Not a buffet: Anthropic adds weekly rate limits to Claude after users run AI 24/7

Anthropic has introduced weekly rate limits for Claude subscribers starting August 28, citing that some users have been running Claude 24/7 and engaging in policy violations like account sharing and reselling access. The throttling will affect approximately 5% of users and comes alongside existing 5-hour daily limits, as the company struggles with reliability issues and unprecedented demand for its Claude Code product.

What you should know: The new weekly limits are designed to address system capacity issues caused by heavy usage patterns and policy violations.
• Claude Max 20x users can expect 240-480 hours of Sonnet 4 and 24-40 hours of Opus 4 within their weekly rate limits.
• Heavy users of the Opus model or those running multiple Claude Code instances simultaneously may reach limits sooner.
• Users who hit weekly limits can purchase additional usage “at standard API rates to continue working without interruption.”

Why this matters: The move highlights the ongoing challenge AI companies face balancing user access with system capacity and profitability during the current period of relatively cheap AI.
• Rate limits help ensure model providers have bandwidth to respond to all user prompts effectively.
• The decision comes as users have experienced reliability issues with Claude, which Anthropic acknowledged.
• Power users experimenting with long-running agents or larger coding projects may find their use cases limited.

What they’re saying: Anthropic defended the decision while users expressed frustration on social media.
• “Claude Code has experienced unprecedented demand since launch. We designed our plans to give developers generous access to Claude, and while most users operate within normal patterns, we’ve also seen policy violations like account sharing and reselling access, which affects performance for everyone,” Anthropic said in a statement.
• The company noted “advanced usage patterns like running Claude 24/7 in the background that are impacting system capacity for all.”
• Developer Will Brown criticized the opacity: “imagine if gas stations didn’t tell you how many gallons you were getting because car mileage was a trade secret.”
• Nick Nisi warned: “Remember, this is the period of cheap AI. They’re getting us all hooked as they push the limits on what they can charge.”

The bigger picture: This throttling decision reflects broader industry tensions around AI pricing and access models.
• While some companies like Google have removed limits for specific models, others including OpenAI and Anthropic maintain tiered rate limit systems.
• The approach assumes power users will pay more for compute power while lighter users pay less.
• Anthropic has been expanding its developer offerings, recently transforming Claude into a no-code platform and launching enterprise-specific versions.