Frequently asked questions
About Claude Code peak hours, limits and how this map works.
What is Hourglyph for?
It helps you save Claude Code limits by starting work in off-peak hours. Anthropic has tied limits to the time of day before, peak hours bring more slow replies and failed runs you end up repeating. The heatmap shows when the load peaks in your time zone so you can plan heavy work around it. More tips: how to save Claude Code limits.
When are Claude Code’s peak hours?
Anthropic has described weekdays from 5 to 11 AM Pacific Time (8 AM–2 PM Eastern, 13:00–19:00 UK in summer) as its peak window. That is when US mornings overlap with the European afternoon. The live heatmap on the home page shows how real Claude Code sessions are distributed across the week, converted to your time zone.
What is the best time to use Claude Code?
Outside the weekday peak: late evening and night in the Americas, early morning in Europe, and weekends everywhere tend to be calmer. See best time to use Claude Code for the current quiet windows.
Do peak hours affect my Claude Code usage limits?
Not anymore for most paid users. In March 2026 Anthropic made 5-hour session limits drain faster during weekday peak hours. On May 6, 2026 it doubled Claude Code’s 5-hour limits for Pro, Max, Team and seat-based Enterprise plans and removed the peak-hour reduction for Pro and Max. Weekly limits still apply. Details: Claude Code usage limits explained.
Why does Claude say “overloaded” or feel slow?
An “overloaded” error (HTTP 529) means capacity is temporarily exhausted; it is more likely at peak hours and during incidents. Check status.claude.com for incidents and current load on this site.
Is this an official Anthropic tool?
No. Hourglyph is an independent, open-source community project. Numbers come only from people who chose to add the hook or press the check-in button, so they show relative patterns, not Anthropic’s internal traffic.
What data does the hook send?
Three kinds of event: a session started, a message was sent (without its text), and a turn finished with four token counts computed locally from your transcript. The server adds the UTC hour, weekday and the country code the network derives from the connection. No prompts, answers, code, paths, session IDs or IP addresses are stored. See privacy.
Why count messages and tokens, not just sessions?
One session can last all day. Messages show when people are actually working, and tokens show how heavy that work is — together they give a far better picture of load, and of the hours when limits go further.
Where does the world map data come from?
From the same check-ins. The country is the two-letter code Cloudflare attaches to each request; only per-day totals per country are published. With a VPN, the VPN’s country is counted.
Where does the incident data come from?
From Anthropic’s official status page, status.claude.com, through its public API. Our database syncs recent incidents every hour and counts the hours when an incident affecting Claude, the API or Claude Code was open. Pick “Incidents” above the charts to see when outages cluster.
Which time zone is the heatmap in?
Your browser’s time zone. Data is stored in UTC and converted on the fly. There are also dedicated pages for major time zones.
Can I use the data?
Yes, it is published under CC BY 4.0 as JSON and CSV. Please link back to Hourglyph.