Claude made session limits run out faster during weekday peak hours
Anthropic began draining 5-hour session limits faster for Free, Pro and Max users on weekdays 5am-11am PT; weekly limits were unchanged and about 7% of users were expected to be affected.
What changed
- Limits cut, Mar 2026
- Before: Same 5-hour session allowance at all times
- After: Smaller effective session allowance during weekday peak hours (5am-11am PT)
- Existing customers: Applied to all Free, Pro and Max subscribers at the same price
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.