Anthropic triggered significant developer backlash by “silently” removing Claude Code from its $20/month Pro plan for new signups and updating its public pricing documentation to show the tool as exclusive to the $100/month Max tier.
Following a wave of criticism on social media and developer forums like Hacker News, Anthropic reversed the change within 24 hours, restoring the feature to the Pro plan.
1. What Happened: The “2% Test”
The confusion began when developers noticed that the “checkbox” for Claude Code on the Anthropic pricing page had been replaced with an “X” for Pro users.
- The Quiet Update: Anthropic updated its support documentation to say “Using Claude Code with your Max plan,” removing mentions of the Pro plan.
- The Response: Anthropic’s Head of Growth, Amol Avasare, claimed this was a “small test on ~2% of new prosumer signups” to evaluate different options.
- The Reversal: By April 22, the pricing page and support documents were reverted globally to include Claude Code in the Pro plan once again.
2. Why Anthropic Attempted the Change
The primary driver for the attempted price hike is the unsustainable economics of agentic AI.
- High Token Consumption: Traditional chat uses relatively few tokens. However, “agentic” coding (where Claude Code autonomously reads files and runs terminal commands) can consume 50–100x more compute power per session.
- The “$20 Wall”: Industry leaders, including GitHub, have recently noted that power users of AI coding tools often incur compute costs that exceed the $20 subscription fee by a factor of ten or more.
- Tier Misalignment: Anthropic stated that the Pro and Max plans were originally designed for “heavy chat usage,” while the newer Claude Code and Claude Cowork features demand a far more robust plan structure.
3. Current Claude Code Pricing (as of April 2026)
Following the reversal, the entry point for Claude Code remains the Pro plan, though higher tiers are recommended for power users.
| Plan | Price (Monthly) | Claude Code Access | Usage Limits (~5-hr window) |
| Free | $0 | No | N/A |
| Pro | $20 | Yes | ~44,000 tokens / ~45 messages |
| Max 5x | $100 | Yes | ~88,000 tokens / ~225 messages |
| Max 20x | $200 | Yes | ~220,000 tokens / ~900 messages |
| Team Premium | $125 /seat | Yes | Max 5x-level per seat |
4. Market Reaction: OpenAI’s “Marketing Gift”
OpenAI quickly capitalized on the confusion. Thibault Sottiaux, head of OpenAI’s Codex (formerly GitHub Copilot), publicly pledged that Codex would remain available in both Free and Plus ($20) plans, emphasizing “transparency and trust.”
Developers’ Takeaway: While Claude Code remains available for $20 for now, Anthropic has signaled that the current plan structures “weren’t built for this” usage, suggesting that more permanent pricing changes or tighter rate limits are likely coming later in 2026.