Anthropic is facing a new class-action lawsuit from Claude users who allege the company did not clearly explain the usage restrictions attached to its most expensive Max subscription plans.

The lawsuit, filed on 8 September, accuses Anthropic of misleading customers by promoting Claude Max as offering five or 20 times more usage than the Pro plan without making the full extent of its weekly limits sufficiently clear.

Claude Max was introduced in April 2025 as a higher-tier subscription aimed at frequent users. The five-times Max plan costs US$100 a month, equivalent to about A$139, while the 20-times plan costs US$200, or about A$277. Claude Pro starts at US$17 a month when billed annually, or roughly A$24.

The dispute centres on how Anthropic describes the increased usage available with Max.

According to the lawsuit, the five-times and 20-times figures refer to usage within session windows that reset every five hours. However, Max subscribers are also subject to separate weekly limits, which Anthropic introduced several months after launching the service.

The plaintiffs argue that customers could reasonably interpret the advertised multipliers as applying more broadly to their total usage rather than only to individual session windows.

Solen Feyissa

The issue has also generated criticism among Claude users online, including on Reddit, where some subscribers have said they did not realise weekly restrictions could substantially reduce the practical difference between Max tiers.

One widely shared calculation suggested that the A$277-equivalent 20-times Max plan may provide only around 1.7 times the weekly usage of the A$139-equivalent five-times plan in some circumstances, despite costing twice as much.

Anthropic does outline Max usage limits in its support documentation, which was most recently updated on 7 August 2026. However, lawyers representing the plaintiffs argue that the restrictions are not presented clearly enough during the subscription process and require users to navigate through multiple links to understand how the limits operate.

The latest case follows a separate federal lawsuit brought by an individual Claude subscriber in June over similar concerns.

Anthropic had not publicly responded to the new class-action allegations at the time of the original report.

Featured photo by Brett Wharton