Anthropic faces a new lawsuit from a paying customer who alleges the company's Claude Max subscriptions provide far less access than users were promised.

According to Engadget and the Wall Street Journal, plaintiff Karl Kahn, a Washington, D.C., resident, alleges the effective caps for the Max 5x and Max 20x options wind up below what Anthropic markets across its site and other materials.

The complaint asks to be treated as a class action, which could widen the case to other U.S. subscribers. Anthropic declined to comment on the case, a spokesperson told Benzinga via email.

Anthropic sells three paid plans for individuals, including Claude Pro starting at $17 per month. On its website, Anthropic says Pro "offers at least five times the usage per session compared to our free service" during peak hours. "The number of messages you can send will vary based on message length, including the length of files you attach, the length of your current conversation, and the model or feature you use."

In the lawsuit, Kahn argues, "The actual usage provided by the Max 5x and Max 20x plans is far below the advertised amount of usage," and points to his own experience after upgrading. He says he moved to Max 20x in April and still ran into weekly ceilings quickly, including a five-hour stretch that consumed 15% of his weekly allotment.

The filing seeks class-action status for U.S. consumers who bought a Max subscription since Anthropic began selling those tiers last year. Anthropic declined to comment.

Anthropic put weekly limits on Claude Code in July after some customers ran the tool "continuously in the background, 24/7."

Usage is ultimately constrained by "tokens," the units that large language models process to turn prompts and attachments into inputs and generate outputs. Costs can swing significantly with prompt complexity, making it difficult to apply a simple software-style subscription model to compute-intensive AI services.