Claude usage limits, plan by plan

How the two windows work

The five-hour session exists on Free, Pro and Max. Anthropic calls it a "rolling five-hour session window": in practice it opens with the first message you send while no window is running and closes about five hours later. Send your first message at 09:00 and that session ends around 14:00; the next one only starts with your next message. On paid plans, Settings > Usage shows it as Current session, with how much you have used and the time remaining.

Ultra has no five-hour limit once Anthropic has verified the account. Anthropic verifies accounts automatically, from signals such as account and payment history; until then a temporary five-hour limit applies and goes away by itself, and verifying a phone number at checkout does not remove it. A verified Ultra account shows no Current session bar in Settings > Usage.

The weekly limit applies across all models. On paid plans it resets "at a fixed time each week that is assigned to your account": the day and time stay the same whenever you started using Claude or subscribed. Settings > Usage shows the next reset under Weekly limits. Free gets "limited usage every 5 hours and every week", without a figure. Every message counts against the session and the week at the same time (on a verified Ultra account, against the week only).

The five-hour window starts with your first message, not at a fixed hour

Example: first message at 09:00 → reset at 14:00. The next message, at 15:00, opens a new window.

Example

Session windows in this example

Period	From	To
Window 1	09:00	14:00
No window	14:00	15:00
Window 2	15:00	20:00

Model ceilings: Fable, Opus and Sonnet

Some models have a ceiling of their own inside the weekly limit.

• Fable 5 and Fable 5.1 on Max and Ultra and on premium Team seats: up to 50% of your weekly limits at no extra cost, then usage credits or another model. It is a ceiling, not extra room: you "can never use more than your weekly limit".
• Fable on Pro and on standard Team seats: not part of the plan's limits. It runs on usage credits from the first message.
• Claude Code can also stop with "You've hit your Opus limit" or "Sonnet limit". That blocks one model family only: /model to another family keeps you working.

A model ceiling can block one model while the session and the week still have room

Example: session 38%, week 61%, Fable 100%. Whichever fills first stops you.

Example

Blockedonly Fable is blocked: switch model and keep working.

Limits in this example

Limit	Used	Resets
5-hour session	38%	—
Weekly · all models	61%	—
Weekly · Fable only	100%	—

How much each plan gives

Anthropic describes each plan by a multiple of another, and its pricing page now gives them for both windows: Max gives 5× Pro's usage every 5 hours and every week, and Ultra gives 10× Pro's usage every week, with no 5-hour limit once the account is verified. Pro gives "more usage than Free", without a figure: the "at least 5x" of earlier pages is no longer published. On Team, Standard seats get 1.25× and Premium seats 6.25× Pro's per-session allowance. Team limits are per member: one person reaching a limit does not affect the others.

Max and Ultra were called Max 5x and Max 20x until 30 October 2026. Prices did not change, subscribers moved automatically, and Anthropic says the old 20x applied to the session limit, not to every limit: weekly limits did not change, so Ultra's 10× a week is not a cut.

Plans differ by published multipliers, never by published token counts

Usage per week relative to Pro, as Anthropic describes its plans. Prices are not part of this chart.

Per weekthe same multiplier buys fewer messages when each message carries a long conversation or big files.

Usage per week by plan

Plan	Relative to Pro
Free	less than Pro
Pro	the reference
Max	5× Pro
Ultra	10× Pro · no 5-hour limit

The same multiplier does not buy the same number of messages. Anthropic lists what fills a window: message length, attachments, the length of the conversation, tools such as Research and web search, the model, the effort level, artifacts and multi-step tasks. A short question in a new chat costs little; the twentieth message of a long chat about a big file costs far more.

One pool for every Claude surface

Claude on the web, Claude Desktop, the mobile apps, Cowork and Claude Code all draw from the same limits. Since 16 September 2026, Anthropic has been merging Cowork and chat into one Claude conversation, starting with Pro and Max; while it rolls out, usage "may be measured slightly differently" between accounts that have it and accounts that do not.

Usage-based Enterprise plans are the exception: they have no plan limits, and every token is billed at API rates, with spend limits set by admins.

When you reach a limit

Anthropic lists three ways to keep going: wait for the reset, move to a bigger plan, or turn on usage credits (Pro, Max, Ultra, and Team when the organization allows it), billed at API rates up to a monthly cap you set. Two more exist: a limit reset, when Anthropic has given you one ("Reset for free" in Settings > Usage, on the web or in Claude Desktop), and another model when only a model ceiling is full.

When each limit comes back, and how the free reset works, is on When Claude's limits reset.

How the limits changed in 2026

How Claude's limits changed

8 changes between January 2026 and October 2026. Dates in UTC.

1. 1Mar 26Peak hours: five-hour limits drain faster on weekdays, 5–11 AM PT
2. 2May 6Claude Code: five-hour limits doubled, no peak-hour reduction on Pro and Max
3. 3May 13 → Sep 13Promotion: Claude Code weekly limits 50% higher
4. 4Jul 20Fable 5: up to 50% of weekly limits on Max, usage credits only on Pro
5. 5Sep 14Claude Code weekly limits permanently 25% above their pre-promotion level
6. 6Sep 16Cowork and chat become one Claude; usage may be measured slightly differently
7. 7Sep 22 → Oct 22Opus 5.5 launch: five-hour limits raised on Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise seats · One limit reset given to subscribers,…
8. 8Oct 30Max 5x becomes Max and Max 20x becomes Ultra; weekly limits unchanged · Ultra: no 5-hour limit once Anthropic has verif…

• Less usage
• More usage
• Promotion
• Model rules
• Other

The latest change: on 30 October 2026, Max 5x and Max 20x became Max and Ultra at the same prices; verified Ultra accounts no longer have a five-hour limit, and Ultra's allowance is stated as 10× Pro's every week, while weekly limits did not change. Before that, on 22 September 2026, with Claude Opus 5.5, Anthropic raised the five-hour limits of Pro, Max, Team and seat-based Enterprise plans (by 20% for Claude Code, according to its Claude Code account) and gave Pro, Max and Team subscribers one limit reset, to use by 22 October; on 14 September 2026, Claude Code's weekly limits had settled 25% above their level before May. Every change, with its source: the full timeline.

What Anthropic does not publish

• No token or message counts for any plan, only the multipliers above.
• No multiplier between Free and Pro. Pro gives "more usage than Free"; the "at least 5x" Anthropic used to publish is gone.
• The size of the 22 September increase for chats. The announcement says the five-hour limits went up without giving a figure; Anthropic's Claude Code account gave 20% for Claude Code's five-hour session limits, and ZDNET reported the same 20% for subscription plans in general.
• Peak hours for chat. On 26 March 2026 Anthropic said five-hour limits drain faster on weekdays from 5 to 11 AM Pacific Time on Free, Pro, Max 5x and Max 20x (now Max and Ultra); it removed that for Claude Code on those plans on 6 May, has announced no end for chat, and its help centre does not mention it.
• A figure for Free's weekly limit. The pricing page says "limited usage every 5 hours and every week"; Free usage "will vary based on demand".