This article explains common error messages and warnings you may encounter when using Claude and provides guidance on how to address them.
Usage limit warnings and errors
Usage limit warnings appear when you're approaching your plan’s limit within a five-hour session: “Approaching 5-hour limit.”
If you hit your plan’s limit after the warning appears, you’ll see a blocking error message letting you know when you can use Claude again: “5-hour limit reached - resets [time].”
Looking for ways to maximize your Claude usage? Refer to Usage Limit Best Practices.
Extra usage
Max 20x users and members of Team and Enterprise organizations with extra usage enabled in Usage settings will see a slightly different usage limit error: “5-hour limit resets [time] - continuing with extra usage.” Note that this will only appear for members with access to extra usage.
Refer to these articles for more information about this feature depending on your plan:
Length limit errors
You may encounter a length limit error when your message to Claude exceeds the maximum input length allowed: “Your message will exceed the length limit for this chat. Try attaching fewer or smaller files or starting a new conversation.”
This error indicates that your message is too long and needs to be shortened before sending it to Claude. If you’re unable to send the message even after reducing its length, this means the current chat reached the context window size. Claude’s context window size is 200K tokens across all models and paid plans with one exception: Claude Sonnet 4.5 has a 500K context window for users on Enterprise plans.
If you reach this limit, you can:
Break your content into smaller chunks and process them separately.
Summarize or extract key sections before sending to Claude.
Use Claude to first identify the most relevant portions of your content.
Capacity constraints
Capacity issues occur when Claude’s infrastructure experiences high demand system-wide. When capacity is constrained, you may see this message when chatting with Claude: "Due to unexpected capacity constraints, Claude is unable to respond to your message. Please try again soon."
Important: Capacity constraints are not outages. The system is functioning normally but managing high demand across all users. These issues are temporary and typically resolve as demand patterns shift throughout the day. If you encounter this message, try again in a few minutes.
Capacity issues will not appear on our status page because they represent normal load management rather than technical problems.
Service incidents and outages
Service incidents are disruptions where Claude is unavailable or significantly degraded for all or most users. These represent actual technical problems with our systems. To check for confirmed incidents, visit status.claude.com, where you'll find real-time updates on scope, impact, and resolution progress for any active incidents.