At 1:29 p.m. ET on October 30, the official Claude account posted an announcement on X announcing a renaming of its subscription tiers: “Max 5x becomes Max, Max 20x becomes Ultra.” Subscription fees are unchanged: Max is still $100 per month, and Ultra is still $200 per month—no price change, no change in benefits. But the next two paragraphs contain the substance of the announcement: Anthropic followed OpenAI’s announcement from the day before and also removed the 5-hour usage limit on the Ultra plan that many developers absolutely hated.
Beyond the name change, the 5-hour limit simply disappears.
The full wording of the official announcement is: it is removing the 5-hour limit for “verified Ultra accounts,” effective for most existing subscribers starting that day; newer accounts will retain a temporary limit until verification is completed. Anthropic says this is to prevent fraud and abuse, and will send an email notification once the limit is lifted. The weekly limit remains unchanged.
We’re renaming our Max plans: Max 5x → Max Max 20x → Ultra Max is still $100/month, and Ultra is still $200. If you’re a subscriber, there’s nothing you need to do. We’re also removing the 5-hour limit for verified Ultra accounts, starting today with most existing subscribers. Newer accounts keep a temporary limit until they’re verified, which helps us prevent fraud and abuse. You’ll get an email when it’s removed. Weekly limits remain unchanged. View our plans here: https://t.co/niRpyGF5Me
— Claude (@claudeai) October 30, 2026
To check whether your account has completed verification, the method is straightforward: open the Usage page in Settings. If the “Current session” bar does not appear, that means you are verified. The official explanation page specifically points out an easily confused point: “Verifying your phone number at checkout is a separate step and will not lift this restriction.” Verification is performed automatically by Anthropic based on the account and payment history; users do not submit a request, nor can they speed it up. What did this restriction originally block? Claude Code users often hit the 5-hour limit halfway through debugging or a large refactor, and even if they still have quota left for the week, they must stop and wait for the reset. After it is removed, heavy users can work continuously all day without being forced to interrupt at midday.
But the weekly total hasn’t increased at all. The official Ultra explanation page states clearly: “The Ultra plan includes 10 times the usage of the Pro plan per week. The Ultra plan has a weekly usage cap that applies across all models, and Fable has a separate dedicated weekly cap.” In other words, it’s feasible to cram two days’ usage into one day, then wait for the weekly reset.
The three characters “20x” originally referred to something else.
Why rename it? Mike Overell, Head of Claude Subscription Products Explainthe ins and outs. When the top-tier plan launched in April 2025, it had only a 5-hour limit, set at 20x Pro, hence the name Max 20x; the weekly cap was added later and actually works out to about 10x Pro. The number in the name never corresponded to the weekly quota.
After the 5-hour limit was removed, “20x” no longer had anything to refer to, so it was changed to Ultra. At the same time, Max 5x also dropped the multiplier and was simplified to Max. The official Help Center mapping states: “The original Max 20x plan is now called Ultra; existing Max 20x subscribers are automatically transitioned at the same price. Ultra includes 10 times the usage of the Pro plan per week and has no 5-hour limit for verified accounts.”
The new structure of the official pricing page
After the rename, the plan tiers became four levels: Free, Pro, Max, and Ultra. On the official pricing page, Max is described as “5x Pro usage every 5 hours and every week,” while Ultra is described as “no 5-hour limit” and “10x Pro usage per week,” with a note that it is “verified accounts only.” Both include Claude Platform API credits equal to the monthly fee: $100 for Max and $200 for Ultra, which the official page labels as a new addition.
Ultra only offers a monthly subscription; the $200 price applies to web subscriptions, while in-app prices vary by platform. The Max plan page states “5x the usage of Pro every 5 hours and every week,” and also includes “priority access to new models and features.”
If you divide the price by the weekly multiplier, you’ll find an interesting result. Calculating it yourself based on the official pricing page, Pro at $20 per month corresponds to 1x, Max at $100 per month corresponds to 5x, and Ultra at $200 per month corresponds to 10x; the cost per “one week of Pro usage” is $20 for all three plans. In other words, the extra $100 that Ultra costs over Max buys double the weekly usage, removal of the 5-hour limit, and an additional $100 in API credits—not a cheaper week of usage.
another one the next day
The timing is no coincidence. On October 29, OpenAI had just announced doubling usage for all Pro plans and eliminating the Pro 200 quota reduction; the next day, October 30, Anthropic changed its name and removed the 5-hour limit. The two companies went in different directions, yet they picked the same spot. What OpenAI added was weekly and shared quotas; what Anthropic removed was the length of a single continuous session. Neither side relaxed its weekly cap. In other words, what was extended was short-term burst capacity; cumulative usage is still capped exactly as before. (Tibo also threw some shade under that announcement XD)
There are still a few things left unexplained.
First, the company said that “most existing subscribers” would take effect that day, but it did not disclose the proportion that had completed verification, nor did it say how long new accounts would have to wait. Second is the fallback of capacity limits. The official explanation page retains considerable discretion: “To manage capacity and ensure fair access for all users, we may limit your usage in other ways, such as weekly and monthly caps, or usage limits on specific models and features. We do not guarantee uninterrupted service.” The company also opened another page stating, “We do not guarantee unlimited use on the Ultra plan.” Third is the interpretation within the ecosystem: some online commenters asked, “Is there going to be a Mega tier next?” (comparable to OpenAI’s Pro 500), and it feels quite likely.
Source: KOCPC Chinese