A group of Claude subscribers filed an expanded class action lawsuit in September 2026 against Anthropic, alleging the AI company deceptively advertised the usage limits of its top-tier Max subscription plan.
Anthropic’s Max plan is an upgrade to its $20-per-month Pro plan, offered at either $100 per month for “5x” usage limits or $200 per month for “20x” usage limits. The lawsuit alleges those figures are misleadingly presented, with critical restrictions buried in fine print. According to the complaint, the promised usage multipliers apply only within five-hour windows subject to a weekly cap — a constraint the plaintiffs say amounts to far less total usage than customers expect when they sign up.
The lawsuit was brought by attorneys Monica Vaca and Kati Daffan, both former Federal Trade Commission staff who worked under Lina Khan, with a combined 38 years at the agency. Vaca said understanding the actual terms requires clicking two separate hyperlinks and cross-referencing the Pro plan webpage to find the definition of “session” — a word central to how limits are applied. “This is hard for consumers,” Vaca said. “They have to rely on the claims the marketer is giving.”
Anthropic announced the Max plan in April 2025 but did not impose the weekly session limits until August 2025, as the company pushed to compete with OpenAI. In a motion to dismiss an earlier version of the complaint, Anthropic argued the session limit information was accessible to consumers via hyperlinks during the purchase process, comparing it to “flipping a product over to read the back label.” Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment on the expanded filing.
Vaca rejected that framing. “It’s a ‘buyer beware’ approach,” she said. “And that’s really not fair to people.” She noted that many subscribers upgraded their plans mid-project after hitting usage limits, only to find the expanded access fell short of expectations for a service costing up to $200 per month.
The case may signal broader legal scrutiny of how AI companies communicate pricing and usage terms to customers, particularly as subscription costs rise and complaints about value grow more common across the industry.
Source: The Verge