Anthropic is under fire for tightening restrictions on Claude Code usage without notifying users



There have been reports that Anthropic's conversational AI coding tool ' Claude Code ,' which runs on a terminal, has been subject to stricter usage restrictions without prior notice. The issue has been occurring since around Monday, July 14, 2025, and is concentrated among 'Claude Max' users with subscription plans of $100 (approximately 15,000 yen) or more per month.

Claude Code API Usage Limit Unexpectedly Reduced on MAX Plan · Issue #3511 · anthropics/claude-code
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/3511

Anthropic tightens usage limits for Claude Code – without telling users | TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/17/anthropic-tightens-usage-limits-for-claude-code-without-telling-users/

Users who experience the issue are only notified that their Claude usage limit has been reached and given the time when the limit will be reset (usually within a few hours), without any details. This has led to confusion among users, with some wondering if their accounts have been unfairly downgraded or if their usage is not being tracked correctly.



A user posted an issue on Claude Code's GitHub page complaining that 'the way usage limits are tracked has changed and is no longer accurate . It's impossible to reach 900 messages with just a few requests in 30 minutes.'

Anthropic's support page states the following about the usage limit for the Max plan: 'If your conversations are relatively short, you can expect to send at least 225 messages every 5 hours with the 5x Max plan, and at least 900 messages every 5 hours with the 20x Max plan, with more messages possible depending on the length of the messages, the length of the conversation, and Claude's current capacity.' In addition, the number of sessions is limited to 50 per month, and '50 sessions equates to a maximum of 250 hours of usage per month, and we will display a warning if you have limited sessions remaining.'

When TechCrunch reached out to Anthropic for comment, a spokesperson acknowledged the issue but declined to provide further details. 'We are aware that some Claude Code users are experiencing slow response times and are currently working to resolve these issues,' the spokesperson said.



According to TechCrunch, this issue is occurring in parallel with problems occurring on Anthropic's network. Anthropic's network is maintaining 100% uptime, and many API users reported overloaded errors at the same time. Anthropic's status page shows six separate issues in the past four days. This means that usage of Claude and Claude Code may have far exceeded Anthropic's expectations, causing the server's processing power to be overwhelmed.

In particular, the $200/month Max plan was extremely cheap compared to paying for individual API usage. One user posted on the social news site Hacker News that 'on this plan, I sometimes made more than $1,000 (about 150,000 yen) worth of API calls in a day.' Another user reported that 'I had a colleague who was paying $200/month and using $1,000/week of API calls.'

One user, who spoke to TechCrunch on the condition of anonymity, said they have been unable to move forward with their project since the restrictions were tightened. 'I've tried Gemini and Kimi, but so far nothing comes close to the feature set that Claude Code has,' the user said.

TechCrunch points out that part of the confusion is due to Anthropic's tiered pricing structure. The most expensive Max plan costs $200 per month and has usage limits 20 times higher than the $20 per month Pro plan. And the Pro plan's usage limits are 'five times higher than the free plan.' However, Anthropic says that the limits for free users 'vary depending on demand,' and does not set absolute values. As a result, TechCrunch argues, users are unclear about when their service will be limited, and cannot plan around the usage limits.

Since then, an update has been applied to Claude Code's Analytics dashboard, which reportedly provides more detailed information about Claude Code's actual usage, from session limits to cache efficiency, but it is not clear what changes have been made to the stricter usage limits.



'Oh man, looks like the sweet deal is over,' one user wrote in a GitHub issue. 'I ran npx ccusage and it showed that we were all spending over $200 a day. I guess Anthropic noticed that, and YouTubers started making videos about how great this tool is, and it got all over the place. This is just like MoviePass used to be. If the price doesn't match the experience, people are going to take full advantage of it. I can't see Anthropic reverting this change. I think they're going to have to consider investing in their own infrastructure and using a fine-tuned open source model.'

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