Anthropic’s Claude has faced growing criticism in recent months. Users on the ClaudeAI subreddit have voiced increasing frustration. Both long-time Pro subscribers and new Max users report problems with the service, not due to cost, but because issues persist even after paying for it.
While Google’s Gemini may be gaining an edge over Claude, it may not be the sole reason why Claude users want to cancel and leave the service.
The Paid Plans Do Not Seem to Cut It
Users found themselves restricted on the Pro plan. “I just cancelled my Pro plan; this is a joke with those limits now,” mentioned a Reddit user. The person added that free tools like Google’s Gemini Studio outperformed Claude in coding tasks. For someone who once paid monthly, the user decided to cancel the subscription.
Another Reddit user, who cancelled Claude’s subscription, told AIM that although he was paying $20 a month, there were issues with Claude. “I would open a chat, and I would want to code on a side project. Gemini 2.5 Pro or ChatGPT allowed me to ask for numerous little iterations in the code and other complex stuff for hours on end without getting any context window limitations.”
The user found Claude’s tokens per minute were limited and often showed that they had exhausted them. This prompted users to start a new chat and add context to each new query. Consequently, the user felt they spent more time explaining their needs than being productive.
Yet another user, who upgraded to the Max plan with high hopes, hit a familiar wall. “I would literally go back to paying for the API if I didn’t have to clear the context window every time I acted on a task,” the user wrote.
And then there was the team use case. The Reddit user, being a part of a six-seat Claude Team with a prepaid annual subscription, reported that even small files were crashing sessions. “We’re getting slammed with ‘Claude hit the maximum length for this conversation’ notification after the MCP reads just one or two tiny files.”
“Even basic prompts are getting cut off after a couple of exchanges. It’s honestly unusable right now.”
Developers Extensively Using Claude Confirm Hitting Rate Limits
It is not just Reddit where users may seem to hate Claude’s new limit. Developers known to use Claude extensively for their projects also posted reviews on various social platforms.
Eduard Ruzga, a staff engineer at software firm Prezi, who ditched using Cursor and Windsurf for Claude with MCPs, resonated with the sentiment observed in the Reddit community.
“Before Claude Code Max subscription, one could use Claude with Desktop Commander [his MCP tool] for hours without hitting limits. After release, there were reports of people hitting limits in a few messages or at least under an hour and being forced to wait for 2–3 hours before limits reset to hit them again very fast,” he told AIM.
Besides, Ruzga also mentioned that he noticed users complaining about the limits in Anthropic’s Discord server.
The users were also not happy with the way the changes to rate limits were communicated. Many recall not receiving alerts about the new session limits, throttling, or pricing structures.
A Reddit user noticed an updated support page detailing the Claude Max Plan’s 5-hour session structure, potentially a usage gate that locks out users even on the top tier. “Terrible usage limits again on Claude today,” the user wrote, linking to the new rules.
The user added, “It seems they really want to push everyone to the Max plan, which costs $300 in Australia.”
Will Anthropic Do Something to Keep The Users?
Amid the negative comments, users are still rooting for Claude to recover. Many point out that when it’s functional, it remains unparalleled in analytical reasoning and writing structure. Some even want to switch to Claude from ChatGPT.
Those who integrate Claude Code with GitHub workflows report better stability, as long as they download artifacts immediately or rely on the command-line interface.
Despite the surge in complaints, there has been no official acknowledgement of some of the platform’s most serious regressions, including downgraded Pro-tier or Max-tier performance.
Claude may not have lost its edge, but it is losing users.
