US Magistrate Judge Alex Tse ruled that Anthropic must face a lawsuit alleging that its Claude Max subscription plans mislead consumers. The court dismissed several other claims in the case but allowed the core allegations regarding usage limits to proceed.
Anthropic markets its $100 and $200 monthly Max plans as offering 5 times and 20 times the usage capacity of the Pro plan, respectively. However, plaintiffs Karl Kahn and Solomon Smith allege that these multipliers do not hold up when calculated on a weekly basis.
The plaintiffs found that the $200 plan provides only 6 times the weekly capacity of the Pro plan, while the $100 plan offers 3.5 times. The discrepancy arises because while users may hit the advertised limits within a 5-hour window, the total weekly caps do not scale proportionally.
Anthropic argued that its help pages clarified that the multipliers applied to single usage cycles rather than the entire month. Judge Tse rejected this defense, noting that the information was buried two clicks away from the main sales page on claude.com.
The judge concluded that since consumers pay for a monthly subscription, they reasonably expect the advertised usage limits to apply to the monthly period. Consequently, the lawsuit will move forward on charges of negligent misrepresentation and breach of contract.
