If you pay for Claude Max or a Team plan, there may be money sitting unclaimed in your account. Since October 7, those plans include monthly credits for Anthropic's API, and unused credits expire at the end of each billing cycle. Then, by October 30, Anthropic's help center said "The Max 20x plan is now called the Ultra plan." Here is what each plan now gets you, and which one fits a solo operator or a small team.
What Changed
- Ultra replaces Max 20x. Same $200 a month, billed monthly only. Existing Max 20x subscribers move over automatically with no price change. The $100 tier is listed simply as Max.
- No five-hour limit on Ultra, for verified accounts. Claude plans cap usage in five-hour windows and per week. Ultra keeps a weekly cap of 10 times Pro's usage but drops the five-hour window once Anthropic verifies the account, which it does automatically from things like account and payment history.
- Monthly API credits. The API is how software, rather than a person in a chat window, uses Claude, billed per token (a small chunk of text). Max includes $100 a month, Ultra $200, and Team $20 per Standard seat and $100 per Premium seat, pooled and capped at $500. Free, Pro and Enterprise plans are not eligible.
The Plans Side by Side
| Plan | Price | Usage | Fable models | API credits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pro | $20/month, or $17 billed annually | The baseline | Paid separately with usage credits | None |
| Max | $100/month | 5x Pro, every 5 hours and every week | Included, up to half your weekly limit | $100/month |
| Ultra (was Max 20x) | $200/month, monthly only | 10x Pro weekly; no 5-hour limit once verified | Included, with its own weekly limit | $200/month |
| Team, Standard seat 2 to 150 people |
$25/seat monthly, or $20 billed annually | More than Pro | Paid separately with usage credits | $20/seat, pooled |
| Team, Premium seat | $125/seat monthly, or $100 billed annually | 5x a Standard seat | Included, up to half your weekly limit | $100/seat, pooled |
Anthropic's listed prices as of October 30, 2026, before tax. Team credits are pooled across seats and capped at $500 a month.
Fable means Claude Fable 5 and 5.1, models that Anthropic's help center says use up your limits faster than other Claude models. On Pro and Team Standard seats you pay for Fable as you go, so a heavy Fable habit on Pro can cost more than you expect. More on what Fable is good for in our Fable 5 explainer.
Which Plan Fits You
Solo, using Claude for writing, research and admin: Pro. Move up only if you hit limits most weeks.
Solo, hitting Pro's limits or wanting Fable without metered bills: Max. The $100 in API credits is a bonus if you will actually build something with it.
Solo, running long coding or research sessions all day: Ultra. You get twice Max's weekly usage and no five-hour window, though the weekly cap still applies.
Two or more people: Team, and mix seats. Give Premium seats only to the heavy users. Anthropic's own example: three Standard seats and two Premium seats earn $260 a month in pooled API credits.
What $100 in API Credits Buys
More than most people expect. Anthropic prices Claude Haiku 5.5, its model "designed for high-volume, cost-sensitive tasks," at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens for requests up to 100,000 tokens. A job that sends 2,000 tokens and gets 200 back, like sorting one long email, costs about three hundredths of a cent. At that rate, $100 covers more than 300,000 such jobs a month.
The credits work with the Claude API, the Playground in the Claude Console (Anthropic's developer dashboard), Claude Managed Agents and the Claude Agent SDK. They do not cover interactive Claude Code, extra usage in the Claude apps, or Claude through Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI or Microsoft Foundry. When they run out and nothing else is on file, requests simply stop until next month; your plan is never charged.
What to Do This Week
- Claim your credits. On claude.ai, go to Settings, then Billing (Max or Ultra), or Organization settings, then Billing (Team owners), and choose "Link organization" in the API credits section. You can link only one Console organization and cannot change it yourself, so pick the one you will build in. New subscribers wait seven days.
- Check your plan against the table. Look at last month's usage, not your best intentions.
- Spend the credits on one small, real job. A daily inbox sort or a weekly report draft is a good first project; see how to build your first AI agent.
The Bottom Line
For most solo owners, Pro is still enough. If you already pay for Max or Team, claim the credits now, because unused credits expire at the end of each billing cycle.
Sources
- Claude Help Center, "What is the Ultra plan?" (archived October 30, 2026): the rename, price, monthly billing, usage, verified accounts, Fable limit. web.archive.org
- Anthropic, "Plans & pricing" (archived October 30, 2026): plan prices, usage multiples, Fable on each plan, Team seats and the $500 pooled cap. web.archive.org
- Claude Help Center, "Monthly API credits for Max, Ultra, and Team plans" (archived October 30, 2026): credit amounts, eligibility, claiming, coverage, expiry. web.archive.org
- Claude Help Center, "Release notes" (archived October 27, 2026): October 7 entry adding monthly API credits to Max and Team plans. web.archive.org
- Claude Help Center, "Claude Fable models on your plan" (September 2, 2026): how Fable works on Pro, Max and Team seats. web.archive.org
- Anthropic, "Introducing Claude Haiku 5.5" (October 7, 2026): Haiku 5.5 pricing and intended use. anthropic.com
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