Same work, 1.8x the limit: Theo says the Claude Agent SDK burns through 5-hour limits faster, and it's Anthropic's bug

"Just downloaded T3 Code and hit 5-hour limits on my Claude Max plan for the first time… it emptied the whole 5-hour limit in ~30 mins." Developer and YouTuber Theo Browne (@theo) quoted that complaint on Oct 24 and said he'd confirmed "it's a real bug on Anthropic's side."

According to Theo, all usage that goes through the Claude Agent SDK drains 5-hour limits faster than using Claude Code directly; weekly limits aren't affected. He suspects Anthropic forgot to apply its recent boost to 5-hour limits on Pro, Max and Team plans to the Agent SDK. The post passed 1,900 likes and 120,000 views.

He pointed to a GitHub issue opened Sept 25. Its author found that running the same workload headless with `claude -p` used about 1.8x more of the 5-hour window than the interactive TUI, with identical token counts, and said they ended up paying for extra usage because of it. The issue is still open.

Replies asked how weekly limits could be unaffected if the 5-hour window counts toward the weekly total, and others asked Anthropic's developer account for a reset. The same day, a r/ClaudeCode post titled "Max plan reset literally this morning and 53% of my limit is already wiped" hit the front of the sub. Anthropic hasn't commented.