Claude Code Quota Crisis: Anthropic Confirms Users Hitting Limits 'Way Faster Than Expected' — Prompt Cache Bugs Inflating Costs Up to 10-20x

The Register·high signal

Anthropic acknowledged on March 31 that Claude Code users are exhausting quotas far faster than expected, calling it the 'top priority for the team.' A reverse-engineering analysis found two independent bugs that break prompt caching mid-session: the cache write succeeds but the read fails, causing full reprocessing of every prior message. Combined with intentional peak-hour throttling (5am-11am PT costs more since March 26) and a surge of new users, Max plan subscribers paying $100-200/month report 5-hour session windows disappearing in 90 minutes on identical workloads.