Checked 31 October 2026. Claude’s five-hour usage limit has been removed for verified Ultra accounts, not for every subscriber. The weekly allowance remains. Anthropic may impose additional capacity and fair-use limits. This is a change in when eligible users can spend their included usage, not unlimited Claude.
Who gets the change?
Anthropic’s Ultra guide says Max 20x subscribers move automatically to Ultra without a price change. Verification happens automatically using factors including account and payment history; unverified accounts retain a temporary limit. Phone verification at checkout is separate. In Settings → Usage, the absence of the Current session bar indicates verification.
The current pricing page lists Ultra at US$200 monthly before applicable tax, with ten times Pro’s weekly allowance. The web price may differ from mobile pricing. Max retains five times Pro’s allowance per five-hour session and per week. Ultra also has a separate Fable allowance: the comparison lists it as up to half the weekly limit. These figures are not fixed message counts.
What changes in everyday work?
The practical benefit is flexibility: a verified Ultra subscriber can concentrate work into a busy afternoon rather than stop at a session ceiling while weekly usage remains. That is an implication of the policy, not a measured productivity result.
Claude Code’s subscription guide confirms that Pro and Max still have session and weekly limits, while verified Ultra accounts have no session limit. Claude chats and Claude Code share allowances. API-key authentication is a different billing route and can incur API charges; this subscription change is not an API rate-limit removal.
The weekly limit still matters
When included usage runs out, waiting for a reset remains an option. Optional usage credits can continue work at additional consumption-based charges. They are separate from the monthly API credits included with some plans. Removing a session cap does not make that overage free.
Check your own usage screen before planning a long task. This report verifies the published policy, not any individual account’s eligibility or uninterrupted service. No subscription, payment or account setting was changed for this article.