Error messages

You've hit your session limit

You've hit your session limit

This is Claude Code telling you your subscription's usage allowance has run out for now. It isn't an API error, your key isn't involved, and the fix is mostly time. In version 2.1.282 the line looks like this, with your reset time and time zone at the end:

You've hit your session limit · resets 3:45pm

302 issues in the anthropics/claude-code repo quote "hit your session limit" as of September 25, 2026, and another 192 quote the wording it replaced. We read the current binary, four older releases from npm and Anthropic's error reference to line the two up.

“Claude usage limit reached” is the old wording

If you searched for this one, you're probably on an old version or reading an old thread:

Claude usage limit reached. Your limit will reset at 5pm (America/New_York).

Release 1.0.51 (July 2025) printed that, with a dimmed /upgrade to increase your usage limit. underneath. Underneath the friendly line, the server's marker was Claude AI usage limit reached followed by a pipe and the reset time in Unix time, and in the early days that raw form sometimes leaked through; one May 2025 report is titled Claude AI usage limit reached|1748268000. Release 2.0.10 (October 7, 2025) carried both the old line and a new "Session limit reached" builder. By 2.0.20, nine days later, the old one was gone, and the current "You've hit your..." phrasing is what 2.1.282 ships. The string "Claude usage limit reached" doesn't appear anywhere in it.

Which limit you hit changes what you can do

The word after "your" comes from a small table in the binary, and it matters more than it looks:

• session limit is the five-hour window (18,000 seconds in the code).
• weekly limit is the seven-day window.
• Opus limit and Sonnet limit are weekly limits on one model family.
• there's also a Fable limit and a usage credit limit, for accounts on those.

Anthropic's error reference is clear that the session and weekly limits are shared across every model, so running /model and picking something smaller won't get you back in. The Opus and Sonnet limits are the exception. Switch to a model outside that family and you keep working, though the docs warn the next request re-reads the whole conversation without cache hits (each model keeps its own cache).

The two windows also count at the same time. A big burst of work can empty the weekly allowance before the five-hour one resets, which is how people end up staring at a weekly message they didn't see coming.

Letting it continue on its own

Since v2.1.234, an interactive session signed in with a claude.ai plan can wait for the reset and pick the interrupted task back up. While it waits you'll see:

Usage limit reached · continuing automatically at 3:45pm · esc to cancel

Press Esc at an empty prompt to cancel the wait. The setting behind it is called "Continue automatically at usage limit" in /config. The desktop app has its own checkbox for the same thing on the session-limit card, and the docs point out the two are separate, so switching one off leaves the other on.

What else you can do before the reset

/usage shows your plan's limits and when each resets. On Pro and Max, /usage-credits buys extra usage past the limit; on Team and Enterprise it sends the request to an admin. Claude Code also warns you before you get here, with lines like "You've used 85% of your session limit", and you can put the same numbers in a custom status line.

Something I didn't expect in the binary: for Pro accounts on the weekly window, it carries specific hints, like "try /model sonnet · ~2× runway" when you're on Opus, or "try /effort medium" when effort is set high. So the product's own suggestion is to spend less per request, which is worth doing anyway.

One report to know about if you're thinking of switching accounts: in #96993 (September 24, on 2.1.282) a user hit the limit on a personal Pro account, signed in with a Max work account, and the session limit "still persists". There's no explanation on it yet. For what the plans actually allow, see our Max 5x and 20x limits page, and for the one-off reset some plans get, how the limit reset works and what it means when it isn't available.