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AI usage limits

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AI usage limits are the caps that providers of subscription AI services place on how much computing a customer can consume before waiting for a reset. Between 2025 and 2026 they hardened from a background nuisance into one of the defining constraints of working with frontier models: coding agents such as Claude Code and OpenAI Codex made it possible to consume in hours what earlier chat interfaces spread across a month, and every major provider responded with layered session windows, weekly caps, and metered credit systems.[12][32] The moment a window renews, the limit reset, has developed a small culture of its own: OpenAI staff announce bonus resets on X to mark milestones, Anthropic resets everyone's windows after incidents and launches, and third-party sites track the announcements the way others track service status.[43][44]

This article explains how the major subscription limit systems work and when they reset, how they differ from API rate limits, how the limits were introduced, and the growing catalogue of out-of-cycle resets and promotions. AI Wiki also maintains a free, browser-local limit reset tracker with live countdowns and sourced reset histories for Codex and Claude.

Two regimes: subscription windows and API rate limits

The same models are metered in two different ways depending on how they are bought.

Subscription plans such as ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, and Google AI Pro bundle a fixed monthly price with usage windows: allowances that refill on a schedule measured in hours, weeks, or calendar months. Hitting one means waiting for the reset or, increasingly, buying metered extra usage. API access is pay-per-token with rate limits: ceilings on requests and tokens per minute or day that protect shared capacity rather than define what was purchased. The two are separate billing systems; a Claude subscription includes no API or Console access, and ChatGPT plans include no API credits.[61][69]

ProductShort windowLonger capDocumented reset rule (July 2026)
Claude (all plans)5-hour session allowanceWeekly limits on most paid plansRolling 5-hour window; weekly limits reset at a fixed time each week assigned to the account[2][4]
Codex / ChatGPT5-hour window shared by local and cloud tasksWeekly limits may apply by planLimits are account-specific, shown on the usage screen; the 5-hour restriction has been temporarily suspended for Plus, Business, and Pro since July 12, 2026[32][33]
Gemini appAllowance refreshes every 5 hoursWeekly limit5-hour refresh under a weekly cap, since May 17, 2026[47]
Gemini API and Gemini CLIPer-minute request capsDaily request quotasDaily quotas reset at midnight Pacific Time[50][51]
GitHub CopilotNoneMonthly AI credit allowanceResets at 00:00:00 UTC on the first day of each calendar month, no rollover[52][54]
CursorNone (Auto usage included)Monthly included usage valueMonthly billing cycle[57]
Anthropic APIRequests and tokens per minuteMonthly spend cap by tierToken bucket replenished continuously, no fixed reset moment[59]
OpenAI APIRequests and tokens per minuteDaily quotas and monthly usage caps by tierPer-minute and per-day windows; reset times returned in response headers[60]

The near-convergence on a 5-hour-plus-weekly design is recent. Anthropic completed it in August 2025 when weekly caps joined its five-hour sessions, Codex adopted the same shape, and Google moved the Gemini app onto it on May 17, 2026.[12][47]

Claude

Anthropic meters every claude.ai plan, including the free tier, with a session allowance on a rolling 5-hour window.[1][4] The help center long explained sessions as starting with the user's first message and lasting five hours, wording that now survives mainly in third-party guides; current documentation says simply that the session limit resets every five hours, and the Claude Code cost docs call it "a rolling five-hour window."[2][4] Because Claude Code and Claude Cowork run on the same subscription, chat, coding agent, and agentic workspace all drain one shared pool.[4][7]

Weekly limits are the newer and more contested layer. Pro, Max, and per-seat Team and Enterprise plans carry caps that reset at a fixed time each week assigned to the account, visible in the usage screen rather than derivable from a public clock; consumption-based Enterprise plans have no included allowance to cap.[2][6][9] As of July 2026, Pro has one weekly limit covering all models, while Max plans carry two: one across all models and a second for Sonnet models only.[2][3] The second cap has shifted identity with the model lineup. It launched in August 2025 as an Opus-only cap, Anthropic removed the model-specific cap when Claude Opus 4.5 arrived on November 24, 2025, and parts of Anthropic's own documentation still describe the weekly display in terms of Opus, so the details are worth checking against your own usage screen.[12][16][6][5]

Reset times are published per account. Settings > Usage on claude.ai shows progress bars for the 5-hour session and the weekly limits, the /usage command in Claude Code shows the same bars plus a breakdown of which skills, subagents, and MCP servers consumed the allowance, and the limit errors themselves carry exact times, in the form "resets Mon 12:00am."[6][4][5]

PlanPrice (July 2026)Session usageWeekly caps
Free$0Baseline 5-hour allowanceNo weekly cap documented[1]
Pro$17/month annual, $20 monthlyAt least 5x FreeOne, across all models[2][10]
Max 5x$100/month5x ProTwo: all models, plus Sonnet-only[3]
Max 20x$200/month20x ProTwo: all models, plus Sonnet-only[3]
Team standard seat$20/month annual, $25 monthlyStandard seat allowanceWeekly window per seat[4][10]
Team premium seat$100/month annual, $125 monthly5x standard seatsWeekly window per seat[4][10]
Enterprise (current)$20/seat plus consumption at API ratesConsumption-basedUsage credits do not apply[9][10]

Running out no longer always means waiting. Pro and Max subscribers can enable usage credits that bill continued usage at standard API rates, with auto-reload and a $2,000 daily redemption cap, and the 5-hour cycle keeps running underneath.[8] Team and seat-based Enterprise owners can enable organization-level credits covering Claude, Cowork, and Claude Code, with per-user spend caps.[9] Inside Claude Code, /usage-credits opens the right billing screen.[4]

OpenAI Codex and ChatGPT

Codex ships with every ChatGPT plan, including Free and the Go tier.[31] Local messages in the Codex CLI and IDE extensions share one 5-hour window with cloud tasks, and additional weekly limits may apply depending on plan.[32] OpenAI's current documentation does not say when the window opens; third-party guides describe it as rolling from first usage. Since ChatGPT's Work mode launched on July 9, 2026 as an agent surface beside Chat and Codex, the two draw from a single pool: OpenAI's pricing page states that "Work mode and Codex share usage."[65][32]

The system changed materially on July 12, 2026, when OpenAI temporarily suspended the 5-hour restriction for Plus, Business, and Pro plans with no announced end date, leaving weekly limits as the binding cap for paid users.[33]

Allowances are published as per-model message ranges rather than token counts. In July 2026 the pricing page listed, for example, roughly 15 to 90 messages of GPT-5.6 Sol per 5-hour window on Plus, with Pro sold in 5x and 20x variants, and it notes that a turn already running when the limit hits may continue, subject to fair use limits.[32] Extra usage is sold as credits: since October 30, 2025, Plus and Pro users can buy packs of 1,000 credits for $40 from the usage dashboard at chatgpt.com/codex/settings/usage, consumed only after plan usage runs out and priced per million tokens on a published rate card.[37][32][38] Workspace credits cover Business, Edu, and Enterprise, and an API key at API rates remains the third path.[32]

OpenAI's distinctive mechanic is the banked reset: a stored full usage reset credited to an account, redeemable whenever the user chooses from the desktop app, web, or mobile, which replenishes the weekly allowance on redemption.[34][35][67] Reset credits carry a type and an expiration date in the Codex CLI, which added a confirmation step before redemption in July 2026.[36] The mechanic first appeared in mid-June 2026, and OpenAI has since granted banked resets to all accounts more than once, including for a 7-million-user milestone on July 13, 2026.[34][35] Inside the CLI, /status reports remaining limits.[32]

ChatGPT's chat interface went through its own cap era. GPT-4 launched in March 2023 under a fluctuating cap that quickly settled at 25 messages per 3 hours, and OpenAI doubled it to 50 that July.[45] Caps later became model-specific, and by 2026 the official Plus page publishes no fixed numbers at all, promising only that caps may apply "especially during high demand."[46]

Google Gemini

Google rebuilt the Gemini app's limits on May 17, 2026, replacing fixed daily prompt counts with a compute-based allowance that "refreshes every 5 hours" under a weekly cap.[47] How much a prompt consumes depends on its complexity, the model and features used, and the length of the chat, and paid tiers are defined as multipliers rather than absolute numbers: Google AI Plus doubles standard limits, AI Pro is 4x, and AI Ultra runs 5x or 20x above Pro depending on the subscription.[47] After user complaints, Google capped how much of a quota any single prompt can consume and stopped charging for failed requests.[48] The previous system, retired in May 2026, had published exact daily counts, such as 5 Gemini 2.5 Pro prompts per day free, 100 on AI Pro, and 500 on AI Ultra.[49]

For developers, the free Gemini CLI tier through a personal Google account allows 60 model requests per minute and 1,000 per day, rising to 1,500 per day on Gemini Code Assist Standard and 2,000 on Enterprise.[50] The CLI documentation names no reset clock, but Google's documented rule for the Gemini API is that daily request quotas reset at midnight Pacific Time.[50][51]

GitHub Copilot

Copilot has the most deterministic reset schedule of the major tools: the calendar does the work. Premium request billing began on June 18, 2025, with monthly allowances (300 on Pro, 1,500 on Pro+) that reset on the first of each month at 00:00:00 UTC and a $0.04 overage price per extra request.[52] On June 1, 2026, GitHub replaced premium request units with token-based GitHub AI Credits, announced that April: 1 credit equals $0.01, individual plans include 1,500 (Pro), 7,000 (Pro+), or 20,000 (the new $100 Copilot Max) credits per month, and organizations get 1,900 (Business) or 3,900 (Enterprise) credits per user pooled at the billing-entity level, promotionally raised to 3,000 and 7,000 through September 1, 2026.[53][54][55][56] The allowance still resets at 00:00:00 UTC on the first day of each calendar month, unused credits do not roll over, and code completions stay unlimited on paid plans.[54]

Cursor

Cursor abandoned request counting on June 16, 2025, when its Pro plan swapped a 500-fast-requests-per-month quota for at least $20 of model inference at API prices each month plus unlimited access to its Auto model, and a $200 Ultra tier launched with 20x Pro's usage.[57][58] The switch confused enough users that Cursor published a clarification on July 4, 2025 and refunded surprise usage charged in the interim.[58] The mid-2026 lineup spans a free Hobby tier and paid Pro, Pro+, and Ultra plans whose included monthly usage scales with the plan price, so limits behave like a prepaid budget on a monthly billing cycle rather than a window that resets during the week.[68]

API rate limits

API platforms enforce a different kind of limit. Anthropic applies organization-level rate limits in three dimensions per model class: requests per minute, input tokens per minute, and output tokens per minute, alongside monthly spend caps that define the usage tiers, which in 2026 are named Start, Build, and Scale (capped at $500, $1,000, and $200,000 per month) plus negotiated Custom tiers.[59] Anthropic's limits use a token bucket that is "continuously replenished up to your maximum limit," so there is no fixed reset moment to wait for; exceeding a limit returns HTTP 429 with a retry-after header, and every response carries anthropic-ratelimit headers giving remaining capacity and an RFC 3339 replenishment time.[59] Cache reads do not count against input-token limits for most models, which makes prompt caching a rate-limit lever as well as a cost one.[59]

OpenAI meters usage across several dimensions (requests per minute and day, tokens per minute and day, images per minute, and audio minutes for some streaming audio models), enforces whichever binds first, and attaches limits to organizations and projects rather than individual users.[60] Usage tiers advance automatically with cumulative spend, from Tier 1 at $5 paid up to Tier 5 at $1,000, raising monthly usage caps from $100 to $200,000, and responses carry x-ratelimit headers with remaining counts and reset times.[60] Google's developer quotas follow the daily-reset rule described above.[51]

Resets outside the schedule

Routine renewals are only half the story. Providers now regularly reset windows early, for four recurring reasons: recovering from incidents that burned usage unfairly, celebrating launches and milestones, running promotions, and plain goodwill.

DateProviderEvent
Oct 1, 2025AnthropicWeekly limits reset for all paid users while steering subscribers from Claude Opus 4.1 to Claude Sonnet 4.5[15]
Dec 19, 2025OpenAICodex usage zeroed during a billing-system migration rather than backfilled[41]
Feb 27, 2026AnthropicClaude Code prompt-caching bug consumed limits too fast; fixed in 2.1.62 and limits reset[19]
Apr 16, 2026AnthropicLong-context usage accounting bug in Opus 4.7; 5-hour and weekly limits reset[18]
Apr 17, 2026OpenAICodex CLI's first anniversary; limits reset across all plans[39][40]
Apr 23, 2026AnthropicPostmortem for three overlapping Claude Code quality regressions; usage limits reset for all subscribers[17]
Jun 1, 2026AnthropicParallel-subagent bug burned usage; Pro and Max limits reset[20]
Jun 4, 2026OpenAIReset across paid plans after three Codex incidents in 24 hours[63]
Jun 9, 2026AnthropicClaude Fable 5 launch; all users' windows reset[21]
Jun 20, 2026AnthropicAbout 3% of Claude Code Pro and Max users saw an incorrect weekly limit; everyone reset[24]
Jun 18 to Jul 13, 2026OpenAIBanked resets granted account-wide, twice, plus a rollout of redemption to web and mobile[34][35][67]
Jul 1, 2026AnthropicFable 5 restored after the June 12-30 export-control suspension; universal reset[22][23]
Jul 9, 2026Anthropic5-hour and weekly limits reset for all users[25]
Jul 21, 2026OpenAI10-million-user milestone reset for paid Codex and ChatGPT Work[43]

Promotions form the other half of the out-of-cycle catalogue:

PromotionWindowTerms
Claude holiday promotionDec 25-31, 20252x usage including weekly caps for individual Pro and Max, with weekly caps reset at the start[26]
Claude March promotionMar 13-28, 20262x 5-hour usage outside weekday peak hours; bonus usage did not count toward weekly limits[27]
Claude Code weekly boostMay 13 to Aug 19, 2026Weekly limits raised 50% for Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise; twice extended; 5-hour limits unaffected[28][29][66]
Cowork usage boostJun 5 to Aug 5, 2026Cowork's 5-hour limit doubled; weekly limits unchanged[30]
Codex 5-hour suspensionFrom Jul 12, 20265-hour restriction temporarily removed for Plus, Business, and Pro; weekly limits remain[33]

History and reception

Usage limits became a story in mid-2025. On July 17, 2025, TechCrunch reported that Anthropic had tightened Claude Code limits without telling anyone, and the complaint that stuck was not the caps but the silence: "Just be transparent. The lack of communication just causes people to lose confidence in them," one affected user told TechCrunch.[13] Eleven days later Anthropic announced weekly rate limits for Pro and Max, effective August 28, 2025, estimating they would touch "less than 5% of subscribers."[11][12] The company pointed to people running Claude Code "continuously in the background, 24/7," account sharing, and resale of access, and its announcement noted that one user had consumed "tens of thousands in model usage" on a $200 plan.[12][14] Launch estimates put Pro at 40 to 80 hours of Sonnet 4 per week, with Max tiers proportionally higher plus separate Opus hours.[12] The Hacker News thread on the change drew over 600 points and 700 comments.[62]

Since then the pattern has been steady liberalization at the edges: higher quotas and the Opus cap's removal in November 2025, purchasable extra usage on both platforms, promotions that temporarily raise or double windows, and frequent goodwill resets.[16][8][37] The reset announcements themselves became a genre. OpenAI's Codex lead Thibault Sottiaux has announced dozens on X, enough that a third-party tracker, codex-resets.com, archives them and computes statistics: 36 reset events averaging 8.8 days apart as of July 23, 2026.[43][44] Over-consumption incidents recur on OpenAI's side too; a March 2026 status-page entry warned that Codex usage was being consumed faster than expected.[42] Desktop monitors such as AI Gauge track Claude, Codex, and Copilot limits locally.[64] Anthropic publishes no equivalent feed of its one-off resets; AI Wiki maintains a manually reviewed, source-linked archive of them on the limit reset tracker, also available as open JSON data.

Checking your reset time

No provider publishes a universal clock for subscription windows, so the account's own surfaces are authoritative.

ProductWhere to lookWhat it shows
Claude (web and apps)Settings > Usage on claude.aiProgress bars for the 5-hour session and weekly limits, with reset times[6]
Claude Code/usage command, or the limit error textPlan usage bars, consumption breakdown, and exact reset times[4][5]
Codexchatgpt.com/codex/settings/usage, or /status in the CLIRemaining 5-hour and weekly limits and credit balance[32][37]
GitHub CopilotBilling and licensing settingsCredit usage against the monthly allowance; resets on the 1st at 00:00 UTC[54]
Gemini appIn-product noticesWarnings as the 5-hour or weekly allowance runs low[47]
Anthropic and OpenAI APIsResponse headersRemaining requests and tokens, with reset timestamps[59][60]

See also

References

  1. Get started with Claude - Anthropic Help Center ↩
  2. What is the Pro plan? - Anthropic Help Center ↩
  3. What is the Max plan? - Anthropic Help Center ↩
  4. Manage costs and usage - Claude Code documentation ↩
  5. Handle errors and usage limits - Claude Code documentation ↩
  6. Usage limit best practices - Anthropic Help Center ↩
  7. Use Claude Code with your Pro or Max plan - Anthropic Help Center ↩
  8. Manage extra usage for paid Claude plans - Anthropic Help Center ↩
  9. Manage usage credits for Team and seat-based Enterprise plans - Anthropic Help Center ↩
  10. Claude pricing - Anthropic ↩
  11. Anthropic announcement of weekly rate limits - X, July 28, 2025 ↩
  12. Anthropic unveils new rate limits to curb Claude Code power users - TechCrunch, July 28, 2025 ↩
  13. Anthropic tightens usage limits for Claude Code without telling users - TechCrunch, July 17, 2025 ↩
  14. Hacker News comment quoting Anthropic's announcement, July 28, 2025 ↩
  15. Update on usage limits - r/Anthropic official post, October 1, 2025 ↩
  16. Claude Opus 4.5 arrives with Anthropic cutting prices - The Decoder, November 24, 2025 ↩
  17. An update on recent Claude Code quality reports - Anthropic Engineering, April 23, 2026 ↩
  18. Claude Developers on the Opus 4.7 long-context accounting fix and reset - X, April 16, 2026 ↩
  19. Thariq Shihipar on the Claude Code prompt-caching bug and reset - X, February 27, 2026 ↩
  20. Claude Developers on the parallel-subagent usage bug and reset - X, June 1, 2026 ↩
  21. Claude Developers reset announcement at the Fable 5 launch - X, June 9, 2026 ↩
  22. Redeploying Claude Fable 5 - Anthropic, June 30, 2026 ↩
  23. Claude Developers reset announcement on Fable 5's return - X, July 1, 2026 ↩
  24. Claude Developers on the incorrect weekly limit display and universal reset - X, June 20, 2026 ↩
  25. Claude Developers universal reset announcement - X, July 9, 2026 ↩
  26. Holiday 2025 usage promotion - Anthropic Help Center ↩
  27. Claude March 2026 usage promotion - Anthropic Help Center ↩
  28. Claude Code May-August 2026 weekly limits promotion - Anthropic Help Center ↩
  29. Claude Developers on extending the weekly boost through August 19 - X, July 18, 2026 ↩
  30. Claude Cowork June-August 2026 usage promotion - Anthropic Help Center ↩
  31. Using Codex with your ChatGPT plan - OpenAI Help Center ↩
  32. Codex pricing and usage limits - OpenAI documentation ↩
  33. Thibault Sottiaux on temporarily removing the 5-hour restriction - X, July 12, 2026 ↩
  34. Thibault Sottiaux introducing the reset bank - X, June 18, 2026 ↩
  35. Thibault Sottiaux on the 7M-user banked reset - X, July 13, 2026 ↩
  36. Codex changelog - OpenAI documentation ↩
  37. OpenAI Developers on Codex credits - X, October 30, 2025 ↩
  38. Codex rate card - OpenAI Help Center ↩
  39. Thibault Sottiaux on the Codex anniversary reset - X, April 17, 2026 ↩
  40. OpenAI releases Codex CLI - Gigazine, April 17, 2025 ↩
  41. Thibault Sottiaux on the billing migration reset - X, December 19, 2025 ↩
  42. Issues with increased Codex usage rate - OpenAI status page, March 2026 ↩
  43. Thibault Sottiaux 10M-user reset announcement - X, July 21, 2026 ↩
  44. codex-resets.com - third-party Codex reset tracker ↩
  45. OpenAI increases GPT-4 message cap for ChatGPT - Search Engine Journal, July 2023 ↩
  46. What is ChatGPT Plus? - OpenAI Help Center ↩
  47. Gemini Apps usage limits and upgrades - Google Help ↩
  48. Google adjusts new Gemini usage limits - 9to5Google, May 28, 2026 ↩
  49. Google publishes exact Gemini usage limits across all tiers - Search Engine Journal, September 2025 ↩
  50. Gemini CLI quota and pricing - Google Gemini CLI documentation ↩
  51. Gemini API rate limits - Google AI for Developers ↩
  52. Premium requests - GitHub Docs ↩
  53. GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing - GitHub Blog, April 27, 2026 ↩
  54. Usage-based billing for individuals - GitHub Docs ↩
  55. GitHub Copilot billing - GitHub Docs ↩
  56. Usage-based billing for organizations and enterprises - GitHub Docs ↩
  57. New Ultra tier - Cursor blog, June 2025 ↩
  58. Clarifying our pricing - Cursor blog, July 4, 2025 ↩
  59. Rate limits - Claude API documentation ↩
  60. Rate limits - OpenAI API documentation ↩
  61. Why do I have to pay separately for the Claude API? - Anthropic Help Center ↩
  62. Claude Code weekly rate limits - Hacker News, July 28, 2025 ↩
  63. Thibault Sottiaux on the reset after three Codex incidents - X, June 4, 2026 ↩
  64. Show HN: AI Gauge, a desktop monitor for AI usage limits - Hacker News, June 2026 ↩
  65. OpenAI unveils ChatGPT Work agent - Bloomberg, July 9, 2026 ↩
  66. Claude Code weekly limits promotion extended - Help Net Security, July 13, 2026 ↩
  67. Thibault Sottiaux on banked reset redemption from web and mobile - X, July 12, 2026 ↩
  68. Cursor pricing ↩
  69. Managing billing settings on ChatGPT web and platform - OpenAI Help Center ↩

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