What is the difference between Claude Pro, Max and Ultra?

As of November 1, 2026: Pro costs $20 a month ($17 a month billed annually) with Pro-level limits every five hours and every week, and Fable only through paid usage credits. Max costs $100 a month with 5x Pro usage every five hours and every week, Fable for up to half the weekly limit, and $100 a month of Claude API credits. Ultra costs $200 a month with 10x Pro's weekly usage, no five-hour limit for verified accounts, Fable for up to half the weekly limit, and $200 a month of API credits.

What happened to Claude Max 20x?

On October 30, 2026 Anthropic renamed Max 5x to Max and Max 20x to Ultra. Existing Max 20x subscribers moved to Ultra automatically at the same $200 price. Ultra is described as 10 times the Pro plan's usage every week, with no five-hour limit once the account is verified; a separate weekly limit still applies to Fable.

Do the Claude API credits on Max and Ultra cover Claude Code?

No. The monthly API credits ($100 on Max, $200 on Ultra) apply to the Claude API in the Claude Console — the API itself, Claude Managed Agents, the Claude Agent SDK and the playground. They do not cover Claude Code or extra usage in the Claude apps, cannot be used on Bedrock, Google Cloud or Foundry, expire at the end of each billing cycle, and can be claimed after seven days on the plan.

Is Claude Ultra better value than ChatGPT Pro?

They now look alike on paper: ChatGPT Pro comes in $100, $200 and $500 tiers with $100, $200 and $500 of monthly OpenAI API credits, and Claude Max and Ultra include $100 and $200 of Claude API credits. Choose Ultra if your heavy use is Claude Code and long Claude sessions, where removing the five-hour limit matters most; choose ChatGPT Pro if you mainly use Codex or need the $500 tier's higher allowance.

Quick Answer

Claude Pro vs Max vs Ultra: Which Claude Plan to Buy (2026)

Published: November 1, 2026

The short answer

Buy the cheapest plan whose limit you do not hit. As of November 1, 2026:

Pro ($20/month, $17 annual) — daily chat, writing and light Claude Code use.
Max ($100/month) — all-day work: 5x Pro usage per five-hour window and per week, Fable included up to half the weekly limit, $100 a month of API credits.
Ultra ($200/month) — the longest agentic sessions: 10x Pro’s weekly usage and no five-hour limit for verified accounts, plus $200 a month of API credits.

Ultra is the renamed Max 20x. Anthropic changed the names on October 30, 2026; prices did not change, and Max 20x subscribers moved to Ultra automatically.

The comparison

	Pro	Max	Ultra
Price	$20/mo ($17/mo billed annually)	$100/mo	$200/mo
5-hour limit	1x	5x Pro	None (verified accounts)
Weekly limit	1x	5x Pro	10x Pro
Fable (top model)	Paid with usage credits	Up to 50% of weekly limit	Up to 50% of weekly limit
Monthly API credits	—	$100	$200
Claude Code	✅	✅	✅
Billing	Monthly or annual	Monthly	Monthly

All three plans include Claude Code, Projects, Claude in Chrome and Microsoft 365, research, memory and a context window up to 1M tokens depending on the model.

What the five-hour limit change means

Until October 30, every paid plan was metered twice: a rolling five-hour session limit and a weekly limit. Heavy Claude Code users hit the five-hour wall mid-task and waited. Ultra removes the five-hour limit for verified accounts, leaving only the weekly allowance (and a separate weekly cap for Fable). Anthropic verifies accounts automatically from account and payment history; until then a temporary limit applies. You can check under Settings > Usage — if there is no “Current session” bar, the account is verified. Verifying a phone number at checkout does not remove the limit.

For people who run long autonomous coding sessions, that is the real difference between Max and Ultra — more than the multiplier.

The API credits, read carefully

Max and Ultra now include monthly credits for the Claude API: $100 and $200. Team plans get $20 per Standard seat and $100 per Premium seat, pooled and capped at $500 a month. Details that matter:

Credits cover the Claude API, Claude Managed Agents, the Claude Agent SDK and the Console playground — not Claude Code and not extra usage in the Claude apps.
They work only in the Claude Console, not on AWS, Google Cloud or Microsoft Foundry.
They refresh each billing cycle and expire at its end — no rollover.
New subscribers can claim them after seven days; Free, Pro and Enterprise are not eligible.

At current list prices, $200 buys about 20 million Claude Sonnet 5.5 input tokens ($2/$10 per million) or 10 million Claude Opus 5.5 input tokens ($4/$20); see our current API prices. For a side project or an internal agent, that can be most of a month’s bill.

Claude Ultra vs ChatGPT Pro

OpenAI made the same move in October 2026: ChatGPT Pro now comes in $100, $200 and $500 tiers with $100, $200 and $500 of monthly OpenAI API credits, and Business seats earn $20 (Standard) or $100 (Premium) per seat, capped at $500 per workspace. The plans are now near mirror images at $100 and $200. Choose by the agent you use all day — Claude Code points to Max or Ultra, Codex to ChatGPT Pro — and only ChatGPT has a $500 tier. Our older ChatGPT Pro 500 vs Pro 200 vs Pro 100 page covers the OpenAI side.

How to choose

You hit the five-hour limit on Pro once a week or less: stay on Pro and buy usage credits when needed.
You hit it daily, but rarely run out for the week: Max.
You run multi-hour Claude Code sessions or parallel agents: Ultra — the missing five-hour limit is the feature.
You also build on the API: count the credits; on Ultra they offset $200 of real API spend.

Last verified: November 1, 2026.