The 5-hour session limit
Anthropic says your “session-based usage limit will reset every five hours.” It fills fastest, especially with long conversations, big files or the biggest models, and it recovers fastest too. Hit it and you wait hours, not days.
The weekly limit
There’s also a weekly limit “that applies across all models.” It “resets at a fixed time each week that is assigned to your account,” and that day and time “stay the same regardless of when you start using Claude.” So it isn’t Monday, and it isn’t a rolling seven days from your first message, whatever older posts say.
Everything counts toward it: Anthropic says your usage of claude.ai, Claude Code and Claude Desktop “counts towards the same usage limit.” Hit it and you wait until your weekly reset, which can be days away.
The Fable limit (Max plans)
On Max plans and premium seats, Fable models can use up to half of your weekly limit, and Anthropic notes they use it faster than other models. That share has its own bar, so it can run out while “All models” still has room. On Pro plans and standard seats, Fable runs on usage credits instead.
How to tell which one stopped you
Open Settings → Usage on claude.ai. It shows Current session with how much you’ve used and the time remaining, and Weekly limits for all models, plus Fable if your plan includes it. The bar at 100% is the one that stopped you, and the reset time next to it tells you how long you’ll wait.
Anthropic also says it “may limit your usage in other ways,” so if nothing is at 100%, check its status page and the help article on usage and length limits.
What you can do
- Session full: wait for the reset, usually the shortest wait. Starting a fresh conversation afterwards helps it last longer.
- Fable full, All models not: switch to another model. It still has room until the weekly limit runs out.
- Weekly full: wait for your weekly reset, upgrade your plan, or turn on usage credits to keep working at API rates.
- A free reset offered in Settings → Usage: Anthropic gives these occasionally. Each one restores the session or weekly limit to full, and your weekly limit still resets on its usual day. Save it for when you’re near the top with days to go. (What is a limit reset?)
What Max multiplies
Anthropic describes Max 5× and Max 20× as five and twenty times the Pro plan’s per-session allowance. It doesn’t state a weekly multiple, so don’t assume your week grew by the same factor. Watch the weekly bar on its own. (What is the Max plan?)
Seeing all three at once
Clausage is a free, open-source Mac menu bar app that keeps every limit on your plan in view: one bar each for the session, all models and each per-model limit, with its reset time and a tick for where an even pace would put you. Past 85% it tells you when you’ll run out, so you know which limit is about to stop you before it does.