Anthropic Ends OpenClaw Coverage in Claude Plans
The April OpenClaw billing change separated third-party harness usage from Claude plan limits. See current plan links and historical-credit caveats.
By AI Pricing Guru Editorial Team
The AI Pricing Guru editorial team verifies prices against official provider pages and maintains the datasets, calculators and guides. See our methodology and contact us to report a correction.
Report summary — 2026-10-31
- Historical April report: OpenClaw-driven Claude-login usage moved outside included subscription limits and required separately billed Extra Usage.
- October 31 update: Ultra replaces Max 20x automatically at the same subscription price; this does not establish third-party harness entitlement.
- April one-time credit reports are historical, not an offer to claim today. Monthly Claude Platform API credits are a separate benefit.
Current Claude subscriptions—not a third-party usage entitlement
| Plan | Recorded price | Tier | Published limits and access |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Pro | $20/mo Price: Source verified: 2026-11-12 01:16:49 UTC. Official source | pro | At least 5x Free per five-hour session, with weekly limits. Outside the limited-time launch offer, Fable requires separate usage credits. Claude Duet research preview requires waitlist access, initially for US Pro, Max, and Ultra subscribers; shares existing plan limits, including background checks and tasks. No separate Duet allowance. Fable 5.2 launch offer: November 9–16, 2026, ending 11:59 pm PT on November 16. All Fable models temporarily included up to 50% of shared weekly limits; after the window or allowance, usage credits apply if enabled. One Fable reset for paid billing and seat membership before November 9 at 10 am PT; Team self-serve trials count as paid. Reset expires with the window; unused allowance does not roll over. Access and limits: Source verified: 2026-11-12 01:16:49 UTC. Official source |
| Claude Max | $100/mo Price: Source verified: 2026-11-12 01:16:49 UTC. Official source | power | 5x Pro usage every five hours AND every week. Fable uses up to half the shared weekly allowance, not an additional pool. Continue beyond included limits with separately paid usage credits. Includes $100/month in claimable Claude Platform API credits. $100/month Claude Platform API credits. Claim after seven days on an active eligible plan by linking one Console organization. Credits refresh monthly, expire without rollover and cover direct Claude Platform API usage, not interactive Claude Code, app extra usage or third-party clouds. API requests stop without other credits when exhausted; API billing is separate. Claude Duet research preview requires waitlist access, initially for US Pro, Max, and Ultra subscribers; shares existing plan limits, including background checks and tasks. No separate Duet allowance. Fable 5.2 launch: 1–3 Fable resets (under 6 months: 1; 6–12 months: 2; over 12 months: 3), based on first paid bill. Requires paid billing before November 9, 2026, 10 am PT and, for Team, seat membership before that cutoff. Resets expire March 8, 2027 at 11:59 pm PT; restore Fable weekly usage and any five-hour window, never raise limits. Canceling or downgrading forfeits unused resets. Access and limits: Source verified: 2026-11-12 01:16:49 UTC. Official source |
| Claude Ultra | $200/mo Price: Source verified: 2026-11-12 01:16:49 UTC. Official source | max | 10x Pro usage every week. No five-hour cap for verified accounts; unverified accounts have a temporary limit, removed automatically after account verification. Fable uses up to half the shared weekly allowance, not an additional pool. Continue beyond included limits with separately paid usage credits. Includes $200/month in claimable Claude Platform API credits. $200/month Claude Platform API credits. Claim after seven days on an active eligible plan by linking one Console organization. Credits refresh monthly, expire without rollover and cover direct Claude Platform API usage, not interactive Claude Code, app extra usage or third-party clouds. API requests stop without other credits when exhausted; API billing is separate. Claude Duet research preview requires waitlist access, initially for US Pro, Max, and Ultra subscribers; shares existing plan limits, including background checks and tasks. No separate Duet allowance. Fable 5.2 launch: 1–3 Fable resets (under 6 months: 1; 6–12 months: 2; over 12 months: 3), based on first paid bill. Requires paid billing before November 9, 2026, 10 am PT and, for Team, seat membership before that cutoff. Resets expire March 8, 2027 at 11:59 pm PT; restore Fable weekly usage and any five-hour window, never raise limits. Canceling or downgrading forfeits unused resets. Access and limits: Source verified: 2026-11-12 01:16:49 UTC. Official source |
Price and access verification are shown separately for each plan. Prices and plan notes are rendered at build time from the maintained subscription dataset.
Dated story text, scoped to the report date above:
This is the April 5 report on a billing-route change, not a fresh price increase. A customer email shared publicly said that, from April 4 at noon Pacific, third-party harnesses including OpenClaw could no longer draw from Claude subscription limits and would require Extra Usage instead.
October 31 plan update: Claude Ultra replaces Max 20x automatically with no price change. Claude Max is the lower heavy-use tier. These current names do not prove that a third-party harness can use included allowance; verify the exact authentication and billing route.
What the April change meant
The customer notice distinguished subscription allowance from pay-as-you-go Extra Usage. This was not the removal of the underlying Claude models from every third-party integration.
| Workflow | April report’s distinction | Buying check today |
|---|---|---|
| Claude’s own apps | Included plan usage within limits | Check your current plan and remaining allowance |
| Direct first-party Claude Code | Included where the paid plan permits | Shared product limits still apply |
| Third-party harness using Claude login | Extra Usage rather than included allowance | Confirm current permission, authentication and billing terms |
| Claude Platform API key | Token-metered API | Track actual usage and set Console spend limits |
| Pricing data: How we verify → | ||
Do not treat “Claude works in this tool” as proof that its traffic is covered by a flat subscription.
Current Max and Ultra limits
Max provides 5× Pro usage every five hours and every week. Ultra provides 10× Pro weekly usage and no five-hour cap only for verified accounts; unverified accounts retain a temporary cap. Weekly and model-specific limits still apply.
Those are first-party plan conditions, not a promise that OpenClaw or another harness can draw from the pool. Our Ultra launch report explains migration and automatic account verification.
Historical credits are not a current promotion
April users reported a one-time Extra Usage credit, including reports from then-named Max 20x accounts. Those observations belong to the original event; do not budget a new signup around them.
Separately, current official terms offer eligible Max, Ultra and Team subscribers monthly Claude Platform API credits after the eligibility period and Console-organization linking. These credits do not cover interactive Claude Code or Claude/Cowork Extra Usage. Read the monthly API-credit report before combining any balances.
Practical budgeting
Choose the supported route your workflow actually uses. For an API-key app, estimate input, output, cache creation, cache reads, tool calls and retries. Keep account spend limits and a fallback configured; the subscription fee is not a ceiling on separately metered requests.
Compare Anthropic API pricing with OpenAI pricing and use the token calculator. Our API cost guide explains the calculation without treating an old token rate as today’s quote.
Sources for the October plan update: official pricing, Ultra help, and monthly API-credit terms. The April customer-email account remains historical reporting, not a newly verified access entitlement.
For a separate API fallback, compare Novita’s hosted open-model catalog on your workload; its billing is independent of Claude subscriptions.
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