Anthropic introduces weekly rate limits for Claude Code to manage heavy usage and prevent account sharing

Anthropic has introduced new weekly rate limits for its AI coding tool, Claude Code, to address excessive usage by certain subscribers who are running the tool continuously in the background, 24/7. The company also aims to prevent a small number of users from violating its usage policies by sharing accounts and reselling access to Claude Code. These limits will take effect on August 28 for users on the $20-per-month Pro plan, as well as the $100 and $200-per-month Max plans, according to an email sent to subscribers and a post on X. Existing usage limits, which reset every five hours, will remain unchanged. In addition, Anthropic is implementing two new weekly rate limits that reset every seven days. One applies to overall usage, while the other is specifically for its most advanced model, Claude Opus 4. Max plan subscribers will have the option to purchase additional usage at standard API rates. The move follows a similar announcement earlier this month when Anthropic quietly introduced rate limits for Claude Code. At the time, the company acknowledged the issues but provided no further details. Despite its popularity among developers, Anthropic has struggled to scale its service effectively. The company’s status page shows that Claude Code has faced at least seven partial or major outages in the past month, which may be linked to the heavy usage by some power users operating the tool around the clock. Anthropic has previously highlighted its constraints in terms of computational resources, a challenge shared by many AI companies as they work to expand their infrastructure. Most AI providers are investing heavily in new data centers to meet the growing demand for model training and serving. Other AI coding tool providers have also been adjusting their pricing models to manage usage. In June, Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, modified its pricing for the $20-per-month Pro plan to prevent power users from overutilizing the service. However, the changes were poorly communicated, leading to confusion and some users paying more than expected. Replit also made similar adjustments to its pricing structure around the same time. Anthropic did not immediately provide detailed information about the new rate limits when contacted by TechCrunch. The company said that the changes will impact less than 5% of current subscribers, based on usage patterns. Pro plan users can expect to have between 40 to 80 hours of access to the Sonnet 4 model within their weekly limits, though actual usage may vary depending on the size of the codebase and other factors. In an email to Claude users, the company stated that it remains committed to supporting long-running use cases through alternative solutions in the future. However, it emphasized that the new rate limits are necessary to ensure reliable service for the majority of users in the short term.