Anthropic is removing the five-hour limit from its Claude Max 20x plan, now renamed Ultra, for verified accounts. In a post on Claude’s X account at 1:29 p.m. Eastern on October 30, 2026, the company said the removal starts “today with most existing subscribers.” Max 5x becomes Max, still $100 a month, and Ultra stays at $200. Weekly limits aren’t changing, and the $100 Max plan keeps its five-hour limit.
Subscribers see both caps as bars under Settings > Usage: one for the current session, which resets every five hours, and one for the week. Our comparison of Claude subscription plans covers the other differences between Pro, Max and Team, using the plans’ old names.
Two new names, same prices
“If you’re a subscriber, there’s nothing you need to do,” Anthropic said in the post. Claude’s pricing page, as displayed in France on October 30, lists Max at €90 and Ultra at €180 a month, before tax.
Anthropic’s help center updated its Ultra page the same day, at 1:11 p.m. Eastern. According to that page, Max 20x subscribers move to Ultra automatically, with no price change, and the plan is available only as a monthly subscription. The email Anthropic sent Ultra subscribers on October 30, seen by maccus.fr, confirms that their “price, features, billing date, and weekly usage limit stay the same.”
For now, the rename is skin-deep: on the pricing page, the Ultra signup link still carries the “max_20x” identifier. Both plans also include a monthly API credit, $100 on Max and $200 on Ultra, which can’t be used in Claude Code or the Claude apps.
The rename doesn’t touch the invisible text watermark Claude puts on its output, which Anthropic extends to Opus 4.7, Opus 4.6, Sonnet 4.6 and Mythos 5 on November 3.
A limit lifted in stages, account by account
Anthropic explained the move in its email to Ultra subscribers: “More of Claude’s work now runs for hours in the background, and a 5-hour limit shouldn’t stop it partway.” Once the limit is removed, “you can spread your weekly usage limit across the week however you like,” the email says.
The removal is happening “in stages,” and only for verified accounts. According to the help center, Anthropic verifies Ultra accounts automatically “using factors like your account and payment history,” to help prevent fraud and abuse. Newer accounts keep a temporary limit until they’re verified, the X post says, and Anthropic emails subscribers once it’s lifted. Verifying a phone number at checkout is a separate step and doesn’t remove that limit.
The help center describes how to check: if the “Current session” bar no longer shows up under Settings > Usage, the account is verified.
Claude Code follows the same rule. Anthropic’s help page for the tool says Pro and Max plans have a five-hour session limit and a weekly limit, while verified Ultra accounts have only a weekly limit. That means the wrap-up allowance, which lets Claude Code finish the step in progress when a user reaches the five-hour limit, no longer applies to those accounts. On an Ultra account under the temporary limit, the allowance works as it does on Max.
Weekly limits are unchanged
Ultra’s weekly allowance stays at 10 times Pro’s usage, across all models, according to the pricing page and the help center. Max keeps 5 times Pro’s usage, every five hours and every week. Usage across Claude’s web, desktop and mobile apps, plus Claude Code, still draws from one shared pool, which our guide to hitting the usage limit on Claude Pro explains. The announcement covers only the two Max plans and leaves Free, Pro, Team and Enterprise untouched.
Fable models remain under a separate cap. On both Max and Ultra, they can use up to half the weekly limit, a rule already covered in our article on Claude models and their pricing. API usage is billed separately, at API rates.
The help center also carries a broader caveat: “Additional usage limits may apply to manage capacity and ensure fair access to all users.” Its examples include weekly or monthly caps and limits on model or feature usage, set at Anthropic’s discretion. The page adds that Anthropic doesn’t guarantee uninterrupted service.
The “20x” only ever applied to the 5-hour window
The email gives the reason for the name change. The company first introduced Max 20x as a way for Pro subscribers to upgrade to a five-hour limit 20 times higher. In August 2025, it added a weekly usage limit, set at 10 times Pro’s. The plan is getting a new name now because the 20x referred to the five-hour limit, which Anthropic is removing.
Mike Overell, who leads product for Claude subscriptions, laid out the timeline on X two minutes after the announcement. When the plan launched in April 2025, it had only a five-hour limit, set at 20 times Pro’s. Weekly limits came later, at 10 times Pro’s, while the five-hour limit stayed at 20 times.
“I get that some new users assumed 20x applied to both limits. We could have done better here, and I’m sorry,” he wrote. Replies to his post expressed surprise that the weekly limit had only been 10 times Pro’s, and one asked how users would be compensated.
On September 8, The Verge reported that an expanded class action accuses Anthropic of deceptively advertising the limits of its Max plan. The suit was brought by Monica Vaca and Kati Daffan, two attorneys who formerly worked at the Federal Trade Commission. In a motion to dismiss the earlier version of the complaint, Anthropic argued that details on those limits were available through links in the purchase process, the outlet reported. Neither the October 30 announcement nor the email mentions the case.
The questions the announcement leaves open
Anthropic hasn’t given a timeline for the staged rollout. The company says it is starting “with most existing subscribers,” but doesn’t say how many accounts remain under the temporary limit or how long it takes to verify a newer account.
The weekly limit is still expressed only as a multiple of Pro’s usage, with no message count. The pricing page notes that how fast a subscriber reaches a limit depends on the model used, the length of conversations and the size of files. None of the Anthropic pages cited here says when or how the additional capacity limits would apply.
What it means
On a verified Ultra account, the weekly limits now do all the rationing, aside from any capacity limits Anthropic reserves the right to impose. A subscriber can pack a week’s usage into a few long days, or let an agent or a Claude Code session run for several hours without being blocked by a session limit. Subscribers who were already hitting the weekly limit before the week was out gain nothing, since that cap hasn’t moved.
The gap between the two plans changes shape, too. For twice the price, Ultra gives twice Max’s weekly usage and, once the account is verified, has no five-hour cap. Max, like Pro, keeps its five-hour cap.
The rename fixes a label that Anthropic itself admits was misunderstood, while a class action targets how those same limits were presented. The next things to watch are how quickly the removal emails go out, what the capacity limits look like in practice and where the class action goes.
Sources
- We’re renaming our Max plans, Claude (Anthropic) on X, October 30, 2026
- I lead product for Claude subscriptions. Today we’re renaming our Max plans, and I want to explain why, Mike Overell on X, October 30, 2026
- What is the Ultra plan?, Claude Help Center, Anthropic, October 30, 2026
- Use Claude Code with your Pro, Max, or Ultra plan, Claude Help Center, Anthropic, accessed October 30, 2026
- Pricing, Claude, Anthropic, accessed October 30, 2026
- “Max 20x is now Ultra,” Anthropic email to Ultra subscribers (not published online), October 30, 2026
- AI power users claim Anthropic duped them with subscriptions, and they’re taking it to court, The Verge, September 8, 2026
Header image: MACCUS chart. Data: Anthropic (pricing page, help center, email to Ultra subscribers) and Mike Overell on X, October 30, 2026
