Anthropic renamed its two Claude Max plans on October 30: the $100-a-month Max 5x is now simply Max, and the $200-a-month Max 20x is now Ultra. Prices did not change. Anthropic also began removing the five-hour usage limit for Ultra accounts it has verified, starting that day with most existing subscribers, while the weekly limits stay as they were.
The five-hour limit is the rolling session cap that stops a heavy user mid-task until the window resets. Without it, a verified Ultra subscriber can "work at your own pace within your weekly limit," in the Help Center's words. The company announced the change in a post from its Claude account at 1:29 p.m. ET.
Post on X by @claudeai
We’re renaming our Max plans: Max 5x → Max Max 20x → Ultra Max is still $100/month, and Ultra is still $200. If you’re a subscriber, there’s nothing you need to do. We’re also removing the 5-hour limit for verified Ultra accounts, starting today with most existing subscribers. Newer accounts keep a temporary limit until they’re verified, which helps us prevent fraud and abuse. You'll get an email when it's removed. Weekly limits remain unchanged. View our plans here: http://claude.com/pricing
What changed, plan by plan
Existing Max 20x subscribers move to Ultra automatically, with no price change, according to Anthropic's Help Center article on the Ultra plan. Ultra is sold as a monthly subscription only, at $200 for web subscriptions; mobile prices may differ. It keeps the Max perks: Claude Code, priority access to new models and features, and monthly credits for the Claude API.
Plan | Price | Weekly | 5-hour cap |
|---|---|---|---|
Pro | $20 | 1x | Yes |
Max | $100 | 5x Pro | Yes |
Ultra | $200 | 10x Pro | No, once verified |
Source: Claude pricing page and Anthropic's Help Center, checked October 30, 2026, 9:25 p.m. UTC. Monthly prices; Pro is $17 a month billed annually.
The renamed Max plan still has both limits. Its Help Center page now says it includes "five times the Pro plan's usage every five hours and every week." Both plans also keep a separate weekly limit for Anthropic's Fable models, and Anthropic reserves the right to add weekly or monthly caps "at our discretion."
Who counts as verified
Verification is automatic. Anthropic says it checks Ultra accounts "using factors like your account and payment history" to prevent fraud and abuse. An unverified account gets a temporary limit, which Anthropic removes without any action from the subscriber, and the Claude post says users will get an email when that happens. Verifying a phone number at checkout does not count. To check, the Help Center says to open Settings, then Usage: an account with no "Current session" bar is verified.
What the second $100 buys heavy users
The new wording also settles what the old "20x" meant. An archived copy of the Max article from October 24 described Max 20x as "20 times the Pro plan's per-session usage allowance" and gave no weekly multiple. The Ultra page now gives one: 10 times Pro every week. Since Anthropic says weekly limits are unchanged, the 20x figure described the five-hour window, not the week.
On the weekly measure, SaasBuzz's calculation from the pricing page shows each plan charges the same $20 a month for each multiple of Pro's allowance: $20 for Pro's 1x, $100 for Max's 5x, $200 for Ultra's 10x. Ultra costs twice as much as Max and carries twice the weekly allowance, so two Max subscriptions would buy the same weekly usage. What the higher price adds is the removal of the five-hour cap, for verified accounts.
For buyers, that splits by habit. A Max subscriber who regularly hits the five-hour wall but rarely the weekly one now has a reason to pay for Ultra. One who runs out of weekly allowance gets twice as much for twice the price, as before.
How the rival top plans compare
The change came a day after OpenAI dropped a planned cut to its $200 ChatGPT Pro 200 plan and doubled allowances elsewhere in the Pro range. "We heard your kind feedback and won't be reducing usage limits for Pro 200," OpenAI's Tibo wrote on X, in a post quoted by BleepingComputer on October 29.
Google is moving the other way on names. Its Google AI plans page sells Google AI Ultra in two tiers, Ultra 5x and Ultra 20x, labeled by their usage multiple of the AI Pro plan, the naming Anthropic has now dropped.
What Anthropic has not said
Anthropic's post and Help Center pages leave several questions open:
How long verification takes, and how large the temporary limit on a new Ultra account is
When the subscribers outside the first group, "most existing subscribers," will be verified
Whether the five-hour limit will come off the $100 Max plan or Team's Premium seats, which the pricing page still describes only as "5x more usage than standard seats"
