Max 5x is now Max and Max 20x is now Ultra, still 90€ and 180€ a month excl. VAT
Every paid plan works out to 18€ per Pro-sized week: Pro 1x, Max 5x, Ultra 10x
Ultra drops the 5-hour limit for verified accounts, so only the weekly limits can stop you
Max and Ultra add 100 or 200 dollars of API credits a month, never usable for Claude Code
My Max 20x plan became Ultra overnight. Same 180€, and the Current session bar on my usage page was simply gone, the one bar I had watched all day for months. If you are weighing Claude Pro vs Max vs Ultra after Anthropic's October 30 rename, the prices did not move. The math underneath them did.
What Changed in the Claude Pro vs Max vs Ultra Lineup?
Anthropic renamed its two top plans. Max 5x is now just Max. Max 20x is now Ultra. Existing subscribers were moved over automatically at the same price, so nobody had to click anything.
Here is the lineup as the German pricing page shows it today, prices without VAT:
| Plan | Per month | Every 5 hours | Every week |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 0€ | A free cap | A free cap |
| Pro | 18€ (15€ billed yearly) | 1x | 1x |
| Max | 90€ | 5x Pro | 5x Pro |
| Ultra | 180€ | No limit (verified accounts) | 10x Pro |
The new names get the attention. Look at the columns instead.
Before the rename, Anthropic described Max only per session: five or twenty times Pro in every five-hour window. Weekly limits existed, but nobody outside Anthropic knew how big they were for each plan. People measured them by hand and argued about the results. Now every plan has an official weekly multiple, and the top plan has no five-hour column at all.
Two smaller details are easy to miss. Ultra is monthly only for now. And on the German pricing page, Pro is still the only plan with a yearly price, 15€ a month paid as 180€ up front. If you are on yearly Pro and move up to Ultra, Anthropic credits any leftover balance larger than the Ultra price to your account, as long as the billing address matches the old subscription.
My older Max vs Pro breakdown still explains how the rolling five-hour window works. Its plan names are history now, and so is its per-session math, which is the next point.
Why Does Every Paid Plan Cost 18€ a Week?
Divide each price by its weekly multiple:
Pro: 18€ for 1x
Max: 90€ for 5x, so 18€ per Pro-sized week
Ultra: 180€ for 10x, so 18€ per Pro-sized week
Same number, three times. Per five-hour window, Pro and Max land on 18€ as well. No paid tier is a discount anymore. Paying more buys room before something stops you, and the usage itself costs exactly what it costs on Pro.
That kills the one argument that used to make Max 20x feel clever. Under the old per-session description it looked like half price: twenty times Pro for ten times the money, 9€ per Pro-sized session. I used that line myself. With Ultra there is no session left to divide by, and per week the price lines up exactly with Pro.
Honestly, I like the new version better. One number, and nobody has to ask which window you meant.
The only cheaper unit on the list is Pro billed yearly, at 15€. If Pro fits you and you know you will stay, that is the one place where paying differently saves money.
Fable is the exception. Max and Ultra include Fable, Anthropic's top model, for up to half of the weekly limit, and it has its own weekly cap next to the all-models one. On Pro, Fable runs on paid usage credits. So the 18€ week is true for everyday models. If most of your work runs on Fable, Pro costs more than its sticker price and Max starts to look different.
Everything else draws from one pool. Chats on the web, the desktop app, your phone and Claude Code all count against the same limits. A heavy Claude Code afternoon is a heavy chat afternoon as far as your plan is concerned.
What Does Ultra Actually Buy You?
The five-hour wall disappears. That is the whole upgrade, and it is a bigger deal than the 10x suggests.
On Max you still get stopped inside a single day. Long refactor, big codebase, the limit hits, you wait for the window to roll over. On Ultra, once Anthropic has verified your account, that never happens. Only two limits are left: the weekly all-models limit and the weekly Fable limit.
Verification is automatic. Anthropic looks at factors like account and payment history and does not publish the rules. Until it is done, an Ultra account gets a temporary session limit of unpublished size, and that limit disappears on its own. Verifying your phone number at checkout is a separate step and does not remove it. The quickest check is in Anthropic's own help article: open Settings > Usage, and if there is no Current session bar, you are verified.
Mine was verified from day one. The usage page now shows two bars, All models at 7% and Fable at 0%. Under the hood, claude.ai's usage data for my account has no session entry at all anymore, which matters if you rely on a tracker. Anything that only reads the five-hour window now has nothing to show.
Per week, Ultra is twice Max. Not four times, even though 20 divided by 5 is 4. The old twenty was a per-session number, and per-session limits are exactly what Ultra dropped.
What I did not see coming is that the five-hour limit was also a brake. Annoying, yes, but a brake. Without it, nothing slows a long session down until the weekly limit does. You can now spend a big chunk of your week in one Saturday and only notice on Wednesday.
So watch the week instead. OhNine, my free macOS menu bar meter, follows the weekly limit as its main number when there is no session window, and it warns at 80%. If you live in the terminal, the Statusline Builder puts the weekly figure under every prompt. And the three ways to check your usage limit all still work. On Ultra, the session line is just gone.
Do the API Credits Change the Max Math?
Max and Ultra now come with API credits, and they can flip the decision. Max includes 100 dollars a month in Claude API credits. Ultra includes 200. Pro and Free get none.
The fine print decides whether they are worth anything to you:
They pay for the Claude API, Managed Agents, the Agent SDK and the Console playground.
They do not pay for Claude Code or for extra usage in the Claude apps.
They expire at the end of every billing cycle. Nothing rolls over.
New subscribers can claim them after seven days on the plan, by linking exactly one Console organization. You cannot switch that link yourself later, so pick the organization you actually build in.
Team plans get credits too: 20 dollars per Standard seat and 100 per Premium seat, pooled into one balance capped at 500. And if you upgrade from Max to Ultra in the middle of a cycle, the extra credits arrive prorated right away.
If you never touch the API, ignore all of this. The credits are worth nothing to you, and the 18€ week is the whole story.
If you already pay for API calls, the picture changes. Going from Pro to Max costs 72€ a month more. If you spend around 100 dollars a month on the API anyway, the credits more than cover that step, and the fivefold Claude usage comes almost free. That is the strongest case for Max I have found, and it has nothing to do with chat.
Ultra versus Max on credits alone is roughly a wash: 100 dollars more in credits for 90€ more in price. Nobody should upgrade to Ultra for the API credits. Upgrade for the missing five-hour wall.
One failure mode to know about. Credits never change your limits in Claude or Claude Code. If the only money in a Console organization is these credits and you point Claude Code at an API key from it, Claude Code stops with a credit balance error. For what the API actually charges per model, my Claude API pricing explainer has the background.
Bottom Line
Every paid plan costs the same 18€ per Pro-sized week, so the price cannot decide this for you. The wall that stops you can.
Stay on Pro if the five-hour limit catches you a few times a month. Pay yearly if you know you will keep it.
Move to Max when Pro stops you most days or every week, or when you already spend about 100 dollars a month on the API.
Move to Ultra when the five-hour wall breaks your working day on Max, or when Max's weekly limit stops you every week. Then start watching the week, because nothing else will warn you.
If you never hit any cap, try one tier lower for a month. Stepping back up is one click.
I built these rules into the free Claude Plan Picker: four questions, one answer, with the math shown. Which wall do you hit first, the five hours or the week?
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