that Max gets priority over Pro, not that 20x gets priority over 5x.

Re: Claude Code weekly rate limits

#260

Post by RF_Savage » Mon, Jul 28, 2025, 8:44 PM UTC

margalabargala wrote: post #224

rmujica wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet and SMS used to be expensive and metered until they weren't thanks to technological advances and expanded use. I think LLMs will follow the same path, maybe on a shorter timespan.

SMS was designed from the start to fit in the handul of unused bytes in the tower handshake that was happening anyway, hence the 160 char limit. Its marginal cost has always been free on the supply side.

SMS routing and billing systems did cost money. Especially billing, as the standards had nothing for it, so it was done by 3rd party software for a very long time.