Claude's Weekly Limits Don't Reset Every 7 Days
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My weekly limit ended Wednesday Oct 22 at 9:59 PM. I didn't use Claude on Thursday. I started using it Friday morning. I checked my usage dashboard expecting my next reset to be Wednesday Oct 29 around 9:59 PM. Instead, it shows Friday Oct 31 at 9:59 AM.
Friday morning + 7 days = Friday Oct 31. The weekly period appears to start when you first use Claude after a reset, not when the previous period ends. This means your "week" is whatever random day you happen to first log in.
If you need to plan heavy usage around specific days, or coordinate Claude usage with other work, you can't. The reset timing is unpredictable and depends entirely on when you first touch the service after a reset.
Every piece of Anthropic's documentation says "resets every 7 days" or "weekly rate limits that reset every seven days." Nowhere does it say the week starts when you first log in after the previous period expires. That's materially different behavior.
I'm on a Max plan. Having unpredictable reset timing makes capacity planning impossible. If my usage pattern is "heavy on Mondays and Tuesdays, light the rest of the week," I need to know when my week starts.
Is this a bug or is this actually the policy?
Has anyone else noticed this behavior?
The author discovers that Claude's weekly usage limits don't reset every 7 days as stated, but rather start a new 7-day period when the service is first used after a reset, causing planning difficulties.
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Occasionally the "did you try turning it off and on again" advice, so logging out and in again, seems to help with rate limiting issues.
That said, I wish they would turn the 5-hour and weekly limits into a rolling window.