Anthropic Renames Claude Max 20x as Ultra and Drops the Five-Hour Limit for Verified Accounts, Keeping the Weekly Cap
Anthropic has renamed its $200-a-month Max 20x plan as Ultra, with no price change, and removed the rolling five-hour usage limit for Ultra accounts it has automatically verified, its help center says. Ultra keeps a weekly cap of 10 times Pro's usage plus a separate weekly limit for Fable; Max 5x is now simply Max, Notebookcheck reports. Unverified accounts keep a temporary limit.
Anthropic has not given its top subscribers more Claude; it has changed when they can spend it. Dropping the five-hour window on the renamed Ultra plan suits long agentic sessions that could previously hit the cap partway through a working day, while the weekly cap that actually bounds cost stays in place. It lands a day after OpenAI doubled Work and Codex allowances on ChatGPT Pro, so both labs are competing on usage terms for their heaviest users rather than on list price.
What changed#
The Max 20x plan is now called Ultra, and existing Max 20x subscribers move to it automatically with no price change, according to Anthropic's help center. Ultra costs $200 a month for web subscriptions, and mobile pricing may differ, the page says. Max 5x has been renamed Max and still costs $100 a month, Notebookcheck reports, quoting Anthropic's announcement on X. Anthropic's pricing page confirms this: it lists Max at $100 a month with "5x Pro usage every 5 hours and every week," and Ultra at $200 with "No 5-hour limit" and "10x Pro usage every week."
Verified Ultra accounts no longer have a five-hour limit, the help center says. Ultra includes 10 times the Pro plan's usage every week, with a weekly limit across all models and a separate weekly limit for Fable, Anthropic's top model, according to the page.
API credits and Fable#
The pricing page also shows monthly API credits for building on the Claude Platform, marked as new: $100 a month on Max and $200 a month on Ultra. Both plans include Fable, Anthropic's top model, for up to half of the weekly limit, while Pro users reach Fable through paid usage credits. Pro is listed at $20 a month billed monthly.
Analysis: Ultra buys time, not cheaper usage#
Our reading, from the listed prices: both higher plans charge the same per unit of weekly usage. Max is $100 for five times Pro's weekly usage and Ultra is $200 for ten times, so each costs $20 per Pro-week, the same as Pro's monthly price. The extra money on Ultra does not buy usage more cheaply. It buys the removal of the five-hour window, which matters for anyone running long agent sessions, plus API credits that match the subscription price. Because Anthropic publishes only ratios, this comparison holds only if "usage" is measured the same way across plans, which the page implies but does not state in numbers.
Who counts as verified#
Anthropic says it verifies Ultra accounts automatically using factors such as account and payment history, to prevent fraud and abuse. Accounts that are not yet verified keep a temporary limit until verification clears, and verifying a phone number at checkout does not remove it, the help center says. Anthropic also says it may limit usage in other ways, such as weekly and monthly caps or model and feature limits, at its discretion.
Limits#
- Anthropic does not publish numeric limits; "10 times the Pro plan's usage" is relative. The help page does not explain how the "20x" in the old name relates to the new "10 times" weekly figure.
- Verification criteria are not spelled out beyond account and payment history, and Anthropic gives no timeline for clearing new accounts.
- We have not read Anthropic's X announcement directly. The Max renaming and the $100 price are confirmed by Anthropic's pricing page.