Pro subscription cannot use Claude Code anymore? Anthropic's limited testing sparks controversy

Original Title: Anthropic tests how devs react to yanking Claude Code from Pro plan
Original Author: Thomas Claburn, The Register
Translation: Peggy, BlockBeats

Editor’s note: Recently, a change on Anthropic’s official pricing page has sparked widespread attention in the developer community: the Claude Code feature, originally listed under the Pro subscription, suddenly disappeared, with some pages even marking the feature with an “X” to indicate it is no longer included. Although the company later responded that this was a small-scale test affecting only about 2% of new users, and that existing subscribers are unaffected, the lack of synchronization across different pages and inconsistent statements between customer service and actual product status quickly amplified this as a signal of “rights tightening.”

From the event itself, it seems more like a miscommunication causing trust fluctuations; but in the broader industry context, it reflects a structural shift that AI products are undergoing. As Amol Avasare explained, user interactions with Claude have shifted from simple conversations to code generation, collaborative development, and even long-running agent workflows, significantly increasing resource consumption per user. The current subscription system, based on “lightweight usage,” struggles to cover the rapidly expanding computational costs.

This also explains why Anthropic has recently introduced usage restrictions and explored new package structures—while model capabilities continue to improve and the developer ecosystem expands (such as projects like OpenClaw), the platform must find a new balance between “affordability” and “sustainability.” This pressure is not unique; Google, GitHub, and others face similar issues.

When AI shifts from a tool to a high-frequency, heavy-use infrastructure, does the original subscription logic still hold? And how will platforms redefine “paying” within the constraints of costs and user experience?

Below is the original text:

Anthropic has removed Claude Code from its Pro subscription plan—at least according to some publicly accessible web pages. However, the company states this is only a test affecting a small number of users.

On Monday, the company’s pricing page still stated that the Pro plan “includes Claude Code”; but by Tuesday, this statement had disappeared, and on the same page, the Claude Code feature was marked with an “X” instead of a checkmark. This change was first pointed out by AI industry skeptic Ed Zitron.

However, this product adjustment has not yet been synchronized across all of Anthropic’s pages. As of this article’s publication, the Claude Code product page still shows that the Pro plan includes the code generation tool. When the reporter accessed Claude Code via the command line interface (CLI), the terminal still displayed “Claude Pro.”

Screenshot of Claude Code subscription information on Anthropic’s website

When asked about this, Claude.ai insisted that the Pro plan includes Claude Code, but a recently updated document page they cited only mentions the Max plan.

Losing access to Claude Code clearly unsettles many developers, and this sentiment has reached Anthropic. The company’s growth lead, Amol Avasare, posted on social media that this adjustment is actually an experiment.

He said: “To clarify, we are conducting a small-scale test on about 2% of new Pro (professional) user registrations. Existing Pro and Max subscribers will not be affected.”

It is unclear why Anthropic believes that updating their public pricing page will only impact a subset of users rather than the entire internet. The company’s spokesperson did not respond to follow-up questions on this matter.

Avasare further explained: “When we launched Max a year ago, it did not include Claude Code, Cowork did not exist yet, and long-running agent workflows had not appeared. Max was originally designed to meet high-frequency chat use. But since then, we packaged Claude Code into Max, and after the launch of Opus 4, it quickly gained popularity. Cowork was launched, and long-duration asynchronous agents became part of daily workflows. The way users actually subscribe to Claude has fundamentally changed. The usage intensity per subscriber has increased significantly. We’ve made some small adjustments along the way (like weekly quotas, tightening restrictions during peak times), but overall usage patterns have changed dramatically, and the current packages are not designed for this. So we are exploring different options to continue providing a good experience. The specific form is not yet determined—this is exactly what we are testing and gathering feedback on.”

Recently, Anthropic has been taking measures to restrict the use of its AI models to curb demand amid tight computational resources—an issue also troubling GitHub and Google. Over the past few months, Claude series models have become very popular, and with projects like OpenClaw emerging, many developers have started building various agents based on Claude.

The core issue is that Anthropic’s subscription fees are far below the actual token costs, sometimes by an order of magnitude. Last month, the company introduced usage limits, encouraging users to operate during off-peak hours, similar to how power companies use time-of-use pricing to promote energy saving. As Avasare said, Anthropic is still exploring further usage restriction plans.

Unsurprisingly, many Claude users expressed dissatisfaction on forums. Many initially thought this was a substantive package adjustment and pointed out that Anthropic seems to be “indirectly” pushing existing Pro users toward lower-cost Chinese models like Minimax, Qwen, Kimi, and GLM.

More noteworthy than the change itself is the lack of communication. Anthropic apparently did not clearly explain the adjustment to users, as if they believed that individual users paying only $20 a month did not need to be fully informed in advance.

But corporate clients will obviously not accept such uncertainty—they may worry that Anthropic does not prioritize customer relationships.

Avasare also seems to have realized this. He said: “Once we finalize the plan, if it involves changes for existing subscribers, we will notify everyone well in advance.” He also promised that “users will hear directly from us, not from screenshots on X or Reddit.”

It should be noted that this statement itself was posted by him on X.

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