A federal lawsuit was filed against Anthropic on Monday, alleging misleading advertising related to the usage limits of its Claude Max subscription plans. The lawsuit seeks class-action status on behalf of other consumers who purchased the Max subscription since its introduction.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Karl Kahn, a resident of Washington DC, claims that the actual usage caps for Anthropic’s Max 5x and Max 20x tiers are significantly lower than what the company advertises. Anthropic offers three paid subscription tiers: Claude Pro, beginning at $17 per month; Max 5x at $100 per month; and Max 20x at $200 per month. The Pro plan claims to provide at least five times the usage per session compared to the free service, while the Max plans promise five and twenty times the Pro plan’s usage limits.
The lawsuit contends that Kahn, after upgrading to the Max 20x plan in April, quickly reached his weekly usage limits. He reported using 15 percent of his allowed usage within a five-hour session. Kahn’s experience is echoed by other users on Reddit, who have expressed frustrations about unexpectedly hitting usage caps.
In response to user behavior, Anthropic imposed weekly rate limits on Claude Code usage last July, targeting those who ran the service continuously. The complaint further highlights the discrepancies between consumer expectations and the actual costs associated with AI inference, indicating a disconnect in how subscription models apply to large language models.
All large language models operate on a token system, converting textual input into numerical representations for processing. The costs incurred depend on the complexity of the prompts. The lawsuit reportedly reflects a broader issue in the industry, as traditional software models do not align with the computational demands of AI technology.
Anthropic declined to comment on the ongoing litigation. As the company and other players in the AI industry, such as OpenAI, move towards public offerings, concerns regarding the economics of AI inference are expected to grow.
