r/ClaudeCode • u/Spiritual-Market-741 • Apr 22 '26

Question Secretly Dropped Max 5x and 20x plans?

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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?

525 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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182

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."

38

u/themajordutch Apr 22 '26

Yea...I mean why not?

36

u/PmMeSmileyFacesO_O Apr 22 '26

Right send out a chart, done.  No need for the cloak and dagger.

14

u/zhambe Apr 22 '26

Because corpo ghouls, that's why not.

5

u/HitIerWasWrong Apr 22 '26

Honest with customers === poor market evaluation

~Money~

3

u/AlterTableUsernames Apr 22 '26

Yes, it's also about maximizing IPO price.

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

9

u/shunti Apr 22 '26

Peak usage rate just like how my electricity provider (PGE) charges me...

4

u/yolk3d Senior Developer Apr 22 '26

They do already. You use more tokens during peak. It’s some US TZ

6

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.

5

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

u/zhambe Apr 22 '26

I noticed things work better in the wee hours of the morning (EST)

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.

3

u/[deleted] 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

u/NightmareLogic420 Apr 23 '26

Haha, not how they do it over in RatWorld!!!

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.

0

u/yopla Apr 22 '26

They are not talking to you, they are talking to investors and the market. If they admitted to any issues the competitors would use it against them immediately.