Judge lets Claude Max quota lawsuit proceed against Anthropic

According to Courthouse News, US federal magistrate judge Alex Tse ruled on November 7 that Anthropic must continue to face the core claims in a class-action lawsuit accusing it of misleading consumers about the usage allowances of its Claude Max plans. Tse dismissed several other requests that had been brought before the court.

Anthropic advertises two Claude Max tiers, at $100 per month and $200 per month, with usage allowances equal to 5x and 20x that of the Pro plan, respectively. But two consumers, Carl Kahn and Solomon Smith, filed suit in June arguing that the real-world figures fall far short of those marketing multiples when calculated on a weekly basis. Using one Claude model as an example, the plaintiffs calculated that the $200 plan's weekly allowance was only 6x Pro, and the $100 plan only 3.5x.

The discrepancy comes down to how the quotas are computed. A Max subscriber does indeed receive 5x or 20x the per-5-hour allowance of a Pro user, but the weekly cap does not scale proportionally. Anthropic countered that consumers should understand the advertised multiples refer to the five-hour allowance. Tse rejected that argument, noting that the allowance disclosures require clicking through two links to be seen. The case will proceed.