Opus 4.6 token consumption significantly higher than 4.5 - quota feedback from Max subscribers

[TweedBeetle]

First off - Opus 4.6 is impressive and the Claude Code team has been shipping at an incredible pace. This is meant as constructive feedback, not a complaint.

Opus 4.6 launched yesterday and the upgrade was automatic. Within hours, Max plan subscribers across Twitter and Reddit started reporting that their quotas were depleted far faster than with Opus 4.5 - in some cases before they even realized they'd been upgraded.

This isn't a bug report and I'm not claiming entitlement to higher quotas. This is feedback: the current quota allocations that worked fine for Opus 4.5 don't seem to be calibrated for 4.6's token consumption patterns. People who had sustainable workflows are now hitting walls.

Community reports (all from Feb 5-6, within 24h of launch)

Max plan users:

• "not even 12 hours and already at 20% weekly usage ON the $200 max plan [...] This model is token HUNGRY and may not be worth it if I run through limits like that" - @Dallenpyrah
• "After a full day of using Claude Code with Opus 4.6, the difference feels minimal [...] But man, 4.6 chugs tokens. My Claude Max account copped a beating" - @SeanDoesLife
• "claude code just upgraded to 4.6 without me changing anything. And it freaking eating all the tokens!" - @atla_

Comparative observations:

• "i never hit the limit with opus 4.5" - @Jungle_Fren
• "Opus 4.6 can use 20-30% more tokens. It is not as efficient as predecessor models" - @VQuinones
• Back-to-back testing on Reddit showing 6-8% session quota per prompt (4.6) vs ~4% (4.5) - r/ClaudeCode thread

Cross-platform:

• "Opus 4.6 already rate-limited across @GitHubCopilot and @claudeai. Seems to have much lower limits than Opus 4.5" - @lukekim

The ask

If 4.6 is genuinely more capable and that capability costs more tokens, that's understandable. But it would help to:

1. Acknowledge the consumption difference so users can make informed model choices
2. Consider adjusting quotas for 4.6, or at minimum document the expected increase
3. Don't auto-upgrade to a model that burns quota faster without warning

Thanks for building a great product. Happy to provide more data if helpful.

Related

• [BUG] Instantly hitting usage limits with Max subscription #16157 (usage limits on Max - 509 upvotes)
• [BUG] Opus 4.5 usage limits significantly reduced since January 2026 - most restrictive since Opus 4.5 launch #17084 (limits reduced since Jan 2026)

[github-actions]

Found 3 possible duplicate issues:

1. [Bug] Rate limit consumed faster than expected with Sonnet-only usage across all models #23690
2. Claude Code excessive limits usage in recent updates. Limits have either been reduced, or Claude Code is incorrectly counting tokens #23318
3. Max subscribers should have full Opus 4.6 access without Extra Usage requirement #23680

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🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[andrewchilds]

For even straightforward tasks, I'm seeing Opus 4.6 do significantly more preparation, and pull in way too much context ahead of time, compared to 4.5.

Per https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1qx8zu4/if_you_still_want_to_use_opus_45/, I've verified I can peg my local CC to 4.5 by adding the following to my project's .claude/settings.json file.

{
  "model": "claude-opus-4-5",
  "env": {
    "ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL": "claude-opus-4-5-20251101"
  }
}

[pevyhlas]

I have just exhausted session limit on Max 5x with Opus 4.6 in ~15 mins on what seemed like a simple task, maybe there is something that just hoggs tokens in Opus 4.6, haven't had this issue with Opus 4.5.

[withinboredom]

I didn't even know a new version came out until I hit 90% of my five hour session doing research that normally would have taken ~10% of my five hour limit.

[mauroluna-dev]

Indeed, the usage limit is consumed significantly faster (Max Plan). You use it for 40-45 minutes and you've used up all your tokens (from the 5-hour batch, which has also increased; it used to be 4 hours), which didn't happen before when doing the same tasks.

[TweedBeetle]

Not a duplicate of any of these:

• [Bug] Rate limit consumed faster than expected with Sonnet-only usage across all models #23690 is about Sonnet usage counting against Opus quotas
• Claude Code excessive limits usage in recent updates. Limits have either been reduced, or Claude Code is incorrectly counting tokens #23318 is about limits being reduced generally (filed before 4.6 launched)
• Max subscribers should have full Opus 4.6 access without Extra Usage requirement #23680 is about requiring Extra Usage for 4.6 access

This issue is specifically about Opus 4.6's per-task token consumption being measurably higher than 4.5 - same tasks, same workflows, significantly more tokens used. The comments here are already confirming this pattern independently.

[TweedBeetle]

Additional data point: Artificial Analysis benchmarks show Opus 4.6 generated 11M tokens during their standardized evaluation vs a 3.8M average across models - nearly 3x more verbose at the same task. Same API pricing as 4.5, but the model is producing significantly more output per task. This aligns with what everyone here is experiencing with quota burn.

[cperezabo]

I have been working with Opus 4.5 the last two months without reaching the Max plan limit.

With Opus 4.6 and similar workloads, I reach the limit in less than 2 hours.

Opus 4.6 is completely broken. Not to mention its extreme slowness.

[milankubin]

One request, about 30-40 files to diff in a request to create a git log.
They were all minor type error fixes, removal of unused imports.
Some redundant file deletions.
Cost me 48% of 5h usage for the prompt to "analyze unstaged work and compile a commit message".
This used to take maybe 15%? max?

[jamartinh]

Same here, I am finding this to much token consumer