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Stealth Switch

Anthropic tested removing Claude Code from the Pro plan

Untenable demand has Anthropic exploring new approaches to rationing its service.

Samuel Axon – | 80
A screenshot of Claude Code running in the command line.
A screenshot of Claude Code running in the command line. Credit: Samuel Axon
A screenshot of Claude Code running in the command line. Credit: Samuel Axon
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Anthropic caused a stir among developers with what appeared to be a surprise change to its pricing plan: The company signaled that Claude Code, the popular agentic development tool, would no longer be available to subscribers on the $20-per-month Pro plan.

Users took to Reddit and X to point out that Anthropic’s pricing page for Claude explicitly showed Claude Code as not supported in the Pro plan. (It remained in the $100/month+ Max plan.) Some new users signing up for Pro subscriptions were unable to access Claude Code. Meanwhile, existing subscribers saw no interruption.

After speculation and frustration spread, Anthropic’s head of growth, Amol Avasare, took to social media to clarify that this was a “small test on ~2% of new prosumer signups.” As for the reasoning, he explained:

When we launched Max a year ago, it didn’t include Claude Code, Cowork didn’t exist, and agents that run for hours weren’t a thing. Max was designed for heavy chat usage, that’s it. Since then, we bundled Claude Code into Max and it took off after Opus 4. Cowork landed. Long-running async agents are now everyday workflows. The way people actually use a Claude subscription has changed fundamentally. Engagement per subscriber is way up.

We’ve made small adjustments along the way (weekly caps, tighter limits at peak), but usage has changed a lot and our current plans weren’t built for this. So we’re looking at different options to keep delivering a great experience for users.

Some users remained upset, noting that it was strange and confusing that Anthropic ran a trial on just 2 percent of new sign-ups yet updated its public-facing documentation to reflect that the change was universal. Before long, the pricing page was updated to again show that Claude Code is offered as part of the Pro plan.

Claude has seen an explosive growth in usage over the past few months. User numbers increased dramatically as many people flocked away from ChatGPT; tools like OpenClaw began consuming large amounts of tokens; and, in general, as Avasare said, usage for some users shifted away from brief, sporadic chat sessions to nearly always-on, multi-agent workflows. The reality is that there is only so much compute to go around—and that’s shown in occasional outages and other problems for the service.

The company has attracted heat over other recent attempts to deal with the high demand, like introducing new limits during peak hours. It’s not surprising that it would test removing the tool that drives a lot of that heavy usage from the plan with a relatively modest consumer price point, but of course, people have started to build their daily workflows on top of this tool, so users are understandably frustrated that a change that dramatic that could occur at all, much less that it could happen without much public communication.

“When we do land on something, if it affects existing subscribers you’ll get plenty of notice before anything changes. Will hear it from us, not a screenshot on X or Reddit,” Avasare said.

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Samuel Axon Senior Editor
Samuel Axon is the editorial lead for tech and gaming coverage at Ars Technica. He covers AI, software development, gaming, entertainment, and mixed reality. He has been writing about gaming and technology for nearly two decades at Engadget, PC World, Mashable, Vice, Polygon, Wired, and others. He previously ran a marketing and PR agency in the gaming industry, led editorial for the TV network CBS, and worked on social media marketing strategy for Samsung Mobile at the creative agency SPCSHP. He also is an independent software and game developer for iOS, Windows, and other platforms, and he is a graduate of DePaul University, where he studied interactive media and software development.
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Dr. Awkward
I recently bought the Claude Pro annual subscription as a birthday present for myself, mostly to fool around with Claude Code. Turns out, the Pro subscription is basically useless for Code. You have extremely strict hourly and weekly token limits, so expect to get maybe 30 - 60 minutes of use before having to wait 3 - 4 hours to try again. Then, because of the weekly limit, around the fourth day of the week you'll be locked out for the next three days.

On top of it, since Opus burns tokens like crazy, you'll probably be using Sonnet so the above issue isn't made even worse. The problem with that is that Sonnet apparently hallucinates like crazy, making up functions and writing totally unusable code. Then, it goes into a loop of trying to debug its code, introducing more errors, until your tokens are all eaten up anyway.

I bought the subscription last month, but didn't start using it until last week. When I hit the weekly token limit and it became apparent that the Pro subscription is actually useless for Code, I followed Anthropic's instructions for submitting a refund, which involves pleading your case to an extremely slow version of Claude. Each attempt was flatly rejected as being outside their refund window, even though I have 11 months remaining on the subscription.

The whole process was very, very frustrating. It feels like I fell for a scam.

Reading about the issue, it seems that Anthropic has been reducing the usage cap (it's a very opaque system and they've never actually explained how the cap is calculated). Users at the $100/month level also report issues with the usage quota, with the common consensus in the Claude echo chamber being that users should spring for the $200/month tier. With its current implementation, I'd say they've effectively removed Code from the Pro plan even if they haven't officially done so.

TLDR: Don't buy a Pro subscription if you're intending to use Claude Code. Better yet, steer clear of shady companies like Anthropic altogether. And think twice before plunking down a pile of cash based on Internet hype.
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