Max 20x is now Ultra: no 5-hour limit once verified

On 30 October 2026 Anthropic changed its two Max plans. If you use Claude Code on the top plan, the biggest part is this: once your account is verified, there is no 5-hour limit any more. Only the weekly limits are left.

I'm writing this the day it was announced, because Shuriken lives on these limits. It reads them, adds them up as fuel and switches your chats between accounts when one runs low. So here is what changed, what stayed the same, and what we are doing about it.

What Anthropic changed#

The plans were renamed, at the same prices (Anthropic's announcement):

• Max 20x is now Ultra, still $200 a month.
• Max 5x is now Max, still $100 a month.

Existing subscribers move over automatically. There is nothing to sign up for again.

The limits are where it gets interesting. From Anthropic's page about the Ultra plan:

• Verified Ultra accounts have no 5-hour limit. Verification is automatic and based on your account and payment history. Until your account is verified, a temporary limit applies. Verifying your phone number at checkout doesn't remove it.
• The weekly limits stay. Ultra has a weekly limit across all models and a separate weekly limit for Fable. Anthropic puts it at 10 times the Pro plan's usage every week.
• You can check which one you have. In Claude's Settings › Usage, a verified account shows no Current session bar.

Max (the old Max 5x) keeps its 5-hour window.

Why it matters if you use several accounts#

Until 30 October 2026 every Claude plan had two clocks: the 5-hour window and the week. Shuriken treats both. It shows each account's 5-hour and weekly bars, adds them up as fuel, and switches a chat to your next account when the one in use reaches its switch point on either clock.

A verified Ultra account has only one of those clocks. If an app still expects a 5-hour window on it, it can read the missing window as empty, and then show an account as out of room when it can keep going for the rest of the week. That's the case we are fixing.

What Shuriken will do#

We are preparing an update for this now. It is not out yet; this is what it does:

• An Ultra account shows as Ultra, and Max 5x accounts show as Max, with the new names everywhere in the app.
• No 5-hour bar on a verified Ultra account. It shows its weekly limit and its Fable weekly limit, and nothing that looks like an empty 5-hour clock.
• Fuel counts it right. Your 5-hour fuel only adds up accounts that have a 5-hour window, so two drained Max accounts next to two Ultra accounts with week to spare never read as "nothing left".
• Switching uses the clocks the account really has. A verified Ultra account switches on its weekly limits only. An Ultra account still waiting for verification keeps its temporary limit, and Shuriken follows whatever Claude reports for it.

Until the update ships, Shuriken keeps working with the limits Claude reports for each account. If an Ultra account looks odd in the meantime, tell us from Report a bug in the app.

Shuriken is not affiliated with Anthropic. Everything above about the plans comes from Anthropic's own announcement and help page, linked here, as they read on 30 October 2026.