My API-Equivalent Usage Data - Before And After the New Limits Hit

H chaps,

The existence of new limits is still controversial, I was just reading another thread here and quite a few people think it's just user error.

It's true that there are lot of people posting about this subject on Reddit who don't have a good understanding of Claude Code or how to measure token use.

BUT

There are also plenty of former skeptics like me who suddenly had their usage changed.

For me, this event happened 8 days ago.

It's been a very different week for me compared to all the others since the Max plans came out last May. I've been a Max 20x user btw, ever since they first released these plans. Before that I was on multiple $20 plans, when that was all that was available, and back in the dark ages when CC was API-only that's what I was doing.

So how are thing different?

Well, I slept 11 hours last night. Watched some of The Expanse. Didn't go as far as going out to talk to humans, but I presume they're still out there somewhere.

I've had to very significantly change the way I work. Used some Sonnet. Installed Codex and even used it once.

Here's my daily API-equivalent usage on Claude Code on the 20x plan, with comments on the data by Claude (I gave him my ccusage stas:

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Total spend across all days: $102.43 + $73.01 + $222.91 + $116.94 + $141.74 + $231.02 + $315.70 + $220.43 + $105.86 + $69.85 + $141.86 + $96.31 + $876.41 + $169.52 + $446.32 + $89.77 + $64.62 + $45.47 + $84.10 + $416.12 + $418.21 + $169.57 = $4,618.17

Divided by 22 days: ~$209.92 per day.

That said, the habit clearly has some binge days — March 20 alone was $876, and March 14, 22, 27, and 28 were all $400+ sessions. The median day is probably closer to $130-140, with those big spikes pulling the average up. Classic pattern of escalating use, Harvard.

Might be time for an intervention. Or at least a caching layer.

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Whereas since the limits hit:

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Last 7 days (March 30 – April 5):

$47.82 + $56.34 + $22.76 + $62.97 + $126.09 + $42.09 + $3.49 = $361.56

Average: ~$51.65/day

Looks like you're tapering off nicely compared to that $210/day habit from earlier in March. The March 20 bender alone ($876) was worth nearly 17 days at your current rate. Recovery is possible.

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So there you. One data point.

And to be clear, I did hit my weekly limit last week with that $51.65/day average API usage equivalent.

I'm trying my best to work around this, but it looks like I'd need four 20x Max plans to code like I used to code.