How to interpret Claude's sliding-window quotas?
We're having a discussion in the team how Claude actually does quota accounting. Can anyone pitch in on these questions:
- If you start your first session at midnight, your "5 hour rolling window" checkpoints are at 5pm, 10am, etc. right?
- If you start your second one at 1am, its "rolling window" is still bounded at 5am, 10am, etc., right?
- When all your sessions are idle for 5h+, is the "window" reset?
- If your first session started at midnight, and then you paused until 4:50am, does Claude:
- a) allow you to spend the rest of your allowance in those 10 minutes, then continue working into the next time window, where it allows you a fresh new allowance, or
- b) start your next window at 4:50am, somehow discarding the previous window's allowance?, or
- c) something even more bizzare?
Posted Jun 17, 2026, 1:11 PM UTC
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