When chatting with Claude, you may encounter two different types of limits that work in distinct ways: usage limits and length limits. Understanding the difference between these can help you use Claude more effectively.
Usage Limits
Usage limits control how much you can interact with Claude over a specific time period. Think of this as your "conversation budget" that determines how many messages you can send to Claude, or how long you can work with Claude Code, before needing to wait for your limit to reset.
Your usage is affected by several factors, including the length and complexity of your conversations, the features you use, and which Claude model you're chatting with. Different subscription plans (Pro, Max, Team, etc.) have different usage allowances, with paid plans offering higher limits.
Note that your usage of all different Claude product surfaces (claude.ai, Claude Code, Claude Desktop) counts towards the same usage limit.
How can I get unlimited usage?
There isn't a way to purchase a specific plan offering unlimited usage at this time. However, there are a couple of different ways to increase your usage depending on your plan:
If you’re using Claude Code with a Pro or Max plan, you can switch to pay-as-you-go usage with a separate API Console account if you hit your usage limit and wish to pay for extra usage rather than waiting for it to reset.
If you’re using a Team or Enterprise plan, see this article for more details about extra usage: Extra Usage for Claude for Work (Team and Enterprise) Plans.
Refer to Usage Limit Best Practices for strategies to maximize your message allotment.
Length Limits
Length limits control the amount of information Claude can work with in a single chat. These limits exist because Claude has a finite context window—think of this as Claude's working memory that determines how much content it can process and remember at once.
When you start a new chat, Claude can handle a specific amount of information (measured in tokens, which roughly correspond to words and characters). As your conversation grows longer or when you upload files, you fill up this context window space. Once you approach the context window capacity, you'll start seeing messages about exceeding the length limit for your chat.
Unlike usage limits, length limits are determined by the fixed size of Claude's context window for each conversation. You can always start a new chat to get a fresh context window.
How can I increase the size of Claude’s context window?
Currently, Claude’s context window size is 200K tokens across all models and paid plans with one exception: Claude Sonnet 4 has a 500K context window for users on Enterprise plans. Refer to What is the Enterprise plan? for more information.
Key Differences
The main distinction is that usage limits control how much you can use Claude across all your conversations, while length limits control how long any single conversation can become. Usage limits are about quantity over time, while length limits are about the depth and complexity of individual conversations.
If you hit your usage limit, you'll need to wait for it to reset, upgrade your plan, or purchase extra usage (Team and Enterprise plans only). If you hit a length limit, you can start a new conversation or use features like projects to work with larger amounts of information more efficiently.