Anthropic Introduces New Rate Limits for Paid Subscribers to Stop Claude Code Usage Abuse

Anthropic announced new weekly rate limits for its paid subscribers on Monday. The artificial intelligence (AI) firm highlighted that the decision to add an upper ceiling to the chatbot's usage was taken due to some users abusing Claude Code's usage. As per the company, some users were running the coding tool 24/7 in the background, which resulted in the consumption of extremely high computing power. Anthropic said the new rate limits will be applied from late August and will impact less than 5 percent of the total subscribers.

Claude Code Abuse Leads to New Rate Limits for Subscribers

In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), the AI company revealed that starting August 28, the company will place new weekly rate limits on its paid subscribers, including both Claude Pro and Claude Max plans. Anthropic maintains that 95 percent of the subscriber base will not be impacted by this new restriction.

According to a TechCrunch report, there are two new rate limits which will be applicable. The first is reportedly an overall usage limit which considers all the different features in the chatbot. The second rate limit is said to be placed on the Claude Opus 4, the company's most powerful AI model. “We'll also support Max plan users buying additional usage at standard API rates, if they choose to,” Anthropic said in another post.

Explaining the reason behind this measure, the AI firm said some users were abusing the usage threshold of the coding feature and consuming excessive processing power. Some users were running Claude Code nonstop in the background. “For example, one user consumed tens of thousands in model usage on a $200 plan,” it added. The company also found some users violating usage policies by reselling and sharing accounts.

As per the report, after the weekly limits are added, Pro users will likely get between 40 to 80 hours of Sonnet 4 usage when using Claue Code. Those on the $100 (roughly Rs. 8,700) Max subscription will reportedly get 140-280 hours of Sonnet 4, and 15-35 hours of Opus 4 usage. Finally, those subscribed to Claude's $200 (roughly Rs. 17,400) Max plans are said to receive 240-480 hours of Sonnet 4, and 24-40 hours of Opus 4. These numbers can vary based on the size of the codebase and other factors.