Claude Code Limits in September 2026: 5-Hour Window, Weekly Cap, and the Sep 13 Promo Cliff

Last verified: September 5, 2026 (Pacific). Sources: Anthropic Help Center promotion article and Fable-on-plan article. Exact token counts are not published.

Direct answer: Claude Code has two meters. A rolling 5-hour session limit that the May 2026 doubling made permanent, and a weekly usage limit that is currently 50% above standard. That weekly bump is a promotion. Official Help Center copy says it runs through September 13, 2026 at 11:59 PM PT, then weekly limits return to standard levels. The 5-hour window does not change when the promo ends. Fable 5 and Fable 5.1 are included only on Max, Team Premium, and seat-based Enterprise Premium, and they may use at most 50% of the weekly pool.

The two clocks

People treat “I hit my limit” as one event. It is two.

• 5-hour session. Rolling window. Burns when the model is working, not when you are idle. Anthropic doubled this across paid plans on May 6, 2026 and removed the old peak-hour throttle for Pro and Max. The September weekly promotion does not raise this clock.
• Weekly bucket. Fixed reset time on your account (Settings → Usage). This is the one that ends a Friday on Max after a Fable week. The May 13, 2026 +50% promotion applies to Claude Code only — CLI, IDE, desktop, and web Code — not to Claude chat or Cowork.

Official promotion page: Claude Code May–August 2026 weekly limits promotion. Eligible: Pro, Max, Team, and legacy seat-based Enterprise. Not eligible: Free and consumption-based Enterprise.

The September 13 cliff

What Anthropic has in writing today:

• Through Sep 13, 2026 11:59 PM PT, Claude Code weekly limits are 50% higher than the published standard.
• After that date, Help Center: “weekly usage limits in Claude Code return to their standard levels.” Plan price does not change.
• 5-hour limits stay at the May doubled level.

Third-party writeups have claimed a permanent +25% over the old baseline starting September 14. That is not in the current Help Center article. Until Anthropic publishes it there, plan as if next week’s weekly bar is the pre-promo standard, not 1.5× and not a guaranteed 1.25×. Check Settings → Usage on the morning of September 14.

Who gets Fable 5.1 on the subscription

Official: Claude Fable models on your plan. Fable 5 and Fable 5.1 follow the same plan rules.

The July 2026 one-time $100 credit for Pro / Team Standard applied to the Fable 5 plan change. Help Center says there is no matching credit for Fable 5.1.

Practical read: Pro can still open Fable. It just bills. Max can spend half the week on Fable before the included cap trips, then it is credits or switch to Opus 5 / Sonnet 5. Fable burns the shared weekly bar faster than Sonnet. That is why two long Fable Code chats can empty a $200 week even during the +50% promo.

What still burns quota

• Long agent loops and multi-agent fan-out (each worker keeps its own context).
• Dumping a whole repo when one file would do.
• MCP tool output that stays in context for the rest of the session.
• Leaving ANTHROPIC_API_KEY set so the CLI bills API rates and ignores the subscription.

What to do this week

• If you are on Pro and need Fable all week, budget credits or move the hard jobs to Max. The subscription does not include Fable on Pro.
• If you are on Max, treat Sep 8–13 as the last documented +50% Code week. Put the expensive Fable refactors there. After Sep 13, route the cheap loops to Sonnet 5.
• Do not upgrade from Pro to Max only because the 5-hour window feels tight on Friday. Check which clock you hit. Session vs week is a different purchase.

Related: Fable 5 / 5.1 pricing and cache rates · Claude plan pricing · Plan and API rate limits · Claude Code pricing.