Claude Renames Max 20x to Ultra, Drops 5-Hour Cap for Verified Users
Max 5x is now Max and Max 20x is now Ultra, at $100 and $200 a month.
Verified Ultra accounts lose the rolling 5-hour cap, but weekly limits stay.
Anthropic has reshuffled Claude's top subscriptions again. On paper it's a rename, but the change users will actually feel is about limits. The $100-a-month Max 5x is now simply Max, and the $200-a-month Max 20x is now Ultra. Prices are unchanged and existing subscribers move over automatically. Claude Code lead Boris Cherny confirmed the change shortly after it went out.
The rename makes sense. Multiplier names like "5x" and "20x" read clearly to engineers but look like a spec sheet to everyone else. Max and Ultra borrow the same ladder Apple uses for its chips, and they're easier to sell. The more interesting part is Ultra's new perk: verified Ultra accounts no longer have the rolling five-hour session limit.
For heavy Claude Code users, the five-hour window has been the biggest pain. A big refactor or a long debugging session could hit the session cap halfway through, leaving developers waiting for a reset even with plenty of weekly usage left. Now Ultra users can keep going as long as their weekly allowance holds, which also makes long background tasks run more smoothly.
That isn't the same as unlimited. Ultra still has a weekly cap, listed on the pricing page as 10 times Pro's weekly usage, plus a separate weekly limit on the top model, Fable, which can take up to half the allowance. Web, desktop, mobile and Claude Code all draw from one pool, and once it's gone you can switch on usage credits billed at standard API rates. Without the five-hour brake, the weekly budget will simply burn faster. "No time limit" really means you set your own pace.
Verification has its own catch. To prevent fraud and abuse, Anthropic verifies Ultra accounts automatically based on account and payment history. You can't request it or speed it up, and confirming a phone number at checkout doesn't count. Until then a temporary session limit applies and is lifted automatically. To check, open Settings > Usage: if there's no "Current session" bar, you're verified.
It's a well-aimed move. Dropping the five-hour cap helps the developers who live in Claude Code all day, the audience Anthropic is fighting hardest over with OpenAI and Google. Automatic verification blocks account sharing and resale, and the weekly ceiling protects compute costs. Anthropic gets a strong "no time limit" pitch for its premium tier without actually opening the compute floodgates.
Both tiers also now include monthly API credits, $100 on Max and $200 on Ultra, to build on the Claude Platform. For teams that both code with Claude and call its API, the $200 tier just got better value.