AI Catchup

Claude Code +50% Weekly Limits Promo Ended September 13, 2026; Limits Are Now 25% Higher Permanently

By 13 min read

Anthropic's +50% Claude Code weekly-limits promotion ended September 13, 2026 at 11:59 PM PT. On September 14 Anthropic rewrote its support article: starting September 14, 2026, weekly limits in Claude Code are 25% higher than they were before the promotion for Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise plans. Five-hour limits are unchanged.

Status (checked September 27, 2026): ended. The +50% window closed September 13 at 11:59 PM PT. Anthropic's support article says weekly limits are now permanently 25% higher than before the promotion. Run /usage to see your account.

Anthropic increased Claude Code weekly limits by 50% on May 13, 2026, originally through July 13, 2026, extended the window four times, and let it end on September 13, 2026 at 11:59 PM PT. Its support article (clau.de/cc-50-promo) carried each new end date; the last one was added on September 1, after the August 31 date on that page had passed. On September 14, 2026 Anthropic rewrote that article to say that "starting September 14, 2026, weekly limits in Claude Code are 25% higher than they were before the promotion for Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise plans." That confirms, on an Anthropic-owned page, the permanent increase a ClaudeDevs post had announced on August 29, which also said the 50% increase would stay in place until then (our coverage of the permanent increase has the details). The exact wording from the official ClaudeDevs post that started it:

Claude Code weekly limits are increasing 50%, now through July 13. Live now for all Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise users.

It came about a week after Anthropic doubled five-hour rate limits and removed peak-hours limit reduction on the same plans. That earlier change was announced with no end date, and the weekly promotion's end does not touch it.

For context on what's been shipping in Claude Code itself, see Claude Code 2.1.133's worktree.baseRef and MCP OAuth proxy fixes and the spring quality post-mortem -- both are relevant context for how Anthropic is currently iterating on the product.

Key Takeaways

  • The +50% promotion is over. It ran May 13 through September 13, 2026 at 11:59 PM PT, after four extensions from the original July 13 deadline. (Support article re-read September 27, 2026: lastUpdatedDate is still 2026-09-14T06:59:42Z.)
  • A permanent 25% increase replaced it. Anthropic's support article now says weekly limits in Claude Code are 25% higher than before the promotion from September 14, 2026. Against the promotional level that is about 17% less weekly capacity; against the pre-May baseline it is 25% more.
  • Plans covered: Pro, Max, Team, and legacy seat-based Enterprise, for both the promotion and the permanent increase. Free plans and consumption-based Enterprise seats were excluded from the promotion by name.
  • Stacks with the May 6 changes: five-hour rate limits doubled and peak-hours limit reduction removed for Pro/Max on Claude Code. Anthropic has announced no change to either.
  • No published absolute Claude Code limits. Anthropic describes every change proportionally; /usage is the reading for your own account.
  • Weekly ceilings only. Neither the promotion nor its replacement touched five-hour limits.

What the Official Sources Actually Say

The ClaudeDevs post is the authoritative source for the original change. Two facts are explicit:

  1. The increase was 50%, applied to weekly limits.
  2. The window originally ended July 13, 2026: the post's wording is "now through July 13." Anthropic extended it four times, to July 19, to August 19, to August 31, and on September 1, 2026 to September 13, 2026 at 11:59 PM PT, per its support documentation. It ended on that date.

The support article is the authoritative source for what came next. Since September 14, 2026 its opening note has read: "This promotion was a limited-time boost on top of your plan. It ran from May 13 through September 13, 2026. We were planning to return weekly limits to their original levels, but we know many of you found the extra usage helpful." The note continues: "So while the full promotional boost couldn't last, we're making part of it permanent: starting September 14, 2026, weekly limits in Claude Code are 25% higher than they were before the promotion for Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise plans." It ends: "We have a lot more in the works around usage, visibility, and control, so stay tuned."

Two things that article still does not do: its title still reads "Claude Code May–August 2026 weekly limits promotion", and it gives no absolute limits. Anthropic's general limits article ("Models, usage, and limits in Claude Code", last updated September 22, 2026) and claude.com/pricing carry no mention of the 25% figure as of September 27, 2026. Neither do the Help Center's two general usage-limit articles or the Claude Code cost documentation, so the promotion article is still the only Anthropic-owned page found that documents it.

What "Weekly Limits" Means in This Context

Claude Code limits operate at two layers:

  • Short-window (five-hour) rate limits, which gate how much you can do in any rolling five-hour stretch.
  • Weekly limits, which cap total usage in a seven-day window.

The May 13 change and its September 14 replacement apply to the weekly layer. The May 6 change applied to the five-hour layer (and removed peak-hours reduction on Pro/Max). They address different problems: bursts versus aggregate weekly consumption.

What the Earlier May 6 Change Did

Anthropic's earlier "Higher limits" announcement covered:

  • Doubling Claude Code five-hour rate limits for Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise plans.
  • Removing peak-hours limit reduction for Claude Code on Pro and Max.

That earlier post does not describe the 50% weekly bump, its end date, or the 25% permanent increase. Those come from the May 13 ClaudeDevs post, the support article that has carried the dates since, and the August 29 ClaudeDevs post that announced the permanent 25%. Treat the announcements as additive policies, each documented separately.

How the Changes Stack

LayerBefore May 6May 6 changeMay 13 to September 13From September 14, 2026
Five-hour rate limitBaseline2x for Pro/Max/Team/seat-Enterprise on Claude CodeNo change2x (no end date announced)
Peak-hours reductionIn placeRemoved for Claude Code on Pro/MaxNo changeRemoved for Claude Code on Pro/Max
Weekly limitBaselineNo change+50% (promotion)+25% over the pre-promotion level, permanent
Plans affected--Pro, Max, Team, seat-EnterprisePro, Max, Team, seat-EnterprisePro, Max, Team, seat-Enterprise

Two lifts on different layers: bursts and weekly ceiling. They sit at different multipliers: the five-hour layer at 2x, with no end date announced, and the weekly layer at 1.25x, which Anthropic calls permanent.

What the Window Was For, and What Comes Off the Table Now

The window ran May 13 through September 13, 2026. These are the four categories of work it carried, and each one is the category to re-check now that the weekly ceiling has changed:

  • Context-heavy refactors. Large repos with deep Read passes and multi-agent Plan + Execute sessions consume a lot of weekly tokens. These are the first to push against a lower cap.
  • Multi-day subagent workflows. Subagent fan-out adds up fast on the weekly meter. A fan-out that sat comfortably under cap at 1.5x may not at 1.25x.
  • Spike weeks. A release crunch or migration that the lifted ceiling absorbed has to fit inside the permanent ceiling.
  • Experimentation. Trying different effort levels, subagent topologies, or custom hook scripts came out of the extra headroom rather than the normal weekly budget.

The failure mode this page has warned about since May is building permanent workflows that only fit inside the +50% window. The permanent level is 25% over the pre-promotion baseline, about 17% under the promotional level, so a workflow that needed the full 1.5x has lost roughly a sixth of its weekly room. Run /usage in the CLI and compare it against what you saw in August.

When to Choose Claude Code vs. Other Tools This Quarter

The temporary lift changed the per-task economics of Claude Code specifically, not Codex or Cursor. If you have been splitting work across multiple AI coding tools partly to manage Claude Code quota, the new permanent level is what changes the arithmetic:

SituationWhere you stand as of September 14, 2026
You hit weekly limits often on Claude CodeThe extra 50% is gone. The weekly cap is now 25% above its pre-May level, permanently. Re-check /usage before rebalancing work out to other tools
You hit five-hour limits oftenUnaffected. The May 6 doubling of five-hour limits was a separate change with no end date, not part of this promotion
You're on the API / usage-based tierThe promo never applied; the permanent increase does not name usage-based access either
You're on FreeNever eligible; Anthropic's doc excludes Free plans by name
You're on seat-based EnterpriseBoth the promotion and the permanent 25% increase name seat-based Enterprise; consumption-based Enterprise seats were excluded from the promotion. If your org has internal caps on top, the new level is worth raising with your admin

For a comparison anchor across tools, our Codex CLI vs Claude Code vs Cursor architecture piece is the broader frame, and the recent 2.1.133 release coverage captures what's been shipping in the product itself.

Caveats

  • No absolute Claude Code limits published. Anthropic describes each limit change as a multiple or a percentage. Your own /usage reading is the source for raw caps.
  • The window ended September 13, 2026 at 11:59 PM PT (extended from July 13, to July 19, to August 19, to August 31, and then to September 13). It moved four times; the support article gained the last date on September 1, after its August 31 date had passed. clau.de/cc-50-promo remains the surface Anthropic uses for this topic; it is where the 25% was documented.
  • Plan set is specific. Both the promotion and the permanent increase name Pro, Max, and Team plans plus seat-based Enterprise. Free plans and consumption-based Enterprise seats were excluded from the promotion by name.
  • Weekly layer only. Anthropic's support doc states that five-hour usage limits were not affected by the promotion, and the September 14 update speaks only of weekly limits.
  • "More in the works." The updated article closes with "We have a lot more in the works around usage, visibility, and control, so stay tuned." No specifics are given, and this page does not speculate about them.

FAQ

See structured FAQ in the schema header for question-level details: whether the promo is active, what replaced it, which plans, permanence, how it stacks with the May 6 changes, raw numbers, and practical implications.

Corrections and Updates

September 27, 2026: this page said every extension and the replacement were published only on the support article, and dated the five-hour change May 5-6. A ClaudeDevs post announced the permanent 25% on August 29, and Anthropic's news post is dated May 6, 2026.

September 14, 2026: the promotion ended on schedule and Anthropic documented the permanent 25% increase. Until today this page said the permanent 25% was on no Anthropic-owned page; the support article was updated at 06:59 UTC on September 14 and now states it.

September 2, 2026: logged the fourth extension, through September 13, 2026. Anthropic updated the support article on September 1.

September 1, 2026: this page reported that morning that the promotion had ended on Anthropic's documented schedule; the support article was updated at 18:11 UTC the same day with the extension logged above.

August 30, 2026: Re-checked Anthropic's support article today.

August 19, 2026: logged the third extension, through August 31, 2026. Anthropic updated the support article on August 18.

July 25, 2026: logged the second extension, through August 19, 2026. Anthropic updated the support article on July 18.

Sources

Read next

Related coverage

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the +50% Claude Code weekly-limits promo still active?

No. It ran from May 13 through September 13, 2026 at 11:59 PM PT and has ended. Anthropic updated its support article on September 14, 2026: starting September 14, weekly limits in Claude Code are 25% higher than before the promotion for Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise plans. Run /usage to see your own account.

What replaced the 50% promotion on September 14, 2026?

A permanent 25% increase over the pre-promotion weekly limit. Anthropic's support article, updated September 14, 2026, says: 'we're making part of it permanent: starting September 14, 2026, weekly limits in Claude Code are 25% higher than they were before the promotion for Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise plans.' That is about 17% less than the promotional level.

What changed on May 13, 2026?

Anthropic increased Claude Code weekly limits by 50%, originally through July 13, 2026. The official ClaudeDevs post read: 'Claude Code weekly limits are increasing 50%, now through July 13. Live now for all Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise users.' Anthropic then extended the window four times; it ended September 13, 2026.

Which plans got the increase?

Pro, Max, and Team plans, plus legacy seat-based users on Enterprise plans. Anthropic's support doc excludes Free plans and consumption-based Enterprise seats by name. The permanent 25% increase from September 14, 2026 names the same four plan groups. Neither change names usage-based or API-billed access.

Was the 50% promotion permanent or temporary?

Temporary, extended four times, and now over. The May 13 wording was 'now through July 13'; Anthropic then moved the end date to July 19, August 19, August 31, and finally September 13, 2026 at 11:59 PM PT. What is permanent is the 25% increase over the pre-promotion weekly limit documented from September 14, 2026.

How does this stack with the doubled five-hour rate limits announced in early May?

They are separate levers. On May 6, 2026, Anthropic doubled Claude Code five-hour rate limits and removed the peak-hours limit reduction on Pro and Max, with no end date. The weekly promotion lifted the weekly cap by 50% through September 13, 2026 without touching five-hour limits. From September 14 the weekly cap sits 25% above its pre-promotion level.

What were the actual numerical limits before and after?

Anthropic did not publish absolute Claude Code limits in any announcement. The May 6 news post, the May 13 ClaudeDevs post, and the September 14, 2026 support-article update all describe the changes as percentages (doubled, +50%, +25%) or policy removals. Use your own /usage readings as the baseline; the proportions are what is documented.

What should heavy Claude Code users do now that the window has closed?

Run /usage in the CLI and compare the weekly figure against August. Any workflow that only fit inside the +50% window has about 17% less weekly headroom from September 14, 2026, because the permanent level is 25% over the pre-promotion baseline rather than 50%. Re-check context-heavy refactors, multi-day subagent fan-outs, and release-week spikes first.

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