Judge lets Claude Max "20x more usage" lawsuit go ahead

Felix Laurent 7 Nov 2026 4 min read

Big tech

A federal judge in California ruled on November 6, 2026 that the Claude Max lawsuit against Anthropic can go ahead on its key claims. Subscribers say the promise of "5x or 20x more usage" than Pro does not hold over a full week. U.S. Magistrate Judge Alex Tse dismissed several claims, but he let the core of the proposed class action move forward. "The advertising in question is plausibly misleading," Tse wrote, Courthouse News reported.

The ruling lands a week after Anthropic renamed the plans. The $200 Max 20x is now called Ultra, and its pricing page now promises ten times Pro's weekly usage.

What the Claude Max lawsuit claims

The case is Kahn v. Anthropic, filed in June in the Northern District of California. The plaintiffs are Karl Kahn and Solomon Smith, who sued on behalf of Claude Max customers. No class has been certified yet.

Anthropic sold three paid tiers when the case began: Pro for $17 to $20 a month, Max 5x for $100 and Max 20x for $200. Its website promised Max subscribers "5x more usage than Pro" or "20x more usage than Pro."

The plaintiffs say the plans deliver far less over a week. For one Claude model, they calculated that Max 20x users get six times Pro's weekly usage and Max 5x users get 3.5 times.

Plan	Price	Advertised	Weekly usage vs Pro, per plaintiffs
Pro	$17–$20 a month	Baseline	1x
Max 5x	$100 a month	5x more usage	3.5x
Max 20x	$200 a month	20x more usage	6x

The gap comes from two kinds of limits. Max subscribers get five or 20 times more use in each five-hour session. Their weekly limits, which Anthropic added in August 2025, are not five or 20 times higher. One customer quoted in the case said they had used half of the weekly allowance on Max 20x by the third day of the week.

Why the judge let the case proceed

Anthropic argued that customers should read "more usage" as more usage per session. It pointed to a help page that explains the limits. Tse was not persuaded.

"Anthropic's per session disclosure is located two hyperlinks away from the primary sales pages on claude.com," he wrote. Customers did not need to visit that page to sign up. The plaintiffs compared the disclosure to fine print on the back of a shampoo bottle.

An asterisk on one sales page says "Usage limits apply." Tse noted that it does not mention per-session limits. Because customers pay monthly, he found they could reasonably expect five or 20 times more usage each month.

The disclosure may still help Anthropic later in the case, the judge wrote. At this early stage, it was not enough to throw the claims out.

Which claims survived and which did not

The ruling split the case in several directions.

Claim	Result
Negligent misrepresentation	Proceeds
Breach of contract	Proceeds
California consumer protection law (CLRA), Solomon Smith	Proceeds
California consumer protection law (CLRA), Karl Kahn	Dismissed, can be refiled with more detail
Unfair competition and false advertising laws	Dismissed
Unfair dealing by changing limits mid-billing period	Dismissed

The contract claim survived because Anthropic's terms point customers to "the order process" for subscription details. Tse found that the sales pages, with their 5x and 20x promises, could be part of the contract.

The consumer law only covers personal, family or household use. Smith is a computer science student who uses Claude for coursework and a hackathon, so his claim stands. Kahn said only that he uses Claude Code for programming tasks. "He could be an entrepreneur who uses Claude Code to develop software for sale," Tse wrote, and gave him a chance to add details.

The unfair competition and false advertising claims fell for another reason. The plaintiffs still subscribe despite knowing about the dispute. So Tse found they had not shown a need for a court order to change Anthropic's marketing.

The judge also sided with Anthropic on one point. Its terms allow it to change capacity limits, and Max users still get more than Pro users. "Anthropic didn't tighten usage limits as a bait-and-switch," Tse wrote.

Anthropic already changed the Max plans

On October 30, a week before the ruling, Anthropic renamed both Max plans, The Next Web reported. Max 5x is now simply Max, and Max 20x is now Ultra. Prices stayed at $100 and $200 a month.

The new pricing page lists Max at five times Pro usage, both every five hours and every week. Ultra is listed at ten times Pro usage a week, with no five-hour limit for verified accounts. Anthropic's announcement did not mention that the 20x figure was gone, according to The Next Web.

Anthropic is not alone in walking back a multiplier. OpenAI cut ChatGPT Pro limits from 20x to 10x the usage of Plus for existing subscribers from October 30. In both cases, the $200 tier now promises ten times the cheaper plan.

Neither Anthropic nor the plaintiffs' lawyers responded to Courthouse News before publication.

What the Claude Max ruling means for AI subscriptions

The ruling does not decide whether Anthropic misled anyone. It only says the claims are plausible enough to go to the next stage, where both sides gather evidence. Anthropic can still argue that its help page and the asterisk were enough.

The bigger signal is for every AI lab that sells plans with a multiplier. A "20x" on a sales page reads like a monthly promise to a customer who pays monthly. A limit explained two clicks away may not count as a disclosure. Anthropic's new labels already state weekly multiples, and that is the safer way to sell usage. For Max 20x subscribers who paid since 2025, the case now decides whether the old label owes them anything.