Anthropic tests pulling Claude Code from Pro plan as AI pricing models face pressure

Anthropic tests reaction to yanking Claude Code from Pro

Unannounced change apparently aimed at two percent of users but hit documentation for everyone Anthropic has removed Claude Code from its Pro subscription plan, according to some of its public-facing web pages, but the company says it's only a test for a small number of users. On Monday, the company's pricing web page stated its Pro plan "includes Claude Code." On Tuesday, that phrase is no longer present, and elsewhere on the page, the feature list for the Pro plan includes an explicit "X" rather than a check mark for Claude Code. The changes were previously noted by AI industry skeptic Ed Zitron. Anthropic's changed product inclusions have not reached all corners of its site. At the time this article was filed, the Claude Code product page still stated the Pro plan provides access to the code generation tool. And when this reporter accessed Claude Code from the CLI, the terminal output still says "Claude Pro." Claude.ai, when queried about this, insisted that the Pro plan includes Claude Code, but one of the cited documentation pages, updated today, mentions only the Max plan. Losing access to Claude Code understandably alarmed developers and that sentiment reached Anthropic, whose head of growth Amol Avasare published a social media post indicating that the change represented an experiment. "For clarity, we're running a small test on ~2 percent of new prosumer signups," he said. "Existing Pro and Max subscribers aren't affected." Why Anthropic felt that the update to its public-facing pricing page would address only some users and not the entire internet isn't entirely clear. And a company spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up question about that. Avasare went on to explain: "When we launched Max a year ago, it didn't include Claude Code, Cowork didn't exist, and agents that run for hours weren't a thing. Max was designed for heavy chat usage, that's it. "Since then, we bundled Claude Code into Max and it took off after Opus 4. Cowork landed. Long-running async agents are now everyday workflows. The way people actually use a Claude subscription has changed fundamentally. "Engagement per subscriber is way up. We've made small adjustments along the way (weekly caps, tighter limits at peak), but usage has changed a lot and our current plans weren't built for this. "So we're looking at different options to keep delivering a great experience for users. We don't know exactly what those look like yet - that's what we're testing and getting feedback on right now." Anthropic has been taking steps recently to limit usage of its AI models to dampen demand amid tight capacity, a problem also faced by GitHub and Google. Claude in its various forms has become exceedingly popular in the past few months, and the advent of projects like OpenClaw led many developers to create agents using Claude models. The basic problem is that Anthropic's subscription plans charge far less than the book value of tokens consumed, sometimes by a factor of ten or more. The company introduced usage limits last month to encourage use during off-peak hours, much as a power utility might do to prompt energy conservation. As noted by Avasare, Anthropic is exploring further usage limitations. Predictably, Claude subscribers venting in online forums resent what many assumed was a major change to their plans, noting that Anthropic appears to want former Pro subscribers to adopt cheaper-to-use Chinese models like Minimax, Qwen, Kimi, and GLM. What's striking about the transition is not so much that it happened but the lack of coherent communication to customers. Maybe Anthropic feels doesn't need to offer fair warning or clear announcements of plan changes to individual customers who pay a mere $20 a month. Enterprise customers, however, don't like that sort of uncertainty and may worry that Anthropic doesn't consider customer relations a priority. Avasare seems to be aware of this. "When we do land on something, if it affects existing subscribers you'll get plenty of notice before anything changes," he said, and promised customers "Will hear it from us, not a screenshot on X or Reddit."

Anthropic considers pulling Claude Code from its $20 Pro plan

These moves suggest current pricing models are becoming unsustainable as AI capabilities advance, potentially forcing significant plan restructuring across providers. Wasn't I just saying that flat-rate AI plans are broken? Now we've got more proof, this time coming from the makers of Claude. Eagled-eyed Claude users caught Anthropic tinkering with the signup page for individual Claude Pro and Max plans. Specifically, they saw that Claude Code was nixed from the features available on Claude Pro. The Claude Code bullet point eventually returned to the Claude Pro signup page, and Anthropic Head of Growth Amol Avasare later posted on social media that the change was just "a small test on ~2% of new prosumer signups," adding that nothing had changed for current Pro ($20/month) and Max ($100/month and up) users. But then Avasare expanded on his comments, noting that when Claude Max first launched a year ago, Claude Code wasn't included, Cowork "didn't exist," and "agents that run for hours weren't a thing." "Max was designed for heavy chat usage, that's it," Avasare continued. "Engagement per subscriber is way up. We've made small adjustments along the way (weekly caps, tighter limits at peak), but usage has changed a lot and our current plans weren't built for this." It's the "our current plans weren't built for this" part that caught my attention. Avasare seems to be stating quite plainly what I wrote yesterday: that flat-rate AI plans like Claude Pro and Claude Max are broken, mainly due to the rise in agentic AI applications like Claude Cowork and Claude Code. So, is Anthropic getting ready to yank Claude Code from Claude Pro users? That's the big question. I've reached out to Anthropic for comment and will update this story if I get a worthwhile response. But following GitHub's recent decision to suspend signups for its own flat-rate Copilot plans as well as pull Claude Opus access from its $10/month Pro plan, the writing seems to be on the wall: Big changes are coming to individual AI plans, and agent-focused features like code and desktop AI assistants might be the first to go. If that seems like a bait-and-switch, well, I don't blame you, especially if you ponied up for an annual AI plan like Claude Pro or Max. One would hope that if Anthropic does downgrade its consumer plans, it would either allow current subscribers to keep their existing functionality or offer refunds to those who want them. Then again, if Anthropic were to go ahead and drop Claude Code from the list of Claude Pro features, the move would create an opportunity for Anthropic's competitors -- namely OpenAI with Codex. Replying to Avasare's comments, OpenAI chief and mortal Anthropic opponent Sam Altman trolled the exec with an "ok boomer," hinting that the ChatGPT creator would be all too happy to scoop up those Claude users angered by any upcoming Claude plan changes.