Anthropic faces lawsuit over the usage limits on paid Claude plans

A Claude user has filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging that the company's paid subscription tiers offer less access than what is promised in its advertising.

According to Engadget, citing The Wall Street Journal, the complaint was filed by Karl Kahn, a Washington state resident, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Kahn is seeking class-action status on behalf of every user who has subscribed to Claude's Max tiers since their launch.

The lawsuit focuses on two of Anthropic's premium plans. The Max 5x plan, priced at $100 a month, is advertised as offering five times the access of the standard Claude Pro subscription. The Max 20x plan, at $200 a month, is marketed as twenty times the access. According to Kahn, the actual limits fall noticeably short of what the company has promised. He argues that the limits are difficult to determine in advance and that Anthropic has adjusted them without clear notice to subscribers. The complaint states that real usage on these tiers is "lower than the limits the company advertises."

Kahn details his own experience to support the claim. He started with a basic Claude subscription in June 2025, upgraded to Max 5x a few months later, and moved to Max 20x in April 2026 once he began using Claude regularly for coding work. According to his account, a single five-hour work session consumed 15% of his weekly allowance, and shortly after subscribing, the limits began interrupting his workflow. He says he was repeatedly forced to either pause his projects, ration his queries, or buy additional usage on top of his existing plan. Kahn is seeking damages and asking the court to declare Anthropic's pricing claims misleading. Anthropic has declined to comment on the case.

Consumer protection attorneys have been monitoring how AI services are priced with growing attention, and this case is one of the first instances where a dispute over subscription limits has reached the courts. For now, the high computing costs behind these services are largely subsidized by investor funding. Industry observers, however, note that pricing tensions could intensify once Anthropic and its main competitor OpenAI eventually go public.