Exogenous protease supplementation may help to improve amino acid (AA) utilization in low crude protein (CP) diets. This study was conducted to determine the effects of reducing CP/AA in diets with or without a commercially available protease on performance and egg quality of laying hens in peak production. A 20-week study was conducted using 30 wk old 768 Hy-Line W-36 laying hens that were equally and randomly placed into one of 96 experimental units (raised-wire cages). There were 12 replications per treatment and the stocking density was 7.62 hens/m2. Each replicate pen (8 hens) was fed one of 8 diets from the 4 AA level (100, 95, 90 and 85% of breeder recommendation) x 2 protease inclusion (0 or 0.012%). The adequate (100%) diet was based on corn and soybean meal and formulated on the basis of dig. Lys: dig. AAs (Met, Thr, Trp, TSAA, Ile and Val) to meet 100% of Hy-Line W-36 breed recommendation. Variations in CP/AA (95, 90, and 85% diets) were accomplished by reducing the 100% diet by 5, 10 and 15%, respectively. Data were subjected to statistical analyzes of variance (PROC GLM procedure, SAS 9.4). There was an AA levels x protease interaction for hen day egg pro- duction (HDEP; P=0.0120). Inclusion of protease in 100, 95, and 90% diets improved HDEP, whereas HDEP decreased at 85% AA + protease. Hens fed the 95% diet had the highest HDEP and those fed 85% diet without protease had the lowest HDEP. The average feed conversion ratio (FCR; kg feed/dozen eggs) was lower in 85% diets (1.57) compared to others (P=0.0019). Egg weight (EW) was significantly lower in hens that were fed the 85% AA diets (P<0.0001). Percent of defective eggs were significantly lower in hens fed 90% AA diet (P=0.0244) compared to all other AA levels. Throughout the experiment, there were no significant differences between any treatments for feed intake, Haugh unit, albumen weight, albumen %, yolk weight and yolk %.