Max Plan: Token usage increased ~3-5x without any configuration change (since ~March 28-29)

## Summary Since approximately March 28-29, 2026, my token consumption on the **Max plan ($100/month)** has increased dramatically — roughly **3-5x** — without any changes to my setup. ## Before (working fine for months) - 5+ hour coding sessions possible - Multiple terminals in parallel - 30-60 minute cooldown between heavy sessions - Same plugins, same model, same configuration ## Now (since ~March 28-29) - 1-2 hours in a **single terminal** → limit reached - ~42% of the 5-hour rolling window consumed by a moderate coding session - Frequent rate limit warnings ## Setup (unchanged for months) - **Plan:** Max ($100/month) - **Model:** Opus 4.6 (1M context) — `claude-opus-4-6[1m]` - **Claude Code version:** 2.1.87 - **OS:** Debian 12 (remote server via SSH) - **Plugins:** 57 enabled (unchanged) - **MCP Servers:** 9 configured (unchanged) - **Settings:** `alwaysThinkingEnabled: true`, `effortLevel: "high"`, `CLAUDE_CODE_MAX_OUTPUT_TOKENS: 32000` ## Token Analysis (estimated for today's session) A single coding session (building a maintenance page — ~1000 lines of new code, 4 deploys, 15 back-and-forth messages) consumed approximately **42% of the 5-hour limit**. Estimated breakdown: | Category | Estimated Tokens | |----------|-----------------| | System context overhead per request | ~40,000 | | Context overhead × ~30 turns | ~1,200,000 | | Conversation history (growing) | ~600,000 | | Tool results (file reads, bash output) | ~300,000 | | Output (responses + code) | ~150

Posted by Commandershadow9 on Mar 31, 2026, 2:03 PM

Tags

• onboarding (Sysadmin)

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