Hit the Claude weekly limit? The cheapest API fallback

What happens when you hit the Claude weekly limit

Claude stops until your weekly reset unless you pay for more. Pro and Max have a 5-hour session limit plus a weekly limit; Ultra has a weekly limit, and verified Ultra accounts have no 5-hour limit. Max and Ultra also get a separate weekly limit for Fable. All of it is shared between Claude and Claude Code, per Anthropic's Claude Code help article.

Anthropic lists four ways out: upgrade, turn on usage credits, switch Claude Code to a Claude Console account with API credits, or wait. Your weekly limit resets at a fixed day and time assigned to your account, per Anthropic. If the reset is a day away, waiting is the cheapest fallback there is. See how the Claude Code weekly limit works and recent Claude resets.

Fallback with no setup: Claude usage credits

Usage credits keep Claude and Claude Code running after any limit, billed at standard API rates, per Anthropic's usage credits article. Turn them on in Settings > Usage > Usage credits, add funds and set a monthly spend limit. The model you pick drives the bill: Opus 5.5 costs $4 in and $20 out per 1M tokens, Sonnet 5.5 $2 / $10, Haiku 5.5 $0.10 / $0.50, per Anthropic's pricing page.

Switch to Sonnet or Haiku with /model before you keep going. On our sample session Opus costs $19.60, Sonnet $9.80 and Haiku $0.53. Anthropic's own tip is to use Haiku or the latest Sonnet to keep credit costs down. Haiku has a catch in Claude Code: once a prompt passes 100K tokens, Anthropic bills it at $0.50 in and $2.50 out, which puts the same session at $2.65. A long Claude Code session with big files in context can cross that line. The monthly API credits that come with Max and Ultra don't cover this, per Anthropic. More on that in Claude extra usage cost.

Using a Claude Console API key in Claude Code

It costs the same per token as usage credits, since both bill at Anthropic's API rates. The catch is the switch back. If an ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment variable is set, Claude Code uses it instead of your subscription, "resulting in API usage charges," per Anthropic. Remove it once your weekly limit resets, then run /login to go back to your plan.

How to run DeepSeek V4.1 Flash in Claude Code

DeepSeek runs an Anthropic-format endpoint at https://api.deepseek.com/anthropic and publishes a Claude Code setup. You set ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL to that address, ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN to a DeepSeek API key, and the model variables (ANTHROPIC_MODEL and the Opus, Sonnet and Haiku defaults) to deepseek-flash. Then run claude as usual.

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash costs $0.30 in, $0.006 cached and $1.20 out per 1M tokens at peak, and off-peak is half that, per DeepSeek's pricing page. Peak hours are 01:00 to 04:00 and 06:00 to 10:00 UTC, Monday to Friday. In US Eastern time (EST) that's 8 PM to 11 PM and 1 AM to 5 AM, so a normal US workday is entirely off-peak. Details in DeepSeek off-peak hours.

One trap: if a request still asks for a claude-opus model name, DeepSeek maps it to DeepSeek V4 Pro and bills the V4 Pro price ($1.32 / $3.96 at peak), per DeepSeek's Anthropic API guide. Other Claude names map to Flash. Set the model variables explicitly so you know which one you're paying for. Also keep in mind your prompts and code go to DeepSeek under its terms, not Anthropic's.

How to run MiniMax-M3.1 Flash in Claude Code

MiniMax also speaks the Anthropic format: set ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL to https://api.minimax.io/anthropic, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY to a MiniMax key and use the model MiniMax-M3.1-Flash, per MiniMax's Anthropic API docs. It's $0.15 in and $0.60 out per 1M tokens with no peak pricing, about $0.72 for our sample session. It ranks #26 of 50 on Code Arena. MiniMax's M Plan subscription also works in Claude Code; see MiniMax API pricing.

GLM Coding Plan in Claude Code

Z.ai documents a Claude Code setup for its GLM Coding Plan, a subscription rather than pay-per-token, with ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL set to https://api.z.ai/api/anthropic and every Claude model slot mapped to GLM-5.3-Flash by default. If you hit the Claude limit every week, it's a second flat-rate plan rather than a top-up. API prices are in GLM API pricing.

Should you upgrade your Claude plan instead?

Upgrade if you hit the weekly limit most weeks. Max costs $100 a month for 5x Pro's usage, and Ultra $200 for 10x Pro per week. The $80 gap between Pro and Max buys about 8 sample sessions on Sonnet 5.5 usage credits, or about 64 on DeepSeek V4.1 Flash at peak (our math). If you only run out once a month, a fallback is cheaper. If it happens every week, the bigger plan usually wins. See is Claude Max worth it.

How to switch back to your Claude plan

Unset every variable you added (ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL, ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY and the model variables), or remove them from ~/.claude/settings.json if a setup script wrote them there. Restart the terminal, run claude, then /login with your Claude account. Check /status to confirm you're back on the plan.

Related comparisons

• DeepSeek V4.1 Flash vs Claude Haiku 5.5 and Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Haiku 5.5.
• MiniMax-M3.1 Flash vs DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and DeepSeek vs Claude API cost.
• Claude Pro vs API cost and the cheapest LLM APIs.