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Claude Code users hitting usage limits 'way faster than expected'

theregister.com

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Re: Claude Code users hitting usage limits 'way faster than expected'

#211

Post by therobots927 »

vintagedave wrote: post #104
pxtail wrote: post #53

Recently after noticing how quickly limits are consumed and reading others complaints about same issue on reddit I was wondering how much about this is real error or bug hidden somewhere and how much it's about testing what threshold of constraining limits will be tolerated without cancelling accounts. Eventually, in case of "shit hits the fan" situation it can be always dismissed by waving hands and apologizing (or…

I've run into this, and I highly doubt I am one of the more extraordinary users. I have delays between working with it, don't have many running at once, am running on smaller codebases, etc. Yet just a few minutes ago I hit a quota. In the past I did far more work with it without running into the quota. I emailed their support a few days ago with details, concerns, a link to the twitter thread from one of their emplo…

It’s funny to me that you think this is a bug.

Re: Claude Code users hitting usage limits 'way faster than expected'

#212

Post by therobots927 »

cyanydeez wrote: post #171
devmor wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a real danger that I think a lot of people will run into as prices go up more and more in the future. Completely outside of the productivity debate, offloading cognitive tasks to LLMs leaves you less practiced in them and less ready to do them when the LLM isn't available. When you have to delegate only certain tasks to the LLM for financial reasons, you may find yourself very frustrated.

Seriously, who isnt planning a local first strategy?

Every series A-C startup

Re: Claude Code users hitting usage limits 'way faster than expected'

#213

Post by therobots927 »

captainbland wrote: post #205
joshuafuller wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels a lot like the same playbook we’re seeing with dynamic pricing in retail, just applied to compute instead of products. You never really know what you’re getting, and the rules shift under you. What makes it worse is the lack of transparency. If there were clear, hard limits, people could plan around it. Instead it’s this moving target that makes it impossible to trust for real work. At some point it stops…

It's been pretty clear for a while that companies who have developed foundation models have essentially unprecedented levels of investment to recoup. For all the talk of faster hardware and more efficient models, that spend hasn't gone away and ultimately that investment needs to get a return somewhere. Dependency on cloud AI models is, in effect, dependency on VC subsidy. From the user's point of view, this dependen…

Wow, someone here has above a room temp IQ.

Re: Claude Code users hitting usage limits 'way faster than expected'

#214

Post by therobots927 »

midnightdiesel wrote: post #134

It seems like Anthropic is constantly changing the rules and pulling out rugs, and always entirely by surprise. I’m not sure if they’re incompetent or just careless, but I stopped paying them because of this a while ago, and my days are much more interesting and enjoyable using my own brain instead.

Oh they’re very competent. They’re running a scam.

Re: Claude Code users hitting usage limits 'way faster than expected'

#215

Post by gedy »

reenorap wrote: post #180
leptons wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the cost $1000-2000/month or more for coding. Every programmer will be forced to pay for it because it's only a fraction of their salary (in the US anyway) and it's the only way the programmer will be competitive. I routinely match or beat Claude with regards to speed, I often race it to the solution because Claude just takes so long to produce a usable result. Staying competitive doesn't mean only paying an AI for…

You must not be using it right because where I work, a Big Tech company, it's been transformational. Things that would take me a day to code takes minutes. I can't coded since last year. I can see why software engineering as a career is a dead end job now, I spend most of my time testing and code reviewing instead of coding.

The thing is, does it even matter to Big Tech that you did this in an hour vs a day?

Re: Claude Code users hitting usage limits 'way faster than expected'

#216

Post by reenorap »

leptons wrote: post #191
reenorap wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must not be using it right because where I work, a Big Tech company, it's been transformational. Things that would take me a day to code takes minutes. I can't coded since last year. I can see why software engineering as a career is a dead end job now, I spend most of my time testing and code reviewing instead of coding.

So because I can match or beat Claude at the tasks I give it, you think I'm somehow using it wrong? Maybe you don't recognize someone with real skill and 30+ years of experience? I don't need Claude, but I'm using it. Sometimes it succeeds at simple tasks, but it's out of its depth for anything complex, and after enough iterations on one task, entropy takes hold. Maybe your coding career was a dead end job, but mine…

I also have 30+ years of experience.

If you are "match or beat Claude at the tasks" you give it, you're using it wrong. You sound like some of my coworkers that are eschewing AI or are minimizing it. The ones such as yourself who find AI annoying or not useful are the ones who are going to go extinct during the next few years.

The new era of programmers aren't going to be the most "skilled" ones but the most mentally agile and flexible ones because things are going to be changing so quickly. No one knows where our field is going to end up but we know the path is going to be fast paced and will keep changing and only those with mental flexibility and agility will be able to keep up.

Re: Claude Code users hitting usage limits 'way faster than expected'

#217

Post by bensyverson »

cyanydeez wrote: post #173
bensyverson wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone who has not hit this bug thinks it’s user error… It’s not. It happened to me a few days ago, and the speed at which I tore through my 5 hour usage cap was easily 10x faster than normal. Also: sub agents do not get you free usage. They just protect your main context window.

Readimg through this thread, it seems likely is a KV cache "bug". Theyre likely doing too many evictions of the LLM cache so the context is being reloaded to often. Its a "bug" because its probably an intended effect of capturing the costs of compute but surfacing a fact that they oversold compute to a situations where they cant keep the KV cache hot and now its thrashing.

Caching helps them too, so I hope they fix it

Re: Claude Code users hitting usage limits 'way faster than expected'

#218

Post by testfrequency »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #192
p1necone wrote: post #150

I burn through the entire 5 hour limit in one or two "implement the feature outlined in this doc" requests with claude pro in a not even huge codebase (low tens of thousands of loc). If there were any reasonable alternatives I wouldn't even consider using it, but sonnet 4.6 (and presumably opus 4.6 - I don't use it as sonnet is faster and more than good enough) is the only model I've used that actually makes good dec…

I’ve dumped claude few months ago for gemini. Maybe my problems are too trivial, but it’s same if not better with added benefit of being much faster. I’d say 95% of my work (20-30hrs per week) is done by it and I spend less than $50 per month.

What stack do you work on ooc?

I’ve been tempted to move my Gemini plan up to a higher plan and play around more with the Gemini cli - as I seriously live the Gemini chat for most everything. Claude is lazy af and is always pulling stale data, or not checking resources entirely. I literally have a Gemini mcp that I force close to use half the time when it’s lost, and Gemini nails it every single time.

I’m on a Claude max 20x plan right now, and I seriously can’t imagine not having it around anymore but Gemini seems to always have my back on actual current data and less hallucinations.

Re: Claude Code users hitting usage limits 'way faster than expected'

#219

Post by bjconlan »

While I haven't read all the posts here I was wondering if anyone also noticed a 10% usage before their most recent weeks usage even started? (Specifically over 2026-03-27/28) I was seeing weird service outages over this time too. I suspect they're not being 100% truthful with how they are recording usage (feels like they had an agent run a backfill approximation). So they blur it with weekends rates etc.

Anyways I don't have the knowledge as to how to audit this (claud pro) to confirm what feels like an onboard at any cost business behavior.

Is anyone currently auditing through openrouter/litellm and seeing any poor correlation to the session/weekly limit?

Re: Claude Code users hitting usage limits 'way faster than expected'

#220

Post by bradlannon »

I was literally planning a new feature using superpowers. I typed "continue" after it hit it's limited. No joke, about 1 minute later, I looked at the token % left and it said I was at 20% already. I literally typed continue and then took 1 minute to look at the usage. Something is seriously broken!!!!!!
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