Anthropic's Claude Code pricing pain is Sam Altman's pleasure

• Anthropic caused confusion and anger when it appeared to up the pricing for access to its popular Claude Code tool.
• Anthropic later said that it was testing a change for 2% of new users and Claude Code would remain in its lowest-tier paid plan.
• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and his employees looked to dunk on Anthropic on social media throughout the episode.

Anthropic found itself in the thick of a Claude outrage last night. Meanwhile, Sam Altman seemed to enjoy the spectacle, sipping some drinks and doing some social media trolling at his rival's expense.

It started when eagle-eyed users on social media noticed that Claude Code was no longer listed as available for Pro users on Anthropic's pricing page.

If true, it meant that Anthropic's popular AI coding tool, which has changed the programming and software engineering industry, would no longer be available on its $20 a month plan, its lowest paid tier. Instead, users would have to pay $100 a month to keep using Claude Code.

Needless to say, the idea didn't go over well.

But Anthropic later responded on social media, saying that nothing had changed for existing users, and that the pricing page reflected a pricing "experiment" that only affected 2% of new sign-ups.

Amid the confusion, Sam Altman and other OpenAI staffers pounced, seizing the moment to poke fun at Anthropic while pointing users to its rival coding tool, Codex.

"ok boomer," Altman wrote in a reply to Anthropic's head of growth, adding shortly after that "tongiht i have had a couple of drinks."

There were also some memes.

The incident is the latest example of Anthropic — which has long enjoyed something of golden child status in the AI race — catching some flak for tinkering with pricing for its massively popular AI services, which rely on LLMs that are costly to build, train, and operate.

Claude Code access remains the same for now

Amol Avasare, Anthropic's head of growth, wrote on X that the changes were "understandably confusing" and thus the company was reverting back to previous pricing documentation.

"Getting lots of questions on why the landing page / docs were updated if only 2% of new signups were affected," Avasare wrote on Tuesday evening. "This was understandably confusing for the 98% of folks not part of the experiment, and we've reverted both the landing page and docs changes."

That means that Claude Code is still available for Pro users at $20 a month or $200 billed upfront for the year. (Each subscription tier still has usage limits, which we'll unpack shortly.)

The Anthropic staffer said that the company would "give folks a heads up well in advance" if anything on pricing does change.

'Our current plans weren't build for this'

Avasare said when Anthropic launched its Max subscription tier in 2025, he said the company did not foresee the type of demand it is facing now.

"When we launched Max a year ago, it didn't include Claude Code, Cowork didn't exist, and agents that run for hours weren't a thing. Max was designed for heavy chat usage, that's it," Avasare wrote.

The Anthropic head of growth said that "the way people actually use a Claude subscription has changed fundamentally," "engagement per subscriber is way up," and "our current plans weren't build for this."

In recent weeks, Anthropic also changed the usage limits that Pro and Max users are subject to, meaning some would reach their caps sooner than before. To top it all off, Claude has suffered some "major outages."

All the signs point to a company struggling to meet two broader trends that collided at once: the sheer demands of the agentic AI era and an unprecedented rise in popularity.

"We're looking at different options to keep delivering a great experience for users," Avasare wrote. "We don't know exactly what those look like yet - that's what we're testing and getting feedback on right now."