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Anthropic unveiled a new subscription tier Wednesday called Claude Max, targeting power users willing to pay between $100 and $200 monthly for expanded access to its AI assistant. The move answers complaints from heavy users constantly hitting rate limits on lower-tier plans.
"The top request from our most active users has been expanded Claude access," Anthropic stated in its announcement. A quick scroll through Reddit confirms this sentiment – users have grown increasingly frustrated with the company's usage restrictions, even on the $20 monthly Pro plan.
Claude's large context window – its ability to process hefty chunks of text at once – creates a usage paradox. Each conversation addition reprocesses the entire conversation history plus any attached documents, rapidly depleting usage quotas. Yet this same feature enables more complex projects within each session.
The new Max plan comes in two flavors: a $100 monthly option providing five times more usage than the Pro plan, and a $200 monthly tier offering 20 times more usage. Anthropic labels the pricier option "Maximum Flexibility," targeting "daily users who collaborate often with Claude for most tasks." Translation: people who've made Claude their full-time digital colleague and don't appreciate being cut off mid-workday.
This pricing strategy mirrors OpenAI's approach. OpenAI introduced its $200 "Pro" plan for ChatGPT in December, positioned above its $20 "ChatGPT Plus" subscription that launched in February 2023. The AI assistant arms race continues – now with price tags to match.
The pricing war reflects the resource-intensive reality of running cutting-edge AI models. Consumer expectations push for unlimited access, but computing costs remain stubbornly high. Both companies walk a tightrope between satisfying power users and keeping their services financially viable.
Beyond higher usage limits, Max subscribers receive priority access to new features and models, though Anthropic remains vague about specifics. Subscribers also get higher output limits for "better and richer responses and Artifacts," referring to Claude's ability to create document-style outputs.
In perhaps the clearest sign of tiered customer value, Max subscribers receive "priority access during high traffic periods." Anthropic has implemented a queue system that puts its highest-paying customers at the front of the line when servers get congested. Your $200 buys you both more usage and less waiting – a digital VIP pass.
Anthropic's product lead Scott White told TechCrunch the company isn't ruling out even pricier subscriptions someday. When asked about a potential $500 monthly Claude plan, White offered the corporate equivalent of "maybe": "We'll always keep a number of exploratory options available to us."
White described Max as filling the gap between individual plans and enterprise offerings. It targets professionals who expense Claude rather than accessing it through company-wide deployments. "This is a new way that power users can get access, often for professional use cases, without needing the entire business to have an enterprise plan already," he explained.
When pressed about concrete usage metrics, White avoided specifics, framing the increased limits as "units of consumption" that scale with the Pro plan. Asked what Max users could accomplish that Pro users can't, he painted a picture of all-day reliance: "Imagine you're basically doing your entire role by generating outputs on Claude — we wanted people to do that."
The timing aligns with Anthropic's recent release of Claude 3.7 Sonnet, which the company calls its "most intelligent model to date." More powerful models combined with new features like web search and coding capabilities drive deeper integration and higher usage demands.
White describes Claude as "an indispensable virtual collaborator" that can "change how people perceive their limits professionally." He highlights three use cases driving high usage: automating tedious work, providing professional "superpowers" for existing roles, and helping users expand into new professional areas.
Anthropic's full subscription lineup now includes a free tier for basic access, the $18-$20 "Pro" tier for everyday use (depending on payment schedule), and the $100-$200 "Max" tier for intensive usage.
The new Max plan is available immediately in all regions where Claude operates.
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