Anthropic has approved it! Starting 7/20, Fable 5 will remain on the Max plan, while Pro users will switch to a $100 credit limit

Anthropic announced on the evening of July 17 via its official account @claudeai that starting July 20, the flagship model Claude Fable 5 will be formally included in all Max and Team Premium plans. Users can consume up to 50% of their weekly allowance. Pro and Team Standard users will switch to paying with usage credits to access it, and will receive a one-time $100 credit. This is the final resolution after Fable 5’s subscription included duration was extended three times and originally was set to expire on July 19. The report is compiled from the announcement of the Claude official X account.
(Background: Claude Fable 5 extended by 7 more days! OpenAI Codex removes the 5-hour limit)
(Additional context: In terms of deal size, it’s potentially $10 billion! Anthropic reportedly plans to lease compute resources from Meta to ease the GPU shortage crisis)

Key summary

• Starting July 20, Fable 5 is included in all Max and Team Premium plans, accounting for up to 50% of the weekly allowance cap
• Pro and Team Standard switch to usage credits, with a one-time issuance of a $100 credit
• Fable 5 pricing is $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens, which is twice that of Opus 4.8

At 8:14 p.m. on July 17, Anthropic issued an announcement stating that starting July 20, Claude Fable 5 will be included in all Max and Team Premium plans, with a usage cap of 50% of the weekly allowance.

Beginning July 20, Claude Fable 5 will be included in all Max and Team Premium plans, at 50% of limits.

Pro and Team Standard users will continue to have access to Fable via usage credits, and will receive a one-time $100 credit.

Demand for Fable has been challenging to…

— Claude (@claudeai) July 18, 2026

The official reason is capacity. Anthropic wrote that Fable’s demand has been “very hard to predict,” so it chose to roll it out to subscription plans in stages, extending access multiple times after securing additional compute resources.

Demand for Fable has been challenging to predict, which is why we rolled it out to subscription plans in stages, extending access several times as we secured additional capacity.

After being extended three times via ###, the answer is routing

Looking back at the timeline makes it clearer. Fable 5 originally was supposed to exit subscription plans on July 7. Anthropic first extended it to July 12, then extended again to July 19 on July 13—each time extending it together for all paid users.

This time it’s not a fourth extension—it’s routing. Max and Team Premium directly become the default “included as standard,” while Pro and Team Standard are pushed to the per-usage billing side. Users whose nerves were repeatedly strained by changing schedules over the past two weeks finally get a version with no expiration date, as long as you’re paying for Max.

How long can Pro’s $100 last

For Pro users, the compensation is a one-time $100 usage credits. Based on Anthropic’s published pricing, Fable 5 charges $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens. That’s twice the cost of Opus 4.8, and also the most expensive tier among models Anthropic has made available to the public so far.

Converting it, $100 is roughly equivalent to 10 million input tokens, or 2 million output tokens. It’s fine for occasional heavy runs, but for heavy users who keep Claude Code running all day, this allowance won’t last many days.

OpenAI launched last week an activity that offers $100 Codex credits, publicly targeting Claude users. Now Anthropic is giving Pro users compensation of $100 as well. As for compute resources, reports on the same day said Anthropic is in talks to rent compute power from Meta, with deal size estimated at $10 billion. Capacity issues obviously haven’t been resolved—this time Anthropic simply decided to allocate the limited amount first to the group that pays the most.

FAQ

Which plans can use Claude Fable 5 without extra cost right now?

Starting July 20, Fable 5 is included in Max and Team Premium plans. It can consume up to 50% of the weekly usage allowance. It shares the same allowance pool with other Claude models, with no additional payment required.

Can Pro users still use Fable 5?

Yes, but they must switch to paying by usage with usage credits. Anthropic will issue a one-time $100 credit, priced at $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens.