Rate limits

There are two types of limits:

1. Spend limits set a maximum monthly cost an organization can incur for API usage.
2. Rate limits set the maximum number of API requests an organization can make over a defined period of time.

The API enforces service-configured limits at the organization level, but you may also set user-configurable limits for your organization's workspaces.

About rate limits

• Limits are designed to prevent API abuse, while minimizing impact on common customer usage patterns.
• Limits are defined by usage tier. Organizations are placed on a tier automatically based on usage history and account standing and can move to a higher tier over time as they use the API.
• New organizations and organizations with limited usage history may start in the Evaluation tier, with limits below the standard limits shown on this page while account history is established. These starting limits are part of how Anthropic prevents fraud and abuse, and they increase automatically as your organization builds usage history.
• Limits are set at the organization level. You can see your organization's tier and current limits on the Rate limits page in the Claude Console.
• You might hit rate limits over shorter time intervals. For instance, a rate of 60 requests per minute (RPM) might be enforced as 1 request per second. Short bursts of requests can exceed the limit and trigger rate limit errors.
• The following limits are the standard limits for each tier. If you need higher limits, see Requesting higher limits.
• The API uses the token bucket algorithm to do rate limiting. This means that your capacity is continuously replenished up to your maximum limit, rather than being reset at fixed intervals.
• All limits described here represent maximum allowed usage, not guaranteed minimums. These limits are intended to reduce unintentional overspend and ensure fair distribution of resources among users.

Spend limits

Each of the Start, Build, and Scale tiers carries a monthly spend cap, which is the maximum your organization can spend on the API each calendar month. You can view your organization's monthly spend cap and set your own limit on the Billing page.

Organizations on the Custom tier have no monthly spend cap; limits are arranged with their account team.

Reaching your spend cap

Once you reach your tier's spend cap, API usage pauses until 00:00 UTC on the first day of the next month, unless you request a higher limit sooner. While usage is paused, API requests return HTTP 429:

{
  "type": "error",
  "error": {
    "type": "rate_limit_error",
    "message": "You have reached your API usage limits: your organization has crossed its monthly API usage threshold, set based on your organization's API tier. You will regain access on 2026-09-01 at 00:00 UTC.",
    "details": { "error_code": "enforced_spend_limit_reached" }
  },
  "request_id": "req_018EeWyXxfu5pfWkrYcMdjWG"
}

• The error type is rate_limit_error, the same as for a rate limit, but the response has no retry-after header. Retrying, including the SDKs' automatic retries, fails until access resumes.
• On the Messages API, error.details.error_code is enforced_spend_limit_reached. Use it to tell this response apart from a rate limit.
• Moving to a higher tier restores access; see Requesting higher limits.

Setting your own spend limit

You can also set your own spend limit below your tier's cap to control costs:

1. 1

   Navigate to the Billing page

   Go to Settings > Billing in the Claude Console.

2. 2

   Open the spend limit editor

   In the Spend limits section, click Adjust limit (or Set limit if no limit is currently set).

3. 3

   Adjust your spend limit

   Enter a new value. Your spend limit cannot exceed your current tier's cap.

When usage reaches a spend limit you set, requests return HTTP 400 with error type invalid_request_error. The message begins You have reached your specified API usage limits, or You have reached your specified workspace API usage limits for a workspace limit, and states when access resumes. Raise or remove the limit to restore access sooner.

Limits on the Claude Code workspace are checked separately: Claude Code requests over that workspace's limit can instead receive a 429 that carries a retry-after header.

Rate limits

The rate limits for the Messages API are measured in requests per minute (RPM), input tokens per minute (ITPM), and output tokens per minute (OTPM) for each model class. If you exceed any of the rate limits you will get a 429 error describing which rate limit was exceeded, along with a retry-after header indicating how long to wait.

Cache-aware ITPM

Many API providers use a combined "tokens per minute" (TPM) limit that may include all tokens, both cached and uncached, input and output. For most Claude models, only uncached input tokens count toward your ITPM rate limits. This is a key advantage that makes the rate limits effectively higher than they might initially appear.

ITPM rate limits are estimated at the beginning of each request, and the estimate is adjusted during the request to reflect the actual number of input tokens used.

Here's what counts toward ITPM:

• input_tokens (tokens after the last cache breakpoint) ✓ Count toward ITPM
• cache_creation_input_tokens (tokens being written to cache) ✓ Count toward ITPM
• cache_read_input_tokens (tokens read from cache) ✗ Do NOT count toward ITPM for most models

Example: With a 2,000,000 ITPM limit and an 80% cache hit rate, you could effectively process 10,000,000 total input tokens per minute (2M uncached + 8M cached), because cached tokens don't count toward your rate limit.

To make the most of your rate limits, cache repeated content such as system instructions and prompts, large context documents, tool definitions, and conversation history; see prompt caching for guidance. With effective caching, you can substantially increase your actual throughput without raising your rate limits. Monitor your cache hit rate on the Usage page to tune your caching strategy.

OTPM rate limits are evaluated in real time as output tokens are produced, counting only the actual tokens generated. The max_tokens parameter does not factor into OTPM rate limit calculations, so there is no rate limit downside to setting a higher max_tokens value.

Rate limits are applied separately for each model; therefore you can use different models up to their respective limits simultaneously. You can check your current rate limits and behavior on the Rate limits page in the Claude Console, or read the configured limits programmatically with the Rate Limits API.

^{1 Fable rate limit is a total limit that applies to combined traffic across Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Fable 5. Claude Mythos 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5 share a separate combined limit on the same terms.}

^{2 Opus rate limit is a total limit that applies to combined traffic across Claude Opus 4.8, Opus 4.7, Opus 4.6, and Opus 4.5. Claude Opus 5 has a separate rate limit and is not part of this combined bucket.}

^{3 Sonnet 4.x rate limit is a total limit that applies to combined traffic across Sonnet 4.6 and Sonnet 4.5. Claude Sonnet 5 has a separate rate limit and is not part of this combined bucket.}

^{4 Limit counts cache_read_input_tokens toward ITPM usage.}

Message Batches API

The Message Batches API has its own set of rate limits which are shared across all models. These include a requests per minute (RPM) limit to all API endpoints and a limit on the number of batch requests that can be in the processing queue at the same time. A "batch request" here refers to part of a Message Batch. You may create a Message Batch containing thousands of batch requests, each of which count toward this limit. A batch request is considered part of the processing queue when it has yet to be successfully processed by the model.

Managed Agents

Claude Managed Agents endpoints are rate-limited per organization. These limits are separate from the Messages API rate limits above.

Files API

Files API requests have their own per-organization limit, shared across upload, list, retrieve, download, and delete operations and separate from the Messages API limits described earlier on this page. See Files API rate limits for the current value.

Fast mode rate limits

When using fast mode (research preview) with speed: "fast" on Claude Opus 5 or Opus 4.8, dedicated rate limits apply that are separate from standard Opus rate limits. When fast mode rate limits are exceeded, the API returns a 429 error with a retry-after header. Fast mode is not available on Claude Opus 4.7 (requests return an error) or Claude Opus 4.6 (requests to claude-opus-4-6 with speed: "fast" run at standard speed). See Fast mode.

The response includes anthropic-fast-* headers that indicate your fast mode rate limit status. See Fast mode rate limits for details on these headers.

Monitoring your rate limits in the Console

You can monitor your rate limit usage on the Usage page of the Claude Console.

In addition to providing token and request charts, the Usage page provides two separate rate limit charts. Use these charts to see what headroom you have to grow, identify when you may be hitting peak use, understand what rate limits to request, and learn how to improve your caching rates. The charts visualize a number of metrics for a given rate limit (for example, per model):

• The Rate Limit - Input Tokens chart includes:
  • Hourly maximum uncached input tokens per minute
  • Your current input tokens per minute rate limit
  • The cache rate for your input tokens (that is, the percentage of input tokens read from the cache)
• The Rate Limit - Output Tokens chart includes:
  • Hourly maximum output tokens per minute
  • Your current output tokens per minute rate limit

Requesting higher limits

To request higher rate limits or a higher monthly spend cap, use Request rate limit increase on the Rate limits page. Anthropic support can also raise limits; for urgent needs, contact Anthropic support.

Setting lower limits for Workspaces

For more about workspaces, see Workspaces.

To protect Workspaces in your Organization from potential overuse, you can set custom spend and rate limits per Workspace.

Example: If your Organization's limit is 40,000 input tokens per minute and 8,000 output tokens per minute, you might limit one Workspace to 30,000 input tokens per minute. This protects other Workspaces from potential overuse and ensures a more equitable distribution of resources across your Organization. The remaining unused tokens per minute (or more, if that Workspace doesn't use the limit) are then available for other Workspaces to use.

Note:

• You can't set limits on the default Workspace.
• If not set, Workspace limits match the Organization's limit.
• Workspace limits are set per limiter type (such as requests per minute, input tokens per minute, or output tokens per minute).
• Organization-wide limits always apply, even if Workspace limits add up to more.

To read your current organization and workspace rate limits programmatically, use the Rate Limits API.

Response headers

The API response includes headers that show you the rate limit enforced, current usage, and when the limit will be reset.

The following headers are returned:

The anthropic-ratelimit-tokens-* headers display the values for the most restrictive limit currently in effect. For instance, if you have exceeded the Workspace per-minute token limit, the headers will contain the Workspace per-minute token rate limit values. If Workspace limits do not apply, the headers will return the total tokens remaining, where total is the sum of input and output tokens. This approach ensures that you have visibility into the most relevant constraint on your current API usage. To see which Workspace a request counted against, read the anthropic-workspace-id response header, which carries the ID of the Workspace that your API key or access token resolved to.