Claude Plans Renamed: Ultra Has No 5-Hour Limit, but Verification Comes First

Anthropic has renamed Claude's two Max plans. Max 5x is now called Max, and Max 20x is now called Ultra. Prices are unchanged, still $100 and $200 per month. People who are already subscribed don't need to do anything; billing and benefits remain the same.

Along with the rename, Ultra has removed the 5-hour limit. The official statement says it takes effect today for most existing subscribers. New accounts will keep a temporary limit until they complete verification, to prevent fraud and abuse; an email will be sent when the limit is lifted.

Weekly limits are unchanged. Max still has 5x Pro's weekly usage, and Ultra has 10x. In other words, the 5-hour hurdle is gone, but the weekly total remains.

The 5-hour rolling window was originally designed around the pace of a person sitting in front of a screen chatting. Most web users may not hit that line over the course of a day. The ones truly blocked are continuous task-running scenarios: tools like Claude Code share the same usage pool as chat, and when a refactoring task runs for several hours and gets cut off midway, both context and rhythm have to start over. Removing this limit changes quota management from throttling by pace to accounting by total volume, which is more reasonable for this kind of usage.

But there is a qualifier before 'unlimited': verified accounts. This design is quite clever. It turns risk control into product tiering: ordinary users perceive that the limit has disappeared, while the platform gets identity confirmation. People hoping to farm credits through bulk registrations get stuck at the verification step.

There is another change not mentioned in the tweet: the pricing page says Max includes $100 in monthly API credits, and Ultra includes $200, both marked New. So this is not just a name change.

Who needs to do anything? If you are currently on Max 5x, do nothing; the name changed, but the price did not. If you frequently hit the 5-hour limit and can pass verification, the Ultra experience will change substantially. If you only use it occasionally, the $20 Pro tier is unaffected, and annual billing is still $17 per month.

The rename is a zero-cost perception upgrade; removing the limit is the real move. The fact that both happened at the same time shows that Anthropic wants you to remember the latter.