Anthropic has renamed its two most expensive Claude subscription plans and scrapped the rolling five-hour usage limit for verified accounts on the top tier, the company announced on October 30 in a post from its official @claudeai account on X. The $100-per-month plan previously called Max 5x is now simply Max, while the $200-per-month Max 20x plan becomes Claude Ultra. Prices have not changed, and existing subscribers are moved to the new names automatically.

What changed

The headline change is the removal of the five-hour session cap on Ultra. Anthropic said it is “removing the 5-hour limit for verified Ultra accounts, starting today with most existing subscribers,” according to AI Weekly’s writeup of the announcement. The weekly ceiling, set at 10 times the Pro plan’s allowance, stays exactly where it is, so subscribers get no more total usage, just the freedom to use it in longer uninterrupted sessions.

The $100 Max plan sees only a name change. It keeps its five-hour limit, set at five times Pro usage, along with a weekly limit. “The Ultra plan keeps the weekly limit (10x Pro), but we’re removing the 5-hour limit so you can keep building without getting blocked mid-session,” the company wrote in the announcement, as quoted by Sovereign Magazine.

There is one condition attached. Newer Ultra accounts will keep a temporary five-hour limit until they pass Anthropic’s verification process, a step the company describes as fraud and abuse prevention. Verification is based on account and payment history, and verifying a phone number at checkout does not remove the temporary limit, according to Toolcolumn’s comparison of the updated plan documentation. The Claude Help Center now states plainly that “Verified Ultra accounts don’t have a five-hour limit.”

Both plans also now include monthly credits for building on the Claude Platform, $100 on Max and $200 on Ultra, according to reports comparing the updated pricing page, per LetsDataScience.

The new Claude subscription lineup

The new Claude subscription lineup. Graphic: GPTOnline.

Why the five-hour window mattered

The rolling five-hour limit was the restriction power users complained about most. It reset on a rotating basis, so a long coding or agent session could be cut off mid-task with hours to wait for the window to reopen, even when the weekly allowance still had plenty of room. When the top plan launched, it had a single five-hour limit set at 20 times Pro usage, which gave it the name Max 20x. Anthropic added weekly limits in August 2025 and set them at 10 times Pro, while the five-hour limit stayed at 20 times, per Sovereign Magazine’s reconstruction of the plan history.

The rename clears up a confusion that had built into the naming. The old “20x” described the five-hour allowance, not the weekly one, so subscribers who burned through every window could exhaust the weekly budget after half as many full sessions as Pro allowed. Under the new scheme, Ultra’s defining feature is the opposite: the tank is the same size, but the speed limiter on each session is gone for verified accounts.

The move follows a series of limit adjustments through 2025 aimed at peak-hour bottlenecks and unauthorized account sharing, as Techstrong.ai notes. By making verification, rather than price, the gate to the uncapped tier, Anthropic is targeting resold or shared seats without punishing its heaviest legitimate users.

What changes on Ultra

What changes on Ultra. Graphic: GPTOnline.

Pricing and availability

Pricing is unchanged: Max costs $100 a month and Ultra costs $200 a month, both billed monthly only. Subscribers do not need to take any action, and the changes apply immediately to most existing accounts, with newer Ultra accounts catching up as verification completes. The $20 Pro plan is unaffected, as are the Free tier limits, per Crypto Briefing’s breakdown.

Anthropic has not said what verification involves or how long it takes for a new Ultra account, and the announcement post’s exact URL was not independently confirmable at press time, so no embedded post is included in this article.

Sources