Clarification needed: Are Opus and Sonnet limits independent or shared after Nov 24 update?
Summary
The November 24, 2025 announcement about Opus 4.5 states that Sonnet now has its own separate limit, but the official support documentation still describes limits as shared. This creates confusion about whether maxing out Opus usage will prevent access to Sonnet.
Conflicting Information
Announcement (suggests independent limits):
The November 24 update message states:
"We've increased your limits and removed the Opus cap, so you can use Opus 4.5 up to your overall limit. Sonnet now has its own limit—it's set to match your previous overall limit, so you can use just as much as before."
This wording strongly suggests that Opus and Sonnet are now tracked independently.
Support Documentation (suggests shared limits):
The official support article "Using Claude Code with your Pro or Max plan" states:
"Both Pro and Max plans offer usage limits that are shared across Claude and Claude Code, meaning all activity in both tools counts against the same usage limits."
It also notes that "Using more compute-intensive models will cause you to hit your usage limits sooner," which implies a shared pool.
User Reports:
GitHub issue #3588 shows a user who was cut off from Sonnet after heavy usage, though this may have been due to excessive API calls from hooks.
Questions
- Are Opus and Sonnet limits now independent as of November 24, 2025?
- If I max out my Opus usage, can I still use Sonnet?
- If I max out my Sonnet usage, can I still use Opus?
- Should the support documentation be updated to reflect the new limit structure?
- What does "Sonnet now has its own limit" mean exactly?
- Completely separate tracking from Opus?
- Or does it mean something else?
Context
This clarification would help users understand how to effectively manage their usage across both models, especially for Max plan subscribers who want to use Opus for complex tasks while preserving Sonnet availability for routine work.
19 Comments
This situation is quite ridiculous, and I've seen multiple people ask clarification about this. I can only guess that the only reason why we still don't have an answer is because nobody knows who came up with this copy nor what it means?
As a Claude Max 20 user, you explicitly see the "Sonnet only" usage meter on the "Usage" tab which says:
It says _draws from this limit ONLY_. Yet the "All models" meter is still going up, even when I only use Sonnet.
Should it read "Only Sonnet usage draws from this limit"? It's a big difference.
Then there was also a sentence on the Opus 4.5 blog post that read:
So Opus tokens are _roughly_ equal to Sonnet tokens? So we'd be idiots for using anything but Opus then?
Can somebody please shed some light on this.
I have Max plan and after exhausting my Opus limit, I can't use Sonnet.
I also understood it as using Sonnet would only affect the "Sonnet only" usage... Yet come to find out my weekly all model usage has still increased along side it... Not sure what the point of the separate usage limit is.
Same here. What was the point of giving Sonnet it's own limit if the current session it limits are still shared. The initial issues was that Opus 4.1 devastated its session limit before the use can perform an meaningful work.
My understanding is:
Which would imply:
I think this might be a way to prevent people from getting the Max or Max 20 plan just to have unlimited Sonnet usage since Sonnet 4.5 tokens are lighter than Opus 4.5 tokens. My guess is that Anthropic might see it as a way to abuse/exploit the Max plan to get truly unlimited Sonnet usage as their servers can't produce tokens fast enough to saturate the "All models" limit from just Sonnet usage.
I can confirm that when Current Week (all models) is maxed out (on Claude Max 20x subscription) you are not able to use Sonnet even though it lists as only 2% used:
<img width="501" height="249" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/714278d9-b333-4e95-a233-51c525a7297c" />
<img width="527" height="141" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/8eb2e22e-5bbb-43e4-939e-1fa182b0a9bd" />
Imo it would be fair for Max subscribers to get close to unlimited sonnet, or at least a decent additional qouta after Opus is depleted, and as a minimum there should be close to indefinate haiku. Like those annoying broadband data packages that reduce speed, but at least you get to watch the rest of the movie on low-rez
Just subscribed to Max and also very confused by this. Anyone care to explain.
I did try to here https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/12487#issuecomment-3712637433
Same issue. I can’t use Sonnet even though I still have limits available, because my Opus limits are already exhausted.
<img width="886" height="529" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/678b1993-8cac-4909-91f7-ba9fe8796d2c" />
It's not really an issue, it's intended behavior and it even says that Sonnet usage counts towards ALL limits.
I explained it here: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/12487#issuecomment-3712637433
Basically, "Sonnet only" means if you don't use Opus and instead only use Sonnet in your Max plan, this limit will prevent you from (ab)using the plan to get unlimited Sonnet usage.
This doesn't at all explain why I have Opus maxed but ALL Models and Sonnet available and still cannot use Sonnet; that makes no sense.
Opus 100% used; resets in 1 hr 54 min
All models 81% used; resets in 15 hr 54 min
Sonnet 13% used; resets Mon 12:59 PM
⎿ You've hit your limit · resets 7pm (America/Chicago)
Maybe I wasn't clear enough, let me explain: the "Sonnet only" limit does not mean you can use "Sonnet only". It only means that if you ONLY use Sonnet, and not Opus, it will fill up this limit in addition to "All models" to prevent you from having practically unlimited Sonnet usage. Once "Sonnet only" is full, you can not use it anymore, but Opus will still work as long as "All models" is not full. "All models" is a superset of "Sonnet only" so filling up the former will also affect Sonnet.
Using up Sonnet and then being able to use Opus makes sense. That’s how it
should work in the inverse as well, however; yet, it doesn’t.
If I use up Opus, which generally happens in 10 minutes or so, I’m then
unable to use Sonnet, too. That makes absolutely no sense.
On Tue, Feb 3, 2026 at 6:01 PM Simão Gomes Viana @.***>
wrote:
Just adding to the long list of users who disagree with the limit charts. I, too, feel that the chart is misleading. I have a Max 200 plan and thought when the weekly limit hit I would be able to continue using Sonnet.
<img width="463" height="538" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4579547b-c22f-4fd5-9800-65bb6624ea68" />
the key problem is that this is not explained anywhere in the documentation, and even opus itself is confused about it -- pointing me to THIS location as the original source of information!!!
This is really confusing and impair my plan tremendously!
@jerzydziewierz
Same for me - except that Sonnet was pointing me on this issue 😂
its weird for me too. i feel i hit a RL sometimes and if i keep insisting it will go thru... maybe routed to another model ? i have no clue either on how this works
My mental model for this is 5:3:1:
| Token Type | Opus | Sonnet | Haiku | Ratio |
|------------|------|--------|-------|-------|
| Base Input | $5 | $3 | $1 | 5:3:1 |
| 5m Cache Write | $6.25 | $3.75 | $1.25 | 5:3:1 |
| 1h Cache Write | $10 | $6 | $2 | 5:3:1 |
| Cache Hits | $0.50 | $0.30 | $0.10 | 5:3:1 |
| Output | $25 | $15 | $5 | 5:3:1 |
All other things being equal, the token buckets that enforce your quota "weigh" each token type differently. You have a base number of allowed tokens per session, and the quota consumed is scaled based on the underlying model in a 5:3:1 ratio.
So 100 Opus tokens is equivalent to 167 Sonnet tokens is equivalent to 500 Haiku tokens.
I arrived at this scaling ratio via this table on API pricing:
| Model | Base Input Tokens | 5m Cache Writes | 1h Cache Writes | Cache Hits & Refreshes | Output Tokens |
|-------|-------------------|-----------------|-----------------|----------------------|----------------|
| Claude Opus 4.6 | $5 / MTok | $6.25 / MTok | $10 / MTok | $0.50 / MTok | $25 / MTok |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | $3 / MTok | $3.75 / MTok | $6 / MTok | $0.30 / MTok | $15 / MTok |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | $1 / MTok | $1.25 / MTok | $2 / MTok | $0.10 / MTok | $5 / MTok |