On 23 August I wrote here that the higher weekly limit in Claude Code ran through 31 August, and that Anthropic had said for the first time that it hoped to make the increase permanent. I went with the primary source at the time, because X and the help article did not say the same thing, and I filed it as temporary until the opposite was in writing.
The answer arrived on 29 August. From 14 September the standard weekly limit goes up permanently by 25 percent, and until that day the current 50 percent increase stays in place. Two sentences, no hedge left, and the word permanent without an end date attached to it.
There is a second number in this, though, and it only surfaced after readers spent an afternoon doing the arithmetic.
The sum everyone worked out for themselves
The 25 percent is measured against the old standard, not against what you have today. Index that old standard at 100 and it becomes visible.
| Period | Weekly limit, indexed |
|---|---|
| Before 13 May 2026 | 100 |
| 13 May through 13 September | 150 |
| From 14 September | 125 |
125 really is 25 percent more than 100. It is also 17 percent less than 150. Both numbers are true, and which one you lead with decides whether this reads as an expansion or a squeeze.
Anthropic led with the first. Within hours the second appeared in a Community Note under the post, and shortly after that in a follow-up post from Anthropic itself: “Compared to today, this works out to a 17% reduction in weekly limits on Claude Code.” The same post says something is coming that will make it feel like you are getting more from Claude, with more visibility and control over your usage. The post after that thanks readers for bearing with them while they worked out what they can sustainably serve.
That is a company adjusting its own framing after its readers did it first. I think that is the right order, but it is a correction rather than a clarification, and the gap between those two is exactly why the Community Note is there.
One thing from the coverage I am not repeating. Aitoolsrecap wrote on 31 August that Anthropic deleted the original announcement and reposted it, and other sites picked that up. When I looked that day the post was still there, with the Community Note under it and the correction as a follow-up in the same thread. So I cannot confirm anything was taken down.
What did not line up on 31 August
On 31 August, Anthropic’s help article still said something different from X. The page was called “Claude Code May–August 2026 weekly limits promotion” and stated that the promotion runs from 13 May through 31 August 2026 at 11:59 PM PT, after which weekly limits return to their standard levels.
The X post from 29 August says the 50 percent stays until 14 September. Both are official channels of the same company, contradicting each other about a date that was two days away when that post went out.
This is the same contradiction as in August, only reversed. Back then X was the more generous of the two and I went with the help article. Now X is the more generous one and the help article is the one lagging behind. My August rule would send me the wrong way this time, which is the most useful thing I take from this episode: a standing preference for one channel only works if you also track which channel was updated last.
Postscript, 12 September. The help article has been updated. The page is still called “Claude Code May–August 2026 weekly limits promotion”, but it now gives 13 September 2026 at 11:59 PM PT as the end date, with a note above it saying the promotion was extended. On the end date the two channels no longer contradict each other. One difference remains: the help article still says only that weekly limits return to their standard levels afterwards, and does not mention the permanent 25 percent increase.
Postscript, 19 September. That difference is gone too. The help article now talks in the past tense: the promotion ran from 13 May through 13 September 2026, and from 14 September weekly limits in Claude Code are 25 percent higher than before the promotion, for Pro, Max, Team and seat-based Enterprise. Anthropic adds that it had planned to return limits to their original levels. The title still reads “May–August 2026”. The 17 percent figure is not on the page; that one stays on X.
What the weekly limit does and does not cover
The 50 percent increase applied to the weekly limit in Claude Code alone. The five-hour limit sits apart from it and was never part of this promotion. Anyone who hit a wall mid-refactor was usually hitting that five-hour clock, not the weekly one.
Where it applies is everywhere you use Claude Code: the CLI, the IDE extensions, the desktop and the web. Limits for Claude itself and for Cowork sit outside it.
Who gets it is narrower than you might assume. Pro, Max and Team are in, along with Enterprise plans on fixed seats. Enterprise plans billed by consumption are out, and free accounts have no Claude Code to begin with.
What Anthropic does not publish is how many tokens a weekly limit actually is. There is no table of hours per model, no message count, no absolute figure. So both the 25 and the 17 percent are percentages of something you can only measure yourself, with /usage in the CLI and the usage page in your account.
The caveat
Permanent is a word, not a contract. The promotion has been extended four times since 13 May, and every extension called it temporary. Now it is called permanent, and the reason to trust that word here is exactly as large as it was the previous time. What it describes is a level the company says it can sustainably serve, which is a statement about their capacity, and your week is downstream of it.
Responsibility shifts toward the user. The correction post says something is coming with more visibility and more control over your usage. That is useful, and it also means measuring your own scarcity becomes your job while setting its level stays their decision. Better visibility into a smaller budget is still a smaller budget.
Without an absolute figure you cannot audit a change. I can see my bar fill faster than last week, but I cannot verify that 125 is really 125. On any other metered subscription, from mobile data to electricity, the unit is on the bill. Here the unit is the trade secret and the indexation is a percentage of an unknown.
What I am doing
Between now and 13 September I am not changing what I run, precisely because I want to know where a normal week lands at the current level. I am noting that figure from /usage, using the weekly window rather than the daily one. Without that reference point, 17 percent is a percentage I can do nothing with.
What I am changing is the order of the heavy work. The daily scan and the gates run every day and are cheap; the expensive things are long sessions with many subagents. Those go in before 13 September, not because they cannot run afterwards, but because I want to see how far I get on a week that is still 150.
And I have put the help article on my reading list instead of in my memory. On 31 August it still carried the old date while X had said something else two days earlier. Next time I check both and note which one was touched last.
Frequently asked questions
Is my limit going up or down?
Both, depending on your reference point. Against the old standard from before 13 May you gain 25 percent. Against what you have today you lose roughly 17 percent. Anthropic now states both figures itself.
When does anything change?
On 14 September 2026. Through 13 September the current 50 percent increase stays in place, according to the announcement on X. Anthropic’s help article still named 31 August as the end date on 31 August, but as of 12 September at the latest it gives 13 September 2026 at 11:59 PM PT. As of 19 September at the latest, the help article also names the permanent 25 percent increase from 14 September. Both channels now agree, with one exception: the 17 percent cut compared with the promotion appears on X only.
Does this affect my five-hour limit?
No. The promotion covered the weekly limit in Claude Code only. The five-hour limit was permanently doubled back in May and sits apart from this.
Does it apply to Claude itself and to Cowork?
No. The increase covered Claude Code alone, everywhere you use it. Limits for Claude on web, desktop and mobile and for Cowork were left untouched.
Sources
- @ClaudeDevs on X, announcement of the permanent increase from 14 September, 29 August 2026
- @ClaudeDevs on X, follow-up post in the same thread stating the 17 percent reduction, 29 August 2026
- Community Note under that same announcement, read 31 August 2026
- Anthropic Help Center, “Claude Code May–August 2026 weekly limits promotion”, accessed 31 August, 12 September and 19 September 2026
- Anthropic Help Center, the same page, accessed again on 12 September 2026, giving 13 September 2026 at 11:59 PM PT as the end date
- Absolute limit figures are not published by Anthropic and are therefore absent here
Checked on 31 August 2026, with the help article checked again on 12 and 19 September 2026. The announcement, the correction and the terms come from primary sources: the @ClaudeDevs thread and Anthropic’s own help article. Two things I could not verify. First, several secondary sources write that Anthropic deleted the original announcement and reposted it; on 31 August that post was still up with the Community Note under it, so I am not repeating that claim. Second, the channels contradicted each other on the end date on 31 August, with X naming 13 September and the help article still naming 31 August. I went with the announcement because it was the more recent of the two, which is a different choice from the one I made in August. On the recheck of 12 September the help article had been updated to 13 September 2026 at 11:59 PM PT, so that contradiction is resolved; the permanent 25 percent increase was still absent there at that point. On 19 September it was in: the help article now gives 25 percent above pre-promotion levels, from 14 September. The indexed table is my own arithmetic based on the two published percentages, not a figure from Anthropic.