Claude Max $100 vs $200: What You Actually Get (Measured, Not Guessed)

Everyone running Claude Code at scale hits the same wall: rate limits. You see percentages tick up, you get throttled, you wait. Anthropic doesn't publish the exact numbers behind those percentages. The community guesses. Blog posts recycle each other's estimates. Nobody actually measures. I did. The Problem With Everything You've Read Search for "Claude Code rate limits" and you'll find variations of the same table: Plan 5-Hour Window Pro ($20) ~45 messages Max 5x ($100) ~225 messages Max 20x ($200) ~900 messages These message-count estimates come from community gists, blog roundups, and casual observation. Some sources report token-based estimates (44k / 88k / 220k per 5-hour window) that don't even agree with the message-based numbers. But here's the question nobody has answered: what is the relationship between the 5-hour limit and the weekly limit, and how does it differ between the $100 and $200 plans? This matters because the weekly limit — introduced in August 2025 — is what ac