Claude added weekly usage caps to its $20 Pro and $100/$200 Max plans
On top of the rolling 5-hour session limits, Pro and Max subscribers got weekly caps (overall and for Opus); Anthropic estimated Pro at 40-80 hours of Sonnet 4 in Claude Code per week. Prices stayed at $20, $100 and $200.
What changed
- Limits cut, Aug 28, 2025
- Before: Only rolling 5-hour session limits
- After: 5-hour session limits plus weekly limits that reset every 7 days
- Existing customers: Applied to all Pro and Max subscribers; Anthropic said fewer than 5% would be affected; Max users could buy extra usage at API rates
Cheaper alternatives to Claude Code
At 1 developer, Claude Code costs $20/mo. 3 AI coding tools cost less:
- Cursor: $8/mo (Plus ($8/mo, Grok models only)), covers 94% of Claude Code; missing or partial: VS Code and JetBrains extensions (partly), Open source or self-hosted
- OpenAI Codex: $8/mo (ChatGPT Go), covers 96% of Claude Code; missing or partial: VS Code and JetBrains extensions (partly), Design to code (partly)
- GitHub Copilot: $10/mo (Copilot Pro), covers 100% of Claude Code
Claude Code alternatives: 3 cheaper AI coding tools compared, at every size.
Sources
Every price and change for Claude Code: Claude Code.