Anthropic Rebrands Claude Max Plans and Removes Ultra Usage Caps
The company updates subscription tiers while eliminating the restrictive five-hour limit for Ultra users.
1Strategic Rebranding of Tiers
Anthropic has officially renamed its high-end subscription offerings to simplify the user experience. The former Max 5x plan is now simply called Max, priced at $100 monthly. Meanwhile, the previous Max 20x tier is rebranded as Ultra, maintaining its $200 monthly price point. These changes aim to clarify the specific value proposition for power users.
2Removal of Usage Constraints
The most significant update involves the removal of the five-hour usage limit for verified Ultra subscribers. Previously, this constraint reset frequently, causing friction for heavy users. While existing subscribers received this update on Friday, newer accounts remain subject to temporary limits until Anthropic completes a verification process to mitigate potential fraud and abuse.
3API Credit and Usage Details
The Max plan continues to offer five times the usage of the standard Pro tier, accompanied by $100 in monthly API credits. The Ultra plan now provides ten times the Pro usage on a weekly basis. Both plans include access to Fable, Anthropic’s top-tier model, for up to half of the total weekly usage limit.
4Discrepancies in Usage Metrics
The rebranding process has introduced notable shifts in stated capacity. While the previous Max 20x name implied a twenty-fold increase over Pro, the current Ultra plan is officially listed at ten times Pro usage per week. Anthropic did not explicitly address this reduction in the stated multiplier during their public announcement on the X platform.
5Regional Pricing and Accessibility
Anthropic maintains consistent pricing structures across different regions, with the Max plan costing €90 and the Ultra plan priced at €180 per month in Europe. Subscribers are not required to take any manual action to transition to these new plan structures, as the company has implemented the changes automatically for all existing account holders.
6Context of Legal Challenges
These adjustments follow a lawsuit filed in June, which alleged that Anthropic had oversold the usage capacity of its Max plans. By refining the terminology and adjusting the technical limits, the company appears to be responding to user dissatisfaction and legal scrutiny regarding the actual performance and availability of its premium AI subscription services.
7Historical Capacity Management
This is not the first time Anthropic has modified its infrastructure limits. In May, the company doubled the five-hour usage limits for Claude Code, attributing the improvement to increased computing capacity provided by SpaceX. These iterative changes reflect the company's ongoing effort to balance high-demand AI workloads with available server-side resources.
8Operational Policy Shifts
Beyond subscription tiers, Anthropic has tightened its ecosystem control. In April, the company blocked third-party agent tools like OpenClaw from accessing Claude subscriptions. These combined actions indicate a broader strategy of centralizing user interactions and strictly managing how computing resources are consumed by both individual subscribers and external automated agent tools.
Original article: The Next Web — Anthropic Rebrands Claude Max Plans and Removes Ultra Usage Caps