Clarification needed: Are Opus and Sonnet limits independent or shared after Nov 24 update?

[mweichert]

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

1. 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?

2. Should the support documentation be updated to reflect the new limit structure?

3. 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.

[skerit]

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:

Sonnet usage draws from this limit only, leaving more headroom for Opus

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:

For Max and Team Premium users, we’ve increased overall usage limits, meaning you’ll have roughly the same number of Opus tokens as you previously had with Sonnet

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.

[Yhooi2]

I have Max plan and after exhausting my Opus limit, I can't use Sonnet.

[RobDavenport]

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.

[aterveus]

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.

• Why does Haiku Shared a limit was the Larger Model if it is the cheapest.
• Can't Pro+ user get unlimited or a larger caps for Haiku if the limits are placed on both Sonnet and Opus?

[xdevs23]

My understanding is:

• Sonnet usage counts against "Sonnet only" and "All models"
• Opus counts against "All models" only

Which would imply:

• Hitting "All models" limit means all models are restricted (Opus, Sonnet, Haiku)
• Hitting "Sonnet only" limit means only Sonnet is restricted but Opus and Haiku still work until "All models" is used up

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.

[madshn]

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:

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

[andersonbcdefg]

Just subscribed to Max and also very confused by this. Anyone care to explain.

[xdevs23]

Just subscribed to Max and also very confused by this. Anyone care to explain.

I did try to here #12487 (comment)

[gvtej]

Same issue. I can’t use Sonnet even though I still have limits available, because my Opus limits are already exhausted.

[xdevs23]

Same issue. I can’t use Sonnet even though I still have limits available, because my Opus limits are already exhausted.

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: #12487 (comment)

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.