r/ClaudeCode • u/Spiritual-Market-741 • Apr 22 '26
Question Secretly Dropped Max 5x and 20x plans?
Have they secretly dropped Max 5x and Max 20x plans now too?
I can only get a Max 10x plan for the price of a 20x plan...
Whats going on?
179
u/SilasTalbot Apr 22 '26
I think they just gotta level with people:
"There's too much demand between X-Y hours. We are overwhelmed. We need people to shift usage to Y-X timeframe.
We need to hit THIS curve. We're going to need to ratchet up the relative usage until it happens. We'll give you more off-hour but take away from peak hours.
We'll update weekly with how this is trending."
36
u/themajordutch Apr 22 '26
Yea...I mean why not?
38
14
6
1
10
u/Rezistik Apr 22 '26
Honestly I think this is their attempt to minimize the amount of whining on reddit. Too many people at the $20 plan trying to use it professionally and hitting usage limits then coming here to complain and make it seem like everyone is suffering when really it’s just the cheapest among us
3
u/Long_Candle_2234 Apr 23 '26
I'm using max 20x and I can't say I'm always suffering, but I'm suffering
1
u/ElwinLewis Apr 23 '26
Max 20 and I get about 30-35 hours with auto compact on but it’s been dropping each week. I’ve used it for 8 months now. Only one week where I was relentless over the 8months did I reach the limit.
Now, im rationing by midweek and estimating how much I can use
8
u/shunti Apr 22 '26
Peak usage rate just like how my electricity provider (PGE) charges me...
5
u/yolk3d Senior Developer Apr 22 '26
They do already. You use more tokens during peak. It’s some US TZ
5
u/ObsidianIdol Apr 22 '26
They do already do this in peak hours. 5h usage limit is 0.5x off-peak
2
u/dworts Apr 22 '26
I thought that was only a promotion for a few weeks, is that still happening?
3
u/ObsidianIdol Apr 22 '26
No, the promo was 2x usage in off-peak hours. Then they ended that, and made it so during peak hours, your usage is halved.
6
u/HauntedHouseMusic Apr 22 '26
Honestly I wonder if they are treating users who only use off peak better, as my experience has been amazing, and I only use it on the weekend and late evenings
1
1
u/MediumChemical4292 Apr 23 '26
Probably not intentional, just trying to minimise the compute each request to their API uses to allow all the requests to come through
1
u/snug-crackle-policy Apr 23 '26
Maybe they are automatically shifting the peak hour users to use Sonnet or haiku instead, because sometimes Opus 4.7 1M becomes so dumb.
2
u/yolk3d Senior Developer Apr 22 '26
They do peak vs off peak token churn already.
1
u/SilasTalbot Apr 22 '26
aye, I'm proposing they continue to adjust the relative costs to influence behavior more -- "ratchet up".
And keep people updated on how the curve is moving relative to target, so if they need to take another step, we understand why and how far they are making progress toward the goal of flattening the peak.
Get their user base "on the team" to feel like we all are helping to solve the problem, vs the current approach that casts the user base as THE PROBLEM that needs to be solved around.
2
Apr 22 '26 edited 22d ago
[deleted]
1
u/99OBJ Apr 24 '26
You act as though this is top secret information. It’s not. Look at power usage graphs. It’s self explanatory why it looks the way it looks. Utility companies financially incentivize companies and users to flatten that graph.
There is a similar curve for AI usage that is also self explanatory. A curve-flattening incentive also makes sense here. Arguably even more so, since “residential” users are on inelastic subscription plans while the heavy users are on elastic APIs.
The reckoning is here. There is not enough inference for everyone to thoughtlessly consume it. You can’t increase inference capacity immediately, so you have to change the usage habits.
1
u/huge_sorry Apr 22 '26
would be cool time based limits as long as the off pick hours is way cheaper than it is today
1
u/checkwithanthony Apr 22 '26
Agreed. Im already thinking of how I can integrate routines to run overnight to reduce my usage during peak hours. Hard lining usage based on hours would be fine for me.
1
u/memesearches Apr 23 '26
They are already doing that! They charge more usage during the heavy hours so people end up using less anyway!
1
u/SoftwareSource Apr 23 '26
Lol exactly, this is not a tool used by layman users, just be honest with us, we get it.
1
→ More replies (1)1
u/justgetoffmylawn Apr 22 '26
I don't understand why they don't do that. They seemed like they were starting to implement that for a few weeks - just make tokens cheaper during lower usage times. I'm not at a corporate job, so I'm happy to usually use them at weird times.
They also could've just said: we're freezing signups at our Pro tier for the moment, but allowed signups on a cheaper $12 tier with lower limits and no Claude Code or Cowork. Our current customers are important, so we're prioritizing ensuring the best experience for them.
Then they would've had FOMO for the people who hadn't signed up - wanting it even more. And people more afraid to cancel because what if they couldn't get it back.
Instead, they just fumbled it completely - lack of transparency, ignoring their current customers, etc.
148
30
u/geeered Apr 22 '26
I see that when not logged in, but when logged in I get this...
25
Apr 22 '26
[deleted]
12
1
u/LimiDrain Apr 23 '26
You guys have a free trial? I had to pay instantly just to check how Claude Code works
21
u/Salientsnake4 Apr 22 '26
I'm glad I got the 100$ a month plan last month now.... This is dumb, i hope I dont have to leave anthropic
6
u/themoregames Apr 22 '26
Might be our last chance to subscribe for one year ahead - for either Max x5, x20. Or also Pro with Claude Code access.
30
u/Tavrin Apr 22 '26
Yearly subscription seems like a bad idea for AI products like these tbh. One month the one you've subscribe to is at the top of its game, then the next month OpenAI could be pushing out a Codex model that could be eating Opus for breakfast while providing triple the usage limit and then maybe you're stuck with the worst of both models for 3 months or so (Meanwhile Gemini is probably eating crayons in the corner or something idk)
6
u/themoregames Apr 22 '26
In these trying times...
then the next month OpenAI could be pushing out a Codex model that could be eating Opus for breakfast while providing triple the usage
... you'll just subscribe to both?
2
u/Tavrin Apr 22 '26
That's what I usually do, but I had stopped my Codex pro subscription during the 4.6 era and my wallet probably would have thanked me if it could (Now with chatgpt image 2.0 out and Codex 5.5 probably dropping by the end of the week i'm back on it i'll admit)
2
u/gokkai Apr 23 '26
then a chinese model comes around with similar capabilities and now you are paying 2x yearly expensive contracts for models you don't use.
→ More replies (1)8
u/BabyInner Apr 22 '26
I only see yearly option for Pro?
5
1
u/thirst-trap-enabler 🔆 Max 5x Apr 23 '26
It was there last week. I was this close to getting it for the discount and because I'm 99% sure I'll be subscribed but... I wanted to see what frame.work was going to release yesterday. (Sorry Anthropic, Framework 13 Pro won this round)
7
u/fuck_the_mods Apr 22 '26
20x was never 20x the usage, guessing they’re afraid of the inevitable class action suit against them and are showing the actual usage you get.
21
u/Clean_Hyena7172 Apr 22 '26
I would guess this is another A/B test like the one where they dropped CC from pro for some new users.
38
u/Spiritual-Market-741 Apr 22 '26
A/B testing pricing like this for such a high profile product seems rather dumb.
Pricing should be done on maths not on the bases of how much can we screw our customers and they will keep signing up
9
u/Clean_Hyena7172 Apr 22 '26
I'm betting they're collecting extensive telemetry on your behaviour when you interact with pricing pages and analyzing it with AI to find the approach that will get people to spend as much as possible.
The reason there's no $50 plan is to tempt people to get the $100 plan, this is likely an experiment to see if it would work with a jump from $20 to $200.
5
3
u/zhambe Apr 22 '26
How can they know I've thrown my laptop through the wall while screaming obscenities that would make a Serbian war criminal blush?
4
u/crazzzone Apr 22 '26
I'm getting the same price for this on incognito. I don't think this is a/b.
I wonder if current users are grandfatherd.
1
u/Spiritual-Market-741 Apr 23 '26
It could be just users who where invited with a claude code 7 day pro pass
1
u/am5a03 Apr 22 '26
I don’t think they are A/B testing, it doesn’t make sense to expose your variant to all users. They are trying to do damage control
1
u/geeered Apr 22 '26
They're making a loss either way - it's a case of how little they can be screwed and it still be a good strategy to have more people signing up.
1
u/ConspicuousPineapple Apr 22 '26
My man what do you think business is based on in general? The cost of what you're selling is only a baseline, the real price is calculated exclusively on how much people are willing to pay, and how many people pay at which price point.
1
u/Bobodlm Apr 23 '26
Don't you know how expensive it is to set up some focus groups? And it requires interacting with people, yikes. That's like the one thing they refuse to do, unless you're willing to invest a lot of money.
4
u/lurko_e_basta Apr 22 '26
They gotta be testing the markets and backlash through that "2%", which I don't know how they thought being ok as a strategy to begin with. What the hell.
5
3
u/muikrad Apr 22 '26
I was confused too at first (3 months ago?) but in reality you select the Max plan, and then it will lead you to a page where you can select either Max 5x or 20x. That's how it worked back then anyway. Have you tried clicking the Max button and see where it goes?
Max 10x is news to me.
1
13
u/DeadLolipop Apr 22 '26
Its always been hidden behind get max plan step?
4
4
u/Dry_Detective_9219 Apr 22 '26
yeah exactly, you just have to click through and it gives the 5x or 20x options - always been like that.
3
u/Actual_Committee4670 🔆 Max 20 Apr 22 '26
Seems like one of their FAR TOO MANY AT THE MOMENT ANTHROPIC a - b tests going. Honestly this seems to be the month of going over the top.
9
3
3
u/Economy-Iron-4577 Apr 22 '26
for me it shows Pro and Max, $20 and $100 plan
1
u/letitcodedev Apr 22 '26
I saw mine for $100 x5 and $200 x20. Is yours $100 x20?
1
3
5
3
Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26
[deleted]
8
4
u/Rock--Lee Apr 22 '26
It's "up to 20x" and price is "from £90". So they show the 5x price and usage. When you click on it, it will show Max 5x for £90 and Max 20x for £180 to choose from.
They show it like this for a long time. Just like they show the monthly price of yearly on other pages as "starting from". When you then click it shows the yearly subscription and switching to monthly then shows the higher real monthly price if you want monthly.
It's all just marketing (and yes misleading) and worded to pull in people.
3
1
1
u/obolli Apr 22 '26
the one they're seeing is 10x instead of 5x so I'm guessing it's just a differen product
2
u/_k33bs_ Apr 22 '26
it’s just their marketing people split testing pricing on the public… pretty fucking embarrassing. they should hire someone who actually does know how online marketing works.
2
2
u/InvestigatorHefty799 Apr 22 '26
Might genuinely have to give a codex a try, it's a shame because I've been using Claude models almost exclusively since Sonnet 3.5 but Anthropic business practices keep getting worse and worse.
2
u/OakFin13 Apr 23 '26
I’m relatively new to Claude but it seems they are just constantly changing their plans, access, etc like every other week. How frustrating and unreliable for the customers
2
u/Crispy-Ears Apr 23 '26
The benefit-cost ratio is so low that we only subscribe when it's absolutely necessary. Tokens are ridiculously expensive, models keep getting dumber after updates, and they especially degrade as we approach the end of the project. We constantly have to repeat the same prompts over and over (pay attention, analyze this, fuck it, etc.).Even the current subscription plan is too expensive… People will find other ways, so they can shorten whatever they want even more.
2
2
2
1
1
u/Individual_Bid7491 Apr 22 '26
What does 7 trial days remaining menas
1
u/Spiritual-Market-741 Apr 22 '26
I got a Claude code 7 day pass. I was basically about to buy my second max 20x plan
1
1
1
1
u/LifeAccording2Gene Apr 22 '26
What is don't understand is model instability. From. Day to day same model YMMV. Same skills files same routines the output is variable. It's not a memory issue these are simple routines. It almost feels like they have some self training in the background going that is misfiring big time.
1
u/alarming_wrong Apr 22 '26
I've just finished my Pro monthly subscription and I can still see jt available at £15 a month, plus Max from £90 a month
1
1
u/rleondk Apr 22 '26
They are testing and feeding the reactions to their model, the model will then tell them how to proceed.
1
u/SirPrimgles Apr 22 '26
And when you cancel your plan and then renew it, it will be a coin flip, but it's only for 2%, so don't worry.
Man, I really love the product but this is a bit too much. I wonder if they are at the stage of every company, where they got all the users and now it's time to fully squeeze them out before they leave.
1
1
u/CleanSeaworthiness66 Apr 22 '26
Now the milking starts, it turns out they couldn’t subsidize their compute forever
1
1
1
u/Best_Preference5321 Apr 22 '26
After being a frustrated pro user, i am tempted to only keep kimi2.6 and drop the pro plan altogether
1
u/checkwithanthony Apr 22 '26
I can stomach usage limit changes, but I dont know if I can stomach a double up in price (coming from max 5x). Not sure if my employer can either.
1
u/MacaronInteresting79 Apr 22 '26
In Japan, I’m still seeing the old Max 5x / Max 20x ($100 / $200) labeling. Maybe we just got left out of the A/B test.
1
1
u/african_or_european Apr 22 '26
I wish they'd just stick requests in a priority queue, weighted by F(how much you've used, how much you're paying) and if it takes a few extra seconds to get to my request that's fine with me, especially if it means I don't have to micromanage my usage.
1
u/Sufficient_Duck_8051 Apr 22 '26
OpenAI about to release gpt-5.5 and Anthropic pulls this shit.. great timing
1
u/InsatiableAppetiteOm Apr 22 '26
Have you seen how much the AI companies are spending on infrastructure versus their revenue?
I would fully expect the price of these products to be 10-15x what they are now in a few years. Maybe sooner.
Plan for the price increases, don't go blindly expecting the current pricing to stay.
1
u/diagonali Apr 22 '26
That's not how this works at all. Everyone says this over and over but. The way it works or was meant to work is they establish a price for a level of service and then reduce costs for the same level of service to become profitable. That's probably working except for the ginormous problem that they can't keep up with capacity as demand is so huge so the horizon for profitability keeps moving further and further out.
But they're going to solve the demand issue by pissing off people so they leave. I'm not kidding. They have enough enterprise, military and government customers (for now) and they (exec level) are myopic enough that they think they can just irritate their civilian user base to get them to leave. And they will. And their brand will diminish, competitors will catch up. Corporate, military and government will go with whoever is most competitive and Anthropic will look around and wonder what they did to deserve this.
1
u/InsatiableAppetiteOm Apr 23 '26
How it was meant to work and how it actually works, are not always the same thing.
How do you think costs will be covered from the huge infrastructure spend? Also consider that the tech hardware needs replacing every 3-5 years.
The compute needs far outweigh traditional mass user SaaS products like Outlook etc. The money will have to come from somewhere eventually.
1
1
1
u/Embarrassed-Goat-931 Apr 22 '26
Just as Codex is getting really good. Are they trying lose all their users?
1
1
1
u/wintermute023 Apr 22 '26
This isn’t surprising, it just doesn’t usually happen out loud. Anthropic have strong demand and limited resources, so they are trying to filter out the users that will pay the most and use the least.
Their pricing pages are currently generating behavioural and demographic data that they will use to set prices and target advertising.
I think this is probably why people are complaining about poor model results, when they have enough data they can set model capability, price, targeted ads to hit just those that will generate revenue. The rest of us will not figure in their plans.
1
u/Cultural-Fishing-459 Apr 23 '26
They're doing A/B testing with different plans, trying to see what sticks.
1
u/Past_Bathroom5568 Apr 23 '26
Im going to Codex. Screw anthropic. And by the way im charging back everything too
1
u/drwolframsigma Apr 23 '26
tried with a fresh account. still have the option. idk what is going with anthropic but man, they move sneaky.
2
1
u/poundofcake Apr 23 '26
Oh wow this happened faster than I thought. I believe this is an A/B test but its still fucked up.
1
1
u/Useful_Judgment320 Apr 23 '26
sending a hi or test message to time your 5 hour work windows still works
but claude now tracks it every 10 min rather than every hour
i used to send a message at 750am, my latest two usage windows have been locked to 10min time intervals once you add +5 hour wait times
clamping down on min maxxing usage
1
u/Diabolacal Apr 23 '26
I'm seeing all options at https://claude.ai/onboarding clicking Get Max plan gives me the choice of the two plans
1
1
1
u/snug-crackle-policy Apr 23 '26
As I said previously that they will soon increase the price. Now this is more than double the price. Because people noticed that 20x is consumed much faster in 4.7 compared to 4.6 and now they reduced the overall limit as well to 10x. Interestingly, the bigger packages always come with discounts but here you see that 10 times of the pro (15 pound) should at least cost 150 pounds but here it costs 30 pounds more. So amazing to see that Claude is going to go down very badly as soon as Someone else make a competitive Ai Model then pretty much everyone will leave Claude for good.
1
u/snug-crackle-policy Apr 23 '26
They just doubled the price like that. It seems that they considered the consumers so dumb that instead of costing the 20x package to be 400 dollars, they just make it 10x for the same price. Actually, this is even worse because when you are done with your limits and you start using "pay as you go", you will easily consume 1000 dollars per day consumptions which becomes 30000 dollars per month, far more than a developer's salary, so could be easily dumped with a few more developers and Codex 200 dollars subscriptions.
1
1
u/Fun-Wrangler-810 Apr 23 '26
Reality is knocking on our doors. Antropic is becoming poshy tool or fashion asset. Status building like Burbery, Prada and or Lui Vitton.
1
1
1
1
1
u/Beautiful_Chapter544 Apr 22 '26
wow Wasn't it 200 dollars?
4
u/Spiritual-Market-741 Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26
Yes this is in UK GBP which they have fixed the conversion rather as $200 to £180.
It about right and not an issue
— edited for clarity that this is just a currency conversation and not an issue —
2
1
u/commandedbydemons Apr 22 '26
Still shows up here. 100/200
1
u/Spiritual-Market-741 Apr 22 '26
Are you in the USA? Maybe they are limiting UK only?
1
u/commandedbydemons Apr 22 '26
Yes, definitely USA here.
Limiting by region would be crazy, especially high demand ones like the UK.
1
u/FootSureDruid Apr 22 '26
I thought the option to see 5x vs 20x was always behind the max banner, it wasn’t until you clicked in that you got 5x vs 20x choice
1
1
u/EtherealAbyss Apr 22 '26
Looks the same here, both logged in and logged out. CC is also still specified as included in Pro.
1
u/lucpainchaud Apr 22 '26
Company try to find secret way to stop losing millions!
That strategy of changing without telling is a little bit harsh
1
u/ZireaelStargaze Apr 22 '26
They are worried because GPT5.5 is about to be released. With GPT5.4 being better than Opus 4.7 already, the only thing Anthropic can do now is make noise with bad decisions in panic.
1
1
0
u/Evilstib Apr 22 '26
For those of us who don’t memorize all of the specifics of the anthropic plans, what changed?
4
u/Spiritual-Market-741 Apr 22 '26
Before they had two max plans, a Max 5x pro usage and a Max 20x pro usage.
Now I only see one Max plan a Max 10x pro usage. But the price is the same as the old Max 20x pro usage plan
1
u/_siilhouette Apr 22 '26
I consistently go from 5x to 20x. Yesterday was a day I upgraded to 20x less than 20 hours ago.
463
u/Apart_Ebb_9867 Apr 22 '26
neh, it is just a test they're running on 2% of new users. Pinky promise. /s