Doubling the five-hour rate limits is merely a marketing stunt if the weekly rates are not also doubled. It simply means that you can reach the weekly limits in three days instead of five.
For me personally, I have the basic Claude Code subscription that I use to rewind on some evenings or on weekend, to code a bit for 1-2 hours. I have like 3-5 session with it every week.
The 5h windows are frustrating because I can go through them quickly if I have a more complex task. I haven't yet met the weekly limit. I'd say there are many cases similar to mine.
Exactly, the weekly limits are the real limiting factor. If you really push it, you can easily hit the weekly $200/mo Max limit in a day.
I've found with opus 4.6 which im still stubbornly using i can burn about 10% of the weekly within a 5 hour window with my workflow.
Mentally i think about the weekly usage in terms of usage per day so about 14% per day which results in me not using that much early in the week so i can kinda "burn freely" later on. which leads me to a spot where usually on the final two days im sorta thinking about how can i expend that usage ive "saved".
the 5 hour windows make this harder, sometimes the final day of the week im trying to get that 10% in every 5 hour window of my waking hours and i HATE that, i wanna work when i am most productive, not around some ridiculous window of time, i dont wanna think "I am gonna be utilizing claude the most around 11am so i should send a dumb message to haiku to get my 5 hour window started at 7:30am so i can have it roll over at 12:30."
So im happy about this change sure. But it is 100% them creating a problem and pretending having some relief from that problem is them doing their users a favor. I understand they are doing it to lower peak hours usage and all that, I still despise it.
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Who cares about rate limits if they serve your prompt using dumbed down model.
I have never come close to my weekly limit, but have hit my hourly limit frequently.