Claude Suffers a Full-Stack Outage While Anthropic Bans 11.4 Million Accounts
Claude went down.
Claude Code finally demonstrated, with real performance, how to slow AI down.
He really did it, I'm crying.
This afternoon, whether you were using Claude Chat, the API, Claude Code, or Cowork, everyone basically saw the same thing:
API Error: Repeated 529 Overloaded errors
It's not that your network is broken, nor that you've run out of credits.
According to the official Claude Code documentation, a 529 error means: the API has temporarily reached its capacity limit for all users.
Simply put, the requests can't get through, there's no room for your request, stop crowding in, crowding is useless.
Image source: Claude Status
The statement on Claude's official status page said: the affected products include claude.ai, the Claude API, Claude Code, and Claude Cowork, basically wiping out the entire Claude family in one go.
The whole process was quite theatrical.
At 13:57 this afternoon, the official investigation began.
At 14:26, models other than Opus 5 recovered.
At 15:32, just as Opus 5 recovered, Sonnet 5 went down again.
At 16:05, after Sonnet 5 recovered, Fable 5 started throwing errors.
At 16:33, the official announcement simply declared: all models are throwing errors together again.
It wasn't good for long, and then by 18:23, Opus 4.7 and Opus 4.5 also had problems, and the investigation is still ongoing.
It's like robbing Peter to pay Paul; after paying Paul, Peter is broke again, and in the end, you find your home base has been stolen.
And this wasn't even Claude's first crash today; there's another master at work.
The previous round of elevated error rates across all models happened between 3:45 AM and 5:26 AM Beijing time. Fixed in the early morning, then it happened again in the afternoon, arranging a morning and evening double feature for users in a single day.
Image source: Claude Status
The availability rates for Claude Chat, the API, Claude Code, and Cowork over the past 90 days all look to be above 99%, but that row of yellow and red squares also shows: this isn't the first time.
For an average chat user, being down for an hour isn't a big deal.
But for Claude Code and Cowork users, the situation is a bit different.
When you're in the middle of modifying code, running tests, organizing documents, or have even integrated it into your company's automated workflows, and then you get hit with a 529, can you handle that?
However, a 529 isn't the thing Claude users have been most worried about lately.
If a service goes down, you can always wait for it to recover.
But Claude Code account bans are what everyone truly despises.
Anthropic released a set of data...
According to its data updated on July 23, in the first half of 2026, Anthropic banned a total of 11.4 million accounts.
These 11.4 million accounts don't equal 11.4 million real human users; they likely include bots, bulk registrations, resellers, and other abusive accounts.
But the fact that Anthropic listed out how many accounts it banned, does that mean they think this is something worth showing off?
In addition, a total of 398,000 appeals were received, of which 42,000 appeals were ultimately overturned.
That is to say, out of 11.4 million accounts cast into the cold palace, only 42,000 were ultimately able to come out alive, and this is just the first half of the year, six months...
But for Anthropic, this is just standard operating procedure. However, such a big move and yet so few people are discussing it; it seems nobody cares anymore.
Anyway, not many people are using it anymore.