Anthropic's decision to restrict access is due to the rising prominence of Claude's coding.
In an effort to manage excessive usage by power users, prevent account sharing, and maintain a reliable service for all subscribers, Anthropic has announced that it will be implementing weekly rate limits for its AI coding tool, Claude Code, starting August 28 [1][3][5].
These new limits include a weekly overall usage cap that resets every seven days, a specific weekly limit on the usage of the advanced AI model Claude Opus 4, and the maintenance of existing five-hour rolling limits [1].
The new limits are aimed at users who run Claude Code continuously, 24/7. Max plan subscribers, who make up this majority, will have between 140-280 hours of Sonnet and 15-35 hours of Opus 4, depending on their tier [2]. For higher-tier Max users, the weekly limits extend to 240-480 Sonnet hours and 24-40 Opus hours [1].
Anthropic estimates that these limits will affect less than 5% of subscribers, mostly heavier users and those violating policy [1][5]. Max plan subscribers will have the option to purchase additional usage beyond the limits at standard API rates [1][4].
Other AI development tools, such as Cursor and Replit, are also facing similar issues and have adjusted their pricing strategies in response to heavy usage [6]. The rate limiting for Claude Code could potentially push serious developers to explore alternatives, as it may make the tool less reliable for continuous use [7].
It's worth noting that the exact measurement of the 20x in the Max plan advertisement is not clarified by Anthropic as being in terms of tokens or raw compute [5]. Additionally, Claude Code has experienced at least seven service outages in the past month, according to Anthropic's status page [5].
These weekly rate limits serve to balance high demand, discourage misuse, and help Anthropic deliver consistent, scalable AI coding services to all subscribers [2][3]. The changes in the Pro plan pricing by Anthropic and the restructuring of the Pro plan pricing by Cursor, as well as the reshaping of the pricing strategy by Replit due to overwhelming demand from heavy users, further underscore the need for such measures [4][6].
References:
- Anthropic Blog Post
- TechCrunch Article
- VentureBeat Article
- Ars Technica Article
- The Verge Article
- Cursor Blog Post
- Replit Blog Post
Technology-driven changes are expected in Anthropic's AI coding tool, Claude Code, as the company introduces weekly rate limits to manage excessive usage by power users and maintain a reliable service for all subscribers. These new limits include a weekly overall usage cap, specific weekly limits on the usage of the advanced AI model Claude Opus 4, and the maintenance of existing five-hour rolling limits.
