Anthropic Claude Pro and Max usage limits lawsuit (In re Claude Service Degradation Litigation)

Paying Claude subscribers are suing Anthropic, PBC, over a stretch in spring 2026 when they say their usage limits ran out faster and Claude Code got worse, while Anthropic kept charging full price. The case is In re Claude Service Degradation Litigation, No. 3:26-cv-07699-RFL, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco.

The proposed class covers people in the United States who bought Claude Pro, Max 5x or Max 20x directly from Anthropic and used it from March 4 to May 6, 2026. Anthropic filed a motion to dismiss on October 14, 2026. No court has ruled on it, no class has been certified and there is no settlement.

Anthropic is a Delaware public benefit corporation based in San Francisco that makes Claude. The complaint says individual plans cost about $20 a month for Pro, $100 for Max 5x and $200 for Max 20x, and that paid plans include regular Claude and Claude Code, an agentic coding tool.

The three plaintiffs are California Pro subscribers. Isabelo Pascual of Los Angeles and Moneal Patel of San Diego used both regular Claude and Claude Code. Lauren Morgan of Huntington Beach renewed on April 10, 2026, and used only regular Claude.

They are represented by Milberg, PLLC (William J. Edelman), Justice Jagher London & Millen LLC (Matthew W. Ruan and Jonathan M. Jagher) and Carroll Shamberg LLC (Katrina Carroll). The case is before Judge Rita F. Lin.

According to the complaint, an Anthropic engineer announced on March 26, 2026, that five-hour session limits for Free, Pro and Max users would run down faster during weekday peak hours, while weekly limits stayed the same. The complaint says Anthropic acknowledged about 7% of users, especially Pro subscribers, would hit limits they would not have hit before.

On April 23, 2026, Anthropic published a postmortem tracing Claude Code quality complaints to three changes. On March 4, it lowered Claude Code's default reasoning effort from high to medium, which it called "the wrong tradeoff" and reverted on April 7. On March 26, a caching change had a bug that cleared Claude's older reasoning every turn, which "made Claude seem forgetful and repetitive" until a fix on April 10. On April 16, a prompt instruction to reduce verbosity "hurt coding quality" and was reverted April 20.

The postmortem said the caching bug also caused cache misses, which "we believe" drove reports of "usage limits draining faster than expected." It said, "As of April 23, we're resetting usage limits for all subscribers." On May 6, Anthropic announced it was doubling Claude Code's five-hour limits for paid plans and removing the peak-hours reduction on Claude Code for Pro and Max.

The complaint says subscribers paid more than the reduced service was worth. It claims Anthropic did not give individual notice of the peak-hour change, did not show account-level data on how usage was consumed and did not refund or credit fees for the affected weeks. It says the April reset and May increase did not make up for lost access. Pascual and Patel say their sessions sometimes still showed as full after they bought extra usage. Morgan says she paid $20 and $84.55 in extra usage in July 2026.

It brings six claims: California's Unfair Competition Law, False Advertising Law and Consumers Legal Remedies Act, breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and unjust enrichment.

Anthropic has publicly said, in the postmortem, that "We never intentionally degrade our models" and that its API and inference layer were not affected. Its motion to dismiss argues the complaint should be thrown out, but the motion's text was not in the public records we checked, so we cannot report its arguments.

Pascual's case was filed July 24, 2026, and Patel's on July 28. On August 26, Judge Lin consolidated them and denied, without prejudice, a request to appoint interim class counsel as premature. The consolidated complaint was filed September 14.

Anthropic's motion to dismiss, a supporting declaration and a request for judicial notice were filed October 14. The docket index lists another entry on October 19 without a description. The court has not decided whether the claims can go forward, whether Anthropic broke any law or contract or whether a class should be certified.

The proposed nationwide class is "All persons in the United States who purchased a Claude Pro, Max 5x, or Max 20x subscription directly from Anthropic and used that subscription during the Class Period." A California subclass uses the same wording for people in California.

• The class period runs from March 4, 2026, to May 6, 2026, and could change in discovery.
• It covers users of regular Claude, Claude Code or both.
• Anthropic and its affiliates, officers, directors and employees, counsel in the case, the judge and the judge's family and staff are excluded.

Free, Team, Enterprise and API customers are not named. The definition does not say whether subscriptions bought through an app store count.

• Save receipts or billing history for Pro or Max charges and any extra usage purchases from March to May 2026.
• Note which products you used and keep any screenshots of usage limit warnings.
• Follow the motion to dismiss. If the case survives, class certification comes later.

No money is available. The complaint asks the court to declare Anthropic's practices unlawful and award actual, compensatory and nominal damages. It also seeks restitution of the share of subscription fees and extra usage payments it says Anthropic kept unfairly. It asks for an order requiring clear disclosure of usage allocation changes, account-level usage information and fair remediation for degraded paid service, plus interest and fees. These are requests, not awards.

The complaint says Anthropic had not given automatic pro rata credits or refunds as of its filing.

• March 4, 2026: Claude Code's default reasoning effort is lowered.
• March 26, 2026: Peak-hour limit change announced; caching bug ships.
• April 10, 2026: Caching bug fixed.
• April 23, 2026: Postmortem published; usage limits reset.
• May 6, 2026: Higher Claude Code limits announced.
• July 24 and 28, 2026: First two cases filed.
• August 26, 2026: Cases consolidated.
• September 14, 2026: Consolidated complaint filed.
• October 14, 2026: Motion to dismiss filed.

There are no claim, opt-out or objection deadlines.

• Session limit: The usage a subscriber can spend in a five-hour window before waiting for a reset.
• Claude Code: Anthropic's coding tool that can read code, edit files and run commands.
• Cache miss: When saved context cannot be reused, so more input must be processed again.
• Motion to dismiss: A request to end a case because the complaint fails legally, even if its facts are true.
• Restitution: Returning money a defendant should not keep.

The plaintiffs will oppose the motion, Anthropic will reply and Judge Lin will rule. A motion to dismiss can be granted, denied or granted with permission to amend.

For our report on the motion, see Anthropic asks court to toss Claude Pro and Max usage limits class action.

This article relies on the consolidated complaint, the consolidation order, the court docket, Anthropic's April 23 postmortem and its May 6 announcement.

The March 26 peak-hour announcement and the 7% figure come from the complaint's account of an X post, which we did not view. Claims of overpayment and misleading marketing are allegations. Anthropic's dismissal arguments are unknown because the motion was not publicly available to us. The docket view comes from a public archive and may not show every filing.

Class Action Pulse is not a law firm or settlement administrator and does not guarantee eligibility or payment. This article is general information, not legal advice.