If you pay for Claude's most expensive personal plan, your five-hour usage limit has gone away, as long as Anthropic has verified your account. Anthropic has renamed Max 20x to Ultra and Max 5x to plain Max. Prices stay at $200 and $100 a month, and Anthropic's help center says existing Max 20x subscribers move to Ultra automatically with no price change. Coverage of Anthropic's announcement dates the change to 30 October 2026.
What each plan includes now
Anthropic's pricing page lays out four personal plans. Here is the short version:
- Free costs nothing and has limited usage.
- Pro costs $20 a month billed monthly, and is the baseline the other plans are measured against.
- Max costs $100 a month and gives 5x Pro usage every five hours and every week, plus $100 a month in Claude API credits.
- Ultra costs $200 a month and gives 10x Pro usage every week, with no five-hour limit for verified accounts and $200 a month in API credits.
Max keeps its five-hour limit, so the headline change only applies to Ultra. Anthropic's help center says Ultra is currently sold as a monthly subscription only.
The catch is verification
The five-hour limit only disappears once your account is verified. According to Anthropic's Ultra help article, verification happens automatically, based on factors like your account and payment history. Newer accounts keep a temporary limit until they are verified, and Anthropic removes it on its own, so there is nothing to apply for. The same article notes that verifying your phone number at checkout is a separate step and does not remove the limit.
You can check your status yourself. Open Settings, then Usage. If you no longer see a Current session bar, your account is verified and the five-hour limit no longer applies to you.
Weekly limits have not gone anywhere
This is the detail that matters most for heavy users. Ultra still has a weekly usage limit that covers all models, plus a separate weekly limit for Fable. So the change lets you work through a long afternoon without hitting a wall, but it does not mean unlimited use across the whole week. On Max, Fable is included up to half of your weekly limit, and both the five-hour and weekly limits apply.
Some coverage has pointed out that the old name promised 20x Pro usage while the pricing page now lists 10x Pro per week for Ultra. Anthropic has not published a before and after comparison of the weekly figure, so treat claims that the weekly allowance shrank as unconfirmed.
The API credits stay at $200
Ultra includes $200 a month in Claude API credits. That is the same amount Max 20x has included since 7 October, so nothing changes here for existing subscribers, and it is twice the $100 that Max includes. If you have been meaning to build a small internal tool or a side project on the Claude Platform, that allowance covers a fair amount of experimenting before you pay anything extra.
Which plan fits you
The honest answer depends on how often you hit a limit today, so it is worth measuring before you pay more.
- Stay on Pro if you hit a limit once a week or less.
- Move to Max if you hit the five-hour wall on Pro a few times a week.
- Move to Ultra if you hit the five-hour wall on Max most days and work in long, deep sessions, such as coding, research or document review.
Our honest view is that Ultra makes the most sense for people whose flow kept breaking at the five-hour mark. For everyone else, the weekly limits mean Pro or Max is still the better value.
What to do this week
For one week, write down every time Claude tells you a limit has been reached, and note which plan you were on and what you were doing. If you are on Ultra, check Settings and Usage to confirm you are verified. Then decide whether to move up, move down or stay put based on the real numbers.
If you are still working out which Claude model to use for which job, the Claude page in Learn covers the basics, and our earlier guide on which Claude model to pick explains the trade-offs.