[BUG] Pro Max 5x Quota Exhausted in 1.5 Hours Despite Moderate Usage

### Preflight Checklist - [x] I have searched [existing issues](https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20label%3Abug) and this hasn't been reported yet - [x] This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs) - [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code ### What's Wrong? # Pro Max 5x Quota Exhausted in 1.5 Hours Despite Moderate Usage ## Summary On a Pro Max 5x (Opus) plan, quota resets at a fixed interval. After reset, with **moderate usage** (mostly Q&A, light development), quota was exhausted within 1.5 hours. Prior to reset, 5 hours of **heavy development** (multi-file implementation, graphify pipeline, multi-agent spawns) consumed the previous quota window — but that was expected given the workload. The post-reset exhaustion was not. Investigation reveals the likely root cause: **cache_read tokens appear to count at full rate against the rate limit**, negating the cost benefit of prompt caching for quota purposes. ## Environment - Plan: Pro Max 5x - Model: claude-opus-4-6 (1M context) - Platform: Claude Code CLI on WSL2 - Session: Single continued session with 2 auto-compacts ## Data Collection Method All data extracted from `~/.claude/projects/*//*.jsonl` session files, specifically the `usage` object on each API response: ```json { "cache_read_input_tokens": ..., "cache_creation_input_tokens": ..., "input_tokens": ..., "output_tokens": ... } ``` ## Measured Token Consumption #

Posted by molu0219 on Apr 9, 2026, 1:54 PM

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• pricing (Software)

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