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Considering all the problems they've been having with over-charging Claude Code users over the past few weeks it's the very least they could do. Max subscribers

by smcleod 8mo ago

Considering all the problems they've been having with over-charging Claude Code users over the past few weeks it's the very least they could do. Max subscribers are hitting their 5 hour usage limits in 30-40 minutes with a single instance doing light work, while Anthropic have no support or contact mechanism for users that they respond to.

coffeefirst 8mo ago
Wait, if it burns through a $200/mo allotment that fast, what are all these people who “barely wrote code anymore” doing?
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- input_sh 8mo ago
  You hit a vague, never-quite-explained 5h window limit that has nothing to do with what you're doing, but with what every user is doing together. It's totally not downtime, you're just "using it too much" and they're telling you to fuck off until the overall usage slows down. The order of priority is: everyone using the API (you don't want to calculate the price) → everyone on a $200/month plan → everyone on a $20/month plan → every free user.
  - huflungdung 8mo ago
    [dead]
  - 8note 8mo ago
    you can just watch the limit on the claude usage settings view. itd be nice to know how much the session context window applies wrt token caching, but disabling all those skills and stopping sending a screenshot every couple messages gets that 5hour limit and weekly limit a bunch better
  - 00deadbeef 8mo ago
    Yeah it's way too vague. This morning: (new chat) 42 seconds of thinking, 20 lines of code changed in 4 files = 5% usage Last night: 25 minutes of thinking, 150 lines of code generated in 10 new files = 7% usage
    - exclipy 8mo ago
      I think the first message consumes disproportionately much percentage because it's not cached and includes the system prompt, tools, etc.
      - input_sh 8mo ago
        Here comes the "you're using it wrong" defence! Let's be perfectly clear: if user actions had anything to do with hitting these limits, the limits would be prominently displayed within the tool itself, you'd be able to watch it change in real time, and you'd be able to pinpoint your usage per each conversation and per each message within that conversation. The fact that you cannot do that is not because they can't be bothered to add such a feature, but because they want to be able to tweak those numbers on the backend while still having plausible deniability and being able to blame it on the user. Instead, the little "usage stats" they give you is grouped by the hour and only split between input and output tokens, telling you nothing.
        kaizenb 8mo ago
        Interesting. What do you think the reason for not being transparent on this matter?
        potamic 8mo ago
        Blurring the cost-benefit analysis in the interest of downplaying the costs.
        input_sh 8mo ago
        For the same reason they use "tokens" instead of kilobytes: so that you don't do the conversion yourself and realise that for example spending a million "tokens" on claude-opus-4.6 costs you anywhere from $10 (input tokens) to $37.5 (output tokens). Now, 1 million tokens sounds pretty big and "unreachable" until you realise that's about 4 megabytes of text. It's less than three floppy disks of data going back and forth. Now let's assume you want to send a CD worth of data to Opus 4.6. 700 megabytes * $10 (price per million input tokens) / 4 (rounding down one megabyte to roughly 250k "tokens") = $1750. For Opus 4.6 to return a CD amount of data back to you: $37.50 * 700 / 4 = ~$6.5k. A terabyte worth of data with a 50:50 input/output ratio would cost you $5.7 million. A terabyte worth of data with a 50:50 input/output ratio on gpt-5.2-pro would cost you $25.2 million. (Note: OpenAI's API pricing still hasn't been updated to reflect 5.3 prices.) So we get layers upon layers upon layers upon layers upon layers of obfuscation to hide those numbers from you when you simply subscribe for a fixed monthly fee!
  - inglor_cz 8mo ago
    I definitely noticed that Claude is faster on Central European mornings, e.g. deep night in the US.
- smcleod 8mo ago
  It hasn't always done this, it's a relatively recent problem in the last 1-4 weeks (roughly). (note: I'm on the $160AUD/mo plan, so I think that's $100USD).
- heavyset_go 8mo ago
  > what are all these people who “barely wrote code anymore” doing? Writing self-serving LinkedIn productivity porn
mercutio2 8mo ago
It hadn’t occurred to me this was a billing bug. That would be heartening, if I wasn’t consuming tokens 10x as fast as expected, and they just had attribution bugs. Do you have references to this being documented as the actual issue, or is this just speculation? I want to support Anthropic, but with the Codex desktop app *so much better* than Anthropic’s combined with the old “5 back and forths with Opus and your quota is gone”, it’s hard to see going back
- smcleod 8mo ago
  Yeah I think it's either a billing bug, or some sort of inbuilt background sub-agent loop gone wild inside Claude Code, if you have a look at recent issues on the Github relating to 'limits', 'usage', 'tokens' you'll see a lot of discussion about it: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues?q=sort%3Aupdated-desc%20is%3Aissue%20is%3Aopen%20token%20usage%20limits https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues?q=sort%3Aup...
impulser_ 8mo ago
"Max subscribers are hitting their 5 hour usage limits in 30-40 minutes with a single instance doing light work" This has not been my experience at all. The only time I even got close to this is multiple long sessions that had multiple compacts. The key is if you hit compact, start a new session.
- mcast 8mo ago
  It's known that Anthropic's $20 Pro subscription is a gateway plan to their $100 Max subscription, since you'll easily burn your token rate on a single prompt or two. Meanwhile, I've had ample usage testing out Codex on the basic $20 ChatGPT Plus plan without a problem. As for Anthropic's $100 Max subscription, it's almost always better to start new sessions for tasks since a long conversation will burn your 5-hour usage limit with just a few prompts (assuming they read many files). It's also best to start planning first with Claude, providing line numbers and exact file paths prior, and drilling down the requirements before you start any implementation.
  - deaux 8mo ago
    > It's known that Anthropic's $20 Pro subscription is a gateway plan to their $100 Max subscription, since you'll easily burn your token rate on a single prompt or two. I genuinely have no idea what people mean when I read this kind of thing. Are you abusing the word "prompt" to mean "conversation"? Or are you providing a huge prompt that is meant to spawn 10 subagents and write multiple new full-stack features in one go? For most users, the $20 Pro subscription, when used with Opus, does not hit the 5-hour limit on "a single prompt or two", i.e. 1-2 user messages.
    - pastel8739 8mo ago
      Today I literally gave Claude a single prompt, asking it to make a plan to implement a relatively simple feature that spanned a couple different codebases. It churned for a long time, I asked a couple very simple follow up questions, and then I was out of tokens. I do not consider myself to be any kind of power user at all.
SOLAR_FIELDS 8mo ago
“Light work” is a pretty bold statement my dude. I run max for 8+ hour coding sessions with 3-4 windows where I’m babysitting and watching the thing and I never even get session warnings. The only time I bump up against limits is on token hungry tasks like reverse engineering 3M+ LOC codebases or 5-6 agents generating unit tests in parallel. Something tells me that what you call “light work” is not remotely the same as what I consider “light work”
klipklop 8mo ago
Yeah I can work for minutes in the $20 Claude plan but potentially hours with Codex. It’s just not worth bothering.
chaostheory 8mo ago
Experienced this with the $20 sub, but not with Max (yet).
- subscribed 8mo ago
  Yeah, I find very capable but won't paying them exactly because they cheat /steal like this.
cantalopes 8mo ago
exactly my experience. i am on pro subscription and when coding with claude in console i can only do about 30 min of work before i have to wait for 4 hours. i actually code more by chatting with claude via poe.com than using the subscription that i have
- brulard 8mo ago
  pro is the $20, right? It runs out quickly, especially using opus. But what do you expect for that kind of money? For serious work at least Max $100 is needed.
  - cantalopes 8mo ago
    I spend not even 20 monthly when using gemini cli. Claude's subscription model is forcing you to space out equal sessions unnaturally during day - but you don't work like that. You work N hours of day and then go to have personal life/sleep - meaning you sometimes code more and sometimes you don't. Forcing you to do only little work and then lock you out for extra usage will make you pay much more when actually using the model much less - because the times you are not coding would even out or even benefit you in credits Tl;dr - it's claude's greedy credit system that sucks, i am not going to pay $100 for overcoming these weird limits, i would much rather use gemini cli
    - brulard 8mo ago
      I like Gemini CLI and I got a lot of value from their free tier, and I'm now on the $20 sub. But it is a level bellow the usefulness of Claude Opus 4.6.
alpineman 8mo ago
Wasn't customer service going to be one of the first things to be fully automated by AI? :D

by smcleod 8mo ago

coffeefirst 8mo ago

Wait, if it burns through a $200/mo allotment that fast, what are all these people who “barely wrote code anymore” doing?

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
input_sh 8mo ago
You hit a vague, never-quite-explained 5h window limit that has nothing to do with what you're doing, but with what every user is doing together. It's totally not downtime, you're just "using it too much" and they're telling you to fuck off until the overall usage slows down. The order of priority is: everyone using the API (you don't want to calculate the price) → everyone on a $200/month plan → everyone on a $20/month plan → every free user.
- huflungdung 8mo ago
  [dead]
- 8note 8mo ago
  you can just watch the limit on the claude usage settings view. itd be nice to know how much the session context window applies wrt token caching, but disabling all those skills and stopping sending a screenshot every couple messages gets that 5hour limit and weekly limit a bunch better
- 00deadbeef 8mo ago
  Yeah it's way too vague. This morning: (new chat) 42 seconds of thinking, 20 lines of code changed in 4 files = 5% usage Last night: 25 minutes of thinking, 150 lines of code generated in 10 new files = 7% usage
  - exclipy 8mo ago
    I think the first message consumes disproportionately much percentage because it's not cached and includes the system prompt, tools, etc.
    - input_sh 8mo ago
      Here comes the "you're using it wrong" defence! Let's be perfectly clear: if user actions had anything to do with hitting these limits, the limits would be prominently displayed within the tool itself, you'd be able to watch it change in real time, and you'd be able to pinpoint your usage per each conversation and per each message within that conversation. The fact that you cannot do that is not because they can't be bothered to add such a feature, but because they want to be able to tweak those numbers on the backend while still having plausible deniability and being able to blame it on the user. Instead, the little "usage stats" they give you is grouped by the hour and only split between input and output tokens, telling you nothing.
      - kaizenb 8mo ago
        Interesting. What do you think the reason for not being transparent on this matter?
        potamic 8mo ago
        Blurring the cost-benefit analysis in the interest of downplaying the costs.
        input_sh 8mo ago
        For the same reason they use "tokens" instead of kilobytes: so that you don't do the conversion yourself and realise that for example spending a million "tokens" on claude-opus-4.6 costs you anywhere from $10 (input tokens) to $37.5 (output tokens). Now, 1 million tokens sounds pretty big and "unreachable" until you realise that's about 4 megabytes of text. It's less than three floppy disks of data going back and forth. Now let's assume you want to send a CD worth of data to Opus 4.6. 700 megabytes * $10 (price per million input tokens) / 4 (rounding down one megabyte to roughly 250k "tokens") = $1750. For Opus 4.6 to return a CD amount of data back to you: $37.50 * 700 / 4 = ~$6.5k. A terabyte worth of data with a 50:50 input/output ratio would cost you $5.7 million. A terabyte worth of data with a 50:50 input/output ratio on gpt-5.2-pro would cost you $25.2 million. (Note: OpenAI's API pricing still hasn't been updated to reflect 5.3 prices.) So we get layers upon layers upon layers upon layers upon layers of obfuscation to hide those numbers from you when you simply subscribe for a fixed monthly fee!
- inglor_cz 8mo ago
  I definitely noticed that Claude is faster on Central European mornings, e.g. deep night in the US.
smcleod 8mo ago
It hasn't always done this, it's a relatively recent problem in the last 1-4 weeks (roughly). (note: I'm on the $160AUD/mo plan, so I think that's $100USD).
heavyset_go 8mo ago
> what are all these people who “barely wrote code anymore” doing? Writing self-serving LinkedIn productivity porn

mercutio2 8mo ago

It hadn’t occurred to me this was a billing bug. That would be heartening, if I wasn’t consuming tokens 10x as fast as expected, and they just had attribution bugs. Do you have references to this being documented as the actual issue, or is this just speculation? I want to support Anthropic, but with the Codex desktop app *so much better* than Anthropic’s combined with the old “5 back and forths with Opus and your quota is gone”, it’s hard to see going back

smcleod 8mo ago
Yeah I think it's either a billing bug, or some sort of inbuilt background sub-agent loop gone wild inside Claude Code, if you have a look at recent issues on the Github relating to 'limits', 'usage', 'tokens' you'll see a lot of discussion about it: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues?q=sort%3Aupdated-desc%20is%3Aissue%20is%3Aopen%20token%20usage%20limits https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues?q=sort%3Aup...

impulser_ 8mo ago

"Max subscribers are hitting their 5 hour usage limits in 30-40 minutes with a single instance doing light work" This has not been my experience at all. The only time I even got close to this is multiple long sessions that had multiple compacts. The key is if you hit compact, start a new session.

mcast 8mo ago
It's known that Anthropic's $20 Pro subscription is a gateway plan to their $100 Max subscription, since you'll easily burn your token rate on a single prompt or two. Meanwhile, I've had ample usage testing out Codex on the basic $20 ChatGPT Plus plan without a problem. As for Anthropic's $100 Max subscription, it's almost always better to start new sessions for tasks since a long conversation will burn your 5-hour usage limit with just a few prompts (assuming they read many files). It's also best to start planning first with Claude, providing line numbers and exact file paths prior, and drilling down the requirements before you start any implementation.
- deaux 8mo ago
  > It's known that Anthropic's $20 Pro subscription is a gateway plan to their $100 Max subscription, since you'll easily burn your token rate on a single prompt or two. I genuinely have no idea what people mean when I read this kind of thing. Are you abusing the word "prompt" to mean "conversation"? Or are you providing a huge prompt that is meant to spawn 10 subagents and write multiple new full-stack features in one go? For most users, the $20 Pro subscription, when used with Opus, does not hit the 5-hour limit on "a single prompt or two", i.e. 1-2 user messages.
  - pastel8739 8mo ago
    Today I literally gave Claude a single prompt, asking it to make a plan to implement a relatively simple feature that spanned a couple different codebases. It churned for a long time, I asked a couple very simple follow up questions, and then I was out of tokens. I do not consider myself to be any kind of power user at all.

SOLAR_FIELDS 8mo ago

“Light work” is a pretty bold statement my dude. I run max for 8+ hour coding sessions with 3-4 windows where I’m babysitting and watching the thing and I never even get session warnings. The only time I bump up against limits is on token hungry tasks like reverse engineering 3M+ LOC codebases or 5-6 agents generating unit tests in parallel. Something tells me that what you call “light work” is not remotely the same as what I consider “light work”

klipklop 8mo ago

Yeah I can work for minutes in the $20 Claude plan but potentially hours with Codex. It’s just not worth bothering.

chaostheory 8mo ago

Experienced this with the $20 sub, but not with Max (yet).

subscribed 8mo ago
Yeah, I find very capable but won't paying them exactly because they cheat /steal like this.

cantalopes 8mo ago

exactly my experience. i am on pro subscription and when coding with claude in console i can only do about 30 min of work before i have to wait for 4 hours. i actually code more by chatting with claude via poe.com than using the subscription that i have

brulard 8mo ago
pro is the $20, right? It runs out quickly, especially using opus. But what do you expect for that kind of money? For serious work at least Max $100 is needed.
- cantalopes 8mo ago
  I spend not even 20 monthly when using gemini cli. Claude's subscription model is forcing you to space out equal sessions unnaturally during day - but you don't work like that. You work N hours of day and then go to have personal life/sleep - meaning you sometimes code more and sometimes you don't. Forcing you to do only little work and then lock you out for extra usage will make you pay much more when actually using the model much less - because the times you are not coding would even out or even benefit you in credits Tl;dr - it's claude's greedy credit system that sucks, i am not going to pay $100 for overcoming these weird limits, i would much rather use gemini cli
  - brulard 8mo ago
    I like Gemini CLI and I got a lot of value from their free tier, and I'm now on the $20 sub. But it is a level bellow the usefulness of Claude Opus 4.6.

alpineman 8mo ago

Wasn't customer service going to be one of the first things to be fully automated by AI? :D