Anthropic has renamed its two expensive consumer plans. Max 5x becomes Claude Max, Max 20x becomes Claude Ultra. Prices are unchanged: Max still costs $100 a month, Ultra $200. Existing subscribers do not have to do anything.
The part that matters sits in the second line of the announcement: verified Ultra accounts no longer have a 5-hour limit. The change starts now and reaches most existing subscribers first, while newer accounts keep the window for the time being. The pricing page already lists it as an Ultra feature, with a footnote: no 5-hour limit for verified accounts.
What is left of the limits
The weekly limit stays. Ultra keeps its 10x Pro usage per week, Max keeps 5x per week and 5x per five hours on top. The rolling five-hour window was the ceiling that lands mid-session during long stretches of Claude Code or Cowork work; a weekly budget is something you can plan around.
The rest of the differences are unchanged on the pricing page: Fable up to half your weekly limit on Max and Ultra, $100 a month in API credits on Max against $200 on Ultra, early access to new features, and priority when traffic is heavy.
Why the old names did not work
“Max 5x” and “Max 20x” were arithmetic, not product names. They described a multiple of the Pro plan, and the number stood for two different things at once — the five-hour window and the week. Anyone trying to work out what $200 actually bought had to read footnotes. Max and Ultra say nothing precise, but they do say which one is bigger, and at the point of purchase that matters more.
The rename also puts the consumer tiers in the same shape as everything else: Free, Pro, Max, Ultra. The old ladder jumped from a word to a formula.
The price holds while the promise grows
Anthropic is giving away usage here without touching the price. That is an odd move for a company that has just filed its S-1 with the SEC and needs revenue per subscriber to look healthy. The verification requirement is what makes it add up: an account with no ceiling is attractive to resellers and automation, and the check exists to keep exactly those out. Restricting the offer to verified accounts is not a detail, it is the condition that makes the offer affordable at all.