Anthropic, the company behind the AI coding tool Claude Code, has announced the implementation of new weekly rate limits for its Pro and Max subscribers. This move aims to curb excessive usage, particularly among users who run Claude Code continuously in the background, 24/7, and those who violate usage policies by sharing accounts and reselling access.
The new rate limits, set to take effect on August 28, will apply to subscribers of Anthropic's $20-per-month Pro plan, as well as its $100 and $200-per-month Max plans. According to Anthropic, these limits will affect less than 5% of subscribers based on current usage patterns.
In addition to the existing usage limits, which reset every five hours, Anthropic is introducing two new weekly rate limits that reset every seven days. One limit applies to overall usage, while the other is specific to Anthropic's most advanced AI model, Claude Opus 4. Max subscribers will have the option to purchase additional usage beyond the rate limit at standard API rates.
This announcement follows Anthropic's quiet introduction of rate limits for Claude Code just weeks prior. The company acknowledged the issues at hand but declined to provide further details. Despite the popularity of its AI coding tool among developers, Anthropic seems to be struggling to serve it broadly. The company's status page shows that Claude Code has experienced partial or major outages at least seven times in the last month, possibly due to power users running the tool nonstop.
Anthropic has previously stated that it faces constraints in terms of computational resources, a common challenge for most AI model providers today. As AI companies race to bring new data centers online to meet the massive demands of serving and training their AI models, several providers of AI coding tools are revisiting their pricing strategies.
In June, Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, changed its pricing for the $20-per-month Pro plan to limit power users from abusing the plan. However, Anysphere later apologized for poor communication of these changes, leading to some users paying more than expected. Replit, another AI coding tool provider, made similar pricing changes in June.
Anthropic has not yet responded to TechCrunch's inquiries about the specifics of the rate limits. According to the company, most Pro users can expect 40-80 hours of Sonnet 4 within their weekly rate limits, but usage may vary based on codebase size and other factors.
In an email to Claude subscribers, Anthropic emphasized its commitment to supporting long-running use cases through other options in the future. However, the company claims that these rate limits will help maintain reliable service broadly in the short term.