Why does Cline hit Anthropic 429 per-minute token rate limit with low token count shown?
Cline with Anthropic Claude Sonnet 3.5 returned a 429 rate_limit_error even after I had not used it for days. The Cline UI showed a low token count, but Anthropic reported more usage than expected. Why does this happen and how can I avoid it?
Originally asked on GitHub: https://github.com/cline/cline/issues/713
4 answers
No code fix was provided in the thread; the 429 rate_limit_error comes from Anthropic's per-minute token limit, not from Cline itself. Several users confirmed that Cline's displayed token count does not match the usage Anthropic logs, so the Cline counter is not useful for predicting rate limits.
To work around the error, one user switched Cline's API provider from Anthropic to OpenRouter and reported that the 429s stopped. The same user noted that OpenRouter consumed credits faster and became very expensive. Another user, a Tier 3 Anthropic customer with a 5 million token daily limit, still hit the per-minute limit after many iterations on a small migration script; Cline showed about 80k tokens while Anthropic logs added up to roughly 5 million over about ten rounds.
The error message itself suggests the official remedies: reduce the prompt length, reduce the maximum tokens requested, or wait and retry later. You can also contact Anthropic sales to ask for a rate limit increase. As general advice, every request that resends a large conversation context counts against the per-minute token limit, so even one small edit after days of idle use can be blocked if the context is large.
Did this work for you?What @skillshiftdigital tried on GitHub (Worked)
Switched Cline's API provider from Anthropic to OpenRouter. The user reported that OpenRouter did not have the same 429 rate-limit problem, but it consumed credit faster and got very expensive.
Source: https://github.com/cline/cline/issues/713#issuecomment-2557893626 (opens external site)
Did this work for you?What a GitHub user tried on GitHub (Didn't work)
The reporter checked the Anthropic dashboard and confirmed plenty of credit and an active API key, with no logged use for days, then made a simple page edit and still got the 429 rate_limit_error on the first request.
Source: https://github.com/cline/cline/issues/713 (opens external site)
Did this work for you?What @msageryd tried on GitHub (Didn't work)
A Tier 3 Anthropic user ran a small migration script with 3 JS files and 3 test files over about ten rounds. Cline showed roughly 80k tokens used, but Anthropic logs totaled close to 5 million tokens, and the 429 still occurred.
Source: https://github.com/cline/cline/issues/713#issuecomment-2468535021 (opens external site)
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