Claude’s $200 Plan Is Now Ultra, With No Five-Hour Limit
Anthropic renamed its Claude Max plans: the $100 plan is now Max and the $200 plan is now Ultra, which drops the five-hour limit for verified accounts. Weekly limits didn't change, and that's the part heavy users hit.
AI for Mortals Staff
Anthropic renamed its two Claude Max plans on October 30. The $100 Max 5x is now just Max, and the $200 Max 20x is now the Claude Ultra plan.
Prices stay the same, and subscribers don't need to do anything.
Ultra also drops the usage limit that resets every five hours. Most people already on the old Max 20x got that change on Friday, while the weekly limit stays exactly as it was.
What the Claude Max plan and Ultra plan include now
Here's what each paid plan above Pro gets, per Claude's pricing page:
- Max ($100 a month): 5 times Pro's usage every five hours and every week, Claude Fable 5.1, Anthropic's most capable model, for up to half your weekly limit, and $100 a month in API credits (useful if you build apps on Anthropic's developer platform).
- Ultra ($200 a month): no five-hour limit for verified accounts, 10 times Pro's usage every week, Fable for up to half your weekly limit, and $200 a month in API credits.
In Europe the two plans cost €90 and €180 a month. The $20 Pro plan doesn't change.
Who still has the Claude 5-hour limit
Claude usage limits come in two layers. Most accounts have a limit on a rolling five-hour window, and paid plans add weekly limits on top. Chats on the web, desktop and phone apps and work in Claude Code all draw from the same pool.
On Ultra, the five-hour layer is gone, but only for verified accounts. Anthropic verifies Ultra accounts automatically from your account and payment history, which it says helps stop fraud and abuse.
Newer Ultra accounts keep a temporary five-hour limit until that check clears, and they get an email when it's lifted. Verifying your phone number at checkout is a separate step and doesn't remove it.
To see where you stand, open Settings > Usage in Claude. If there's no Current session bar, your account is verified.
The $100 Max plan keeps its five-hour limit.
Why Ultra gives Max 20x users no extra weekly usage
The old Max 20x name pointed to 20 times Pro's usage. Claude's pricing page now lists Ultra at 10 times Pro's weekly usage, and Anthropic says weekly limits didn't change.
Put the two together and the old plan gave 20 times Pro's usage inside each five-hour window, but only 10 times Pro's usage across a week. So the 20x only ever applied to the five-hour limit, the one that's now gone. Anyone who was already running out of weekly usage on Max 20x gets no more of it on Ultra.
The weekly math between the two plans is simple: Max gives 5 times Pro and Ultra gives 10 times, so Ultra is twice Max's weekly usage for twice the price.
The weekly limit is the one that didn't move, and Ultra's is 10 times Pro's. For anyone whose usage ran out before the week did, the rename only puts the real weekly number on the label.
Who actually comes out ahead on Ultra
The people who gain are the ones who used to stall on the five-hour window in long sessions but rarely touched the weekly cap. Long Claude Code runs and agents left working for hours fit that pattern.
For multi-day agent projects, like the murder mystery game a team of Claude agents built for us, the weekly limit is the number to watch, and that one is unchanged.
Here's the video of that build:
A rename that lands a day after OpenAI added more room
A day earlier, OpenAI doubled Work and Codex usage for many of its ChatGPT Pro subscribers and called off a cut to its $200 plan.
Anthropic's move gives its top plan a clearer name and removes an interruption, but adds no weekly usage. In July, Fable 5 became a permanent part of Claude Max, and on Max and Ultra, Fable use still counts against a weekly limit of up to half your plan's weekly usage.
For people paying $200 a month who hit the weekly wall, Ultra changes the name and leaves their weekly usage where it was.
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