Anthropic sets new limits to curb excessive usage of Claude Code

Anthropic, the developer of the AI coding tool Claude Code, has announced new weekly rate limits for its Pro and Max subscription plans.

The changes will take effect on August 28, 2025, and are intended to address excessive usage and account-sharing violations.

These new limits will complement existing five-hour daily usage caps and will reset every seven days.

The weekly limits will include an overall usage cap as well as a specific limit for the advanced AI model, Claude Opus 4.

Max subscribers will have the option to buy additional usage at standard API rates.

According to Anthropic, these changes are expected to affect less than 5% of subscribers.

Pro plan users can expect 40 to 80 hours of usage per week, while Max plan users on the US$100 and US$200 tiers can anticipate 140 to 480 hours, depending on their chosen plan and model.

🔗 Source: TechCrunch

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ AI coding companies across the industry are struggling with power user economics

Anthropic’s rate limiting reflects a broader trend of AI coding companies revising their pricing strategies to manage power users who consume disproportionate resources.

In June, Cursor’s parent company Anysphere changed pricing for its $20-per-month Pro plan to limit power users, though they later apologized for poor communication that led to unexpected costs for users1.

Replit made similar pricing adjustments in June, highlighting that computational costs from heavy usage are challenging multiple providers simultaneously1.

This industry-wide issue illustrates a core challenge for these companies: AI coding tools deliver significant productivity gains—with 15-25% faster feature delivery reported across organizations—but the most valuable users are also the most expensive to support1.

The economics become particularly strained when power users run these tools continuously, as Anthropic noted with Claude Code users operating “24/7 in the background.”