Anthropic says Claude Code's usage drain comes down to peak-hour caps and ballooning contexts

Anthropic says the faster-than-expected Claude Code usage drain is mainly due to tighter peak-hour caps and sessions with expanding 1‑million‑token contexts.

The company investigated user complaints and Lydia Hallie provided statements explaining the causes and proposed fixes.

Anthropic shipped fixes including bug fixes (no bugs caused incorrect billing), efficiency improvements, and in-product pop-ups to keep users informed.

Hallie recommends using Sonnet 4.6 instead of Opus (Opus burns through limits roughly twice as fast as Sonnet 4.6), turning off Extended Thinking when not needed, starting fresh sessions, and limiting the context window.

Users who notice unusually high usage should report it through the product's feedback function.