Two subscribers who say Anthropic oversold its top Claude plans can take part of their case forward. On Friday, Nov. 6, U.S. Magistrate Judge Alex G. Tse of the federal court in San Francisco turned down part of Anthropic's bid to throw the suit out. "The advertising in question is plausibly misleading, so the case will move forward," he wrote. Karl Kahn and Solomon Smith say Anthropic misled buyers of its Claude Max plans by promising "5x or 20x more usage than Pro." They are asking to sue on behalf of other Claude Max subscribers too, as a class action.
The dispute is over how that promise reads. The complaint says Pro cost $17 to $20 a month, Max 5x $100 and Max 20x $200. According to the complaint, Max subscribers got 5 or 20 times Pro's use in each five-hour session, but like other Claude users they also faced weekly limits, and those were not 5 or 20 times Pro's. By the subscribers' count, for Anthropic's Sonnet 4 model, Max 5x gave 3.5 times Pro's weekly use and Max 20x gave 6 times. One Max customer quoted in the complaint said they had used half of the 20x plan's weekly allowance by the third day of the week. At this early stage, a judge has to accept the subscribers' account as true. Because people pay by the month, the judge wrote, they could plausibly take the promise to mean 5 or 20 times more use each month, which the subscribers say they did not get.
Anthropic argued that buyers should know "more usage" meant more per session, because pages on its website, linked from the sales page, say so. The judge noted that this explanation sits "two hyperlinks away from the primary sales pages," and that, as the subscribers say, buyers do not have to see it to subscribe. An asterisk on one sales page, "Usage limits apply," says nothing about limits per session, he wrote. The per-session explanation may still persuade a jury or judge later in the case that the ads were not misleading, he wrote, but it is no reason to throw the suit out now.
Some claims survive and some do not. The claims that Anthropic carelessly misrepresented the plans and broke its contracts with subscribers go on. So does Smith's claim under a California consumer protection law against deceptive advertising that covers only people buying for personal, family or household use. Smith is a computer science student, and the judge said using Claude for school is not business use. Kahn's claim under that law was dismissed because he did not give enough detail about what he uses Claude for to show it is personal rather than business work.
Claims under two other California consumer protection laws against deceptive advertising were dismissed too. Those laws let a court order a company to change its ways or refund money. For now, Kahn and Smith can't ask for an order to change the ads because they still pay for Max, the judge wrote, and they did not explain why the money damages they seek under the first consumer law would fall short.
The judge also threw out a claim that Anthropic broke its duty to deal fairly with subscribers by tightening limits and moving features to cheaper plans in the middle of billing periods. Anthropic's terms let it change capacity limits, and Max subscribers can still use Claude more each week than Pro users and still have Claude Code, he wrote. The subscribers' own complaint says Anthropic tightened limits because surging demand strained its capacity, he noted, so as they describe it, "Anthropic didn't tighten usage limits as a bait-and-switch." The subscribers have until Dec. 2 to file a revised complaint that tries to fix the dismissed claims. If they don't, Anthropic must file its formal response to the current complaint by Dec. 16.
The plans have changed since the suit was filed. On Oct. 30, Anthropic renamed Max 5x to Max and Max 20x to Ultra, and Max 20x subscribers moved to Ultra at the same $200 a month. Its pricing page now says Max gives five times Pro's use every five hours and every week, and Ultra 10 times Pro's use every week. The ruling does not decide whether the old ads misled anyone or what subscribers might be owed, and the court has not yet ruled on whether the case can go forward as a class action for other Max subscribers.