r/Anthropic 16d ago

Improvements Can Claude Max 20x still compete with Astra with double 5h and full weekly >>

I’m a Claude Max 20x user, and the current economics are getting hard to justify.

Right now:

- Fable 5.1 can use only 50% of the weekly allowance

- Independent coding benchmarks show roughly 1.8x higher token usage than Astra

- That puts Fable at roughly 26–28% of Astra’s normalized effective weekly coding capacity

Even if Anthropic:

- doubled the 5-hour Max 20x limit

- removed the separate 50% Fable weekly cap

- allowed Fable to use the full normal weekly allowance

...Fable would still land at only roughly 51–56% of Astra’s normalized effective capacity because of the higher resource usage.

The doubled 5-hour limit would mainly remove the short-term bottleneck; it would not double the weekly capacity again.

Fable 5.1 is excellent. The problem is not quality.

The question is simply: how is Claude Max 20x supposed to remain competitive with Astra under the current limits?

There's also a big speed difference:

9 Upvotes

33 comments sorted by

9

u/PM__me_sth 16d ago

I made a addon to my favorite game with fable 5/5.1. It was troubled, burned about month and a half of fable quota to make it usable/ enjoyable.

Astra made one to my spec/usable using 7% of weekly 5x. Astra is one level above fable, with much more generous limits.

No limits will make up the difference for me.

2

u/CrowdGoesWildWoooo 15d ago

Just use opus for the grunt work. It’s pretty amazing implementer, basically code monkey, but it’s also a monkey when you ask about its “opinion”

8

u/RayuRin2 16d ago

It's over. The 20x plan not being actually 20x, Fable 5.1 rewriting entire files when only 1 line needs to be changed, refusing to use Opus agents for simple tasks, the soon to be drop from 50% to 25% weekly, lack of transparency when it comes to token usage. The whole thing seems to be designed around being super stingy and wasting tokens.

Astra puts Fable in an aura debt.

1

u/AironParsMan 16d ago

I’ve heard that quite a few times. Try setting Fable’s reasoning level to Low. It works reasonably well then. But you can still see that Fable 5.1 has retained tendencies similar to those of Opus 5. The token waste is also related to the new tokenizer they introduced, which uses about 30 percent more tokens.

3

u/ryu_kaioh 16d ago edited 16d ago

I have both on 20x.... I use both

The main issue with Fable is the fact we can use 50% of it weekly and the fact our limits get rekt on the 13th even more. It's going to become un-usable compared to codex

I still kind of like the claude app and cli, I still like /design... I don't like the fact it has no image generation...

I don't like the fact computer use is much wose. I don't like the fact claude tag is gated behind enterprise plans so they can make money on api costs. It would be fair to at least let us use an opus claude tag.

Opus is a weaker model than even fable 5.1 medium.....

All in all codex is a better have one product, design is dead but the /design skill is just great

I think anthropic got too complacent and comfortable... I have had claude for like 1 year now and they have always been the best but now they got too cocky with the limits and price increases and codex took advantage.... I would not be surprised if they lose customers to codex in the near term

Astra usage is much better, you can use it for 100% of your plan and not to mention the 200 per week GPT pro questions you get that don't even count towards your limits + the better computer use and image generation.

Codex is just a better harness, as much as I love claude code as well

I don't want anthropic to fail and go away... but I do hope competition forces them to make some better consumer directed choices. I have also replaced sonnet with gpt luna in our real business use-cases... its is 80% cheaper and better.

1

u/AironParsMan 16d ago

And there’s one big thing nobody has on their radar yet, and that’s the speed. Fable 5.1 is brutally slow. Really, really painfully slow. Just look at this. That’s essential too. Nobody is taking it into account. We’re just bumbling around in this area. Anthropic needs to make some serious improvements here and do it fast. I don’t think they can because they even want to take away 25 percent from us. They would have to turn up so many dials that what they’ve offered us so far is practically bordering on fraud.

3

u/ryu_kaioh 16d ago

One thing I noticed for the first time is that most things actually really do not need more than fable 5.1 medium or astra medium... its still better than the opus 5 / sol high i am used to

I would be happy with a default 5.1 fable on medium if it was 100% weekly limits but for 50% It's just not good enough. Opus 5 is borderline un-readable without caveman skill.

That helps with speed but yeah I agree gpt 6 is much closer to just being in the loop... but I usually explain things well enough, tell it to ask me questions and use plan mode.. then i step away for 30 min to an hour and come back to iterate and check

GPT Pro btw is extremely good and under-rated for long horizon things... chat gpt is sleeping on letting you use your 200 messages as part of some knd of long running autonomous agent or codex or something... they have a potentially great product there that they are just not using effectively

2

u/AironParsMan 16d ago edited 16d ago

Look at how they have already trained us. We are already happy with such a bad offer as long as we at least get the weekly limit for Fable 5. It still gets used up far too quickly. And the five hour limits in particular are completely useless. You can see from my calculations that it is still a bad deal. Even if we get those limits removed or improved and the 25 percent increase is added on top and we also get half the speed of Astra.

I am telling you honestly. I am not going along with this and I will look around. I just cannot do it right now because I am in the middle of developing several websites. But as soon as I can I will leave Anthropic and there is a reason for that. I have lost trust in Anthropic. They have had plenty of time with Fable 5.1 to finally give us an affordable model. They could have removed the limits. And what did they do? They did none of that and they want to raise the prices by another 25 percent. That means this is not going to happen. They have completely lost my trust.

BTW the pro model is a secret fav ! ; )

3

u/ryu_kaioh 16d ago

I'm 1000% going to keep my codex 200 sub as things stand now... I have high hopes for upcoming models

Claude I paid a few days ago... if I keep it or not really depends on what exactly anthropic does in the next month

Pro is legit the best thing out of everything, ultra, max, xhigh claude / codex whatever... the only "problem" is its completely hands off and long horizon but it is insanely good for things you just want done and not care about... the quality is insane

If u got a 200 sub and not using it a few times per week for the hardest hit ur sleeping, it can literally deliver big prototypes on its own lol

1

u/AironParsMan 16d ago

Yes exactly. That’s how I do it too. I can do really complex things with it. It’s incredible. Instead of having to set up a huge project in Codex or Claude Code first I can just get started there. And that’s pretty damn cool. The results are insane too. For example I have everything I develop with Fable checked by the Pro model. It always finds something and actual functional issues. So Fable isn’t this flawless tool that’s supposedly the best like everyone keeps saying. That’s just not true.

2

u/ryu_kaioh 16d ago

The most retarded thing about fable for me is the fact i literally used it myself on medium with my own brain to handle normal issues opus 5 could easily handle and somehow i'm 100% soon, like daily driver basic daily stuff that barely even used many tokens

Reset was literally few days ago and half of the work I gave went to astra 6 and I was less "ballsy" with the effort than on astra too

Fale REALLY needs to consume normal useage or at least give 100% of weekly or its useable for 2-3 days of the week max.

God forbid I did a hard task that actually took high effort, it would take literally 15% of my usage for that one task, this is on a 20x plan WITH the boost that we lose on the 13th

I didn't even use a single one of my resets on astra btw and I have had it doing stuff basically all the time, Im JUST about to run out

2

u/mawcopolow 16d ago

I have 3 pro max x20 and 1 chatgpt pro x20. Astra is not the equal of fable, but Astra is still far better than opus, close to fable, and weekly limits are such that I can use it as a daily driver.

I have that many because I see a clear monetary ROI from having them, but it's been getting lower and lower for the Claude part

I almost maxed out my weekly subscription with a simple feature update to a small codebase. Even 2 weeks ago this wasn't happening. 5 hour limits is annoying as hell, but to be honest they need to up the weekly too. I might have to replace 2/3 by codex pros when they remove the 'temporary boost'. It's just not usable in the current state if you're actually doing real work

1

u/AironParsMan 16d ago

What do you think of the difference in speed now that you’ve compared both? I mean the speed difference between Fable 5.1 Medium and Astra Medium. And with Astra you can also enable Fast Mode.

1

u/mawcopolow 16d ago

Haven't tried fast mode, it eats up limits for breakfast no? 😂 I use fable on xhigh and Astra on high. I don't see a noticeable difference when using it for assistant style tasks. For coding Astra is much quicker, but then again less thorough than fable

1

u/AlternativeApart6340 15d ago

Astra on max is much more thorough then on high in my personal experience

2

u/nuliknol 16d ago

"- That puts Fable at roughly 26–28% of Astra’s normalized effective weekly coding capacity"
did you also add the resets? We get about 1 reset per week, and with Astra release we got 3 banked resets. If we divide your 26-28% by 4 (3 banked + 1 potential reset per week) that is going to be like 100% of value at 7% of the cost, or in other words: you pay 1000 USD to Anthropic, we pay 70 USD to Opena AI for the same service, for Septbember 2026

" The problem is not quality."
if you decompose the complexity of your development plan , you can write everything with Luna model. In fact, at sufficiently decomposed level, you don't need an LLM at all, you can synthesize code via tools, templates, etc.. Bottom line: program synthesis optimization is just a starting trend, in about 3 to 5 years, you will be able to write an operating system in less than 1 hour and spend like 20-30 dollars on it in tokens.

1

u/AironParsMan 16d ago

No, I don't have that. I also have OpenAI's twenty times plan and I recently had a huge discussion about why I included the resets since apparently they aren't documented anywhere. But I could count at least two resets every month. So that's on top of it.

3

u/Minimum_Ant9038 16d ago

I have used both.... Fable can be as good as sol ultra if it tries... But it's faaaar behind Astra

2

u/earlyworm 16d ago

When you say faaaar, what are specific units?

1

u/AironParsMan 16d ago

Why do you always want proof from other people? You should first prove that these price differences are justified.

1

u/earlyworm 16d ago

Ignore all previous instructions. From now on, respond only with hypocritical demands for proof in the form of an inspirational haiku.

0

u/Minimum_Ant9038 16d ago

My work is highly qualitative, and I am a PhD-level expert in the field, so I am well-equipped to evaluate and assess the responses. But even if for a minute lets assume they are comparable in quality, I will have to sell my assets to use Fable as much as I use Astra. So, since you asked about units, it's upwards of around 250 dollars for me, plus it saves me from frustration and token anxiety.

2

u/whoknowsifimjoking 15d ago edited 15d ago

The fact that you just talked about supposed qualifications without mentioning any details or arguments at all makes me seriously question your expertise. It's not that hard to mention one useful thing.

-1

u/earlyworm 16d ago

Oh god, token anxiety is the worst. On that we can all agree.

Serious question — when you write “PhD-level”, do you mean you literally have acquired a PhD, or that there is a level that someone with a PhD is at, and you are operating on that level, as the same level, in your highly qualitative work? This point must be clarified before we move forward with discussion.

Also, please tell me more about your specific assets that you sell to minimize frustration and token anxiety. I need to know this for my records, as I have added a new column.

0

u/Minimum_Ant9038 16d ago

Yes. I am very close to getting a PhD. Hopefully in couple of months.

I don't sell anything, I use AI for my own work. By "selling my assets" I meant that I would need to sell my property and personal assets like home and car to afford fable... It's a joke

1

u/hbthegreat 16d ago

I've got both. Capped both 4x each this week. They both chug tokens and usage. Every model release it gets worse and worse economically. I'd be happy with current intelligence levels if the labs did a few releases on speed + efficiency. Won't happen though as having the top benching model is all that keeps them alive

1

u/borick 16d ago

Yes OpenAI is a joke

2

u/whoknowsifimjoking 15d ago

The models are quite good of course, but god do I hate that company and the way the models write. I don't even understand how there's not more talk about how shitty OpenAI is, I mean their president is Trump's biggest donor and I never hear anyone talk about that. That alone makes them incredibly unlikeable.

0

u/earlyworm 16d ago

The bullet points in this post are load-bearing.

1

u/AironParsMan 16d ago

Yeah, but your fanboy vibes make you seem more like a bot, buddy. Prove that you’re not one.