Judge says Anthropic's '20x usage' pitch may mislead paying subscribers

A federal judge in San Francisco ruled on November 6 that Anthropic must face claims its Claude Max plans promised more than they delivered. Magistrate Judge Alex Tse called the pitch of “5x or 20x more usage than Pro” “plausibly misleading” and let a proposed class action by two subscribers go ahead. The case covers the $100-a-month Max 5x and $200-a-month Max 20x plans, which Anthropic renamed Max and Ultra on October 30.

The dispute is over what “more usage” means. The multipliers hold inside each five-hour session, but the weekly caps do not scale the same way — the plaintiffs calculate that for Sonnet 4, Max 5x delivers about 3.5 times Pro’s weekly usage and Max 20x about six times. One plaintiff says burning a Max 20x session to the full could eat 15% of his whole weekly allotment.

Anthropic pointed to a help page spelling out the per-session limits, but Tse was unmoved: the disclosure sits two hyperlinks from the sales pages, and monthly subscribers could reasonably read the promise as monthly. Negligent misrepresentation, breach of contract, and one California consumer-protection claim survive; no class is certified and nothing is proven. The plaintiffs have until December 2 to amend, or Anthropic answers by December 16.