Author: Claude, Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Introduction: On April 21, Anthropic quietly removed its programming agent Claude Code from the $20/month Pro plan, with the related pricing page and help documents updated accordingly. Although growth director Amol Avasare claimed this was just a "small-scale test" for about 2% of new users, the entire site documentation has been completely rewritten to "Max plan only," triggering a massive backlash from the developer community. OpenAI quickly stated that Codex would remain in the free and Plus plans, while the local model camp called this situation "the best time to switch to self-hosting."

Anthropic is probing the price tolerance of developers, the cost may be user trust.

On April 21, developers noticed significant changes on Anthropic's official website pricing page: Claude Code was marked as unavailable (showing an "X" mark) in the feature comparison table of the Pro plan ($20/month), whereas the day before, the page still stated "includes Claude Code" for the Pro plan. Almost simultaneously, the wording in the Anthropic help documents quietly changed from "use Claude Code with your Pro or Max plan" to "use Claude Code with your Max plan."

AI industry observer Ed Zitron was the first to sound the alarm on Bluesky, and the news quickly exploded into discussions on Hacker News, Reddit r/LocalLLaMA, and X platforms.

Officially claimed "small-scale test," but documents have been completely rewritten

In response to the intense reaction from the developer community, Anthropic's growth director Amol Avasare posted on the X platform that this was just a small-scale test for about 2% of newly registered users and that existing Pro and Max subscription users were unaffected.

However, several media outlets pointed out that Avasare's statement contradicted the actual situation: the feature comparison matrix on the pricing page has been updated across the site, and the help documents have also been modified simultaneously, these changes are directed at all visitors, which does not resemble a gray test for 2% of users. According to The Register, as of the moment of publication, Anthropic's spokesperson had not made any further comments on this contradiction.

Avasare subsequently explained the background logic for the adjustments in his tweets: when the Max plan was launched a year ago, Claude Code was not bundled within it, Cowork did not exist, and running asynchronous agents for several hours was not yet the norm. Afterward, the usage of Claude Code surged significantly after Opus 4, and the user usage pattern has fundamentally changed. He admitted, "The usage of each subscription user has significantly increased, and our existing plan structure was not designed for this."

This statement reveals a key piece of information: the access to Claude Code offered at $20 per month has become unsustainable in terms of computing costs. Industry analysis shows that each Claude Code programming session consumes tokens far exceeding those of ordinary chats, and the computational costs of long programming sessions could reach several times the subscription fee.

Jumping from $20 to $100, developers are pushed to a crossroads

If this change ultimately results in a permanent adjustment, Pro users wishing to continue using Claude Code will need to upgrade to the starting price of $100/month for the Max 5x plan or $200/month for the Max 20x plan. The price has increased fivefold.

The reaction from developers was swift and intense. On GitHub, an issue titled "Breaking Change: Claude Code CLI Removed from Pro Plan Without Notice" appeared within hours.

A related post on Hacker News received over 100 votes and more than 40 comments in less than an hour. One user's experience was particularly representative: he started with the $20 Pro plan in January this year, upgraded to $200 due to frequently hitting usage limits, then downgraded back to $100 due to a decline in the quality of Claude Opus 4.6 (recently returned to $20 because OpenAI Codex's performance on GPT-5.4 was satisfactory). "I went from being the most enthusiastic advocate to my current state," he wrote.

The response from the Reddit r/LocalLLaMA community was even more direct. A post titled "Anthropic Removes Claude Code from Pro Plan, Users Say 'Best Time to Switch to Local Models'" sparked extensive discussions, focusing on the advancements in programming capabilities of open-source models like Meta's Llama series, Mistral, and DeepSeek over the past year, as well as the maturity of local deployment tools like Ollama and LM Studio.

OpenAI swiftly strikes back, Codex remaining in free and Plus plans

Competitors did not miss this opportunity.

At OpenAI, an employee responsible for Codex related work posted on the X platform: "I don’t know what they are doing over there, but Codex will continue to be available in the free and Plus ($20) plans. We have the computing power and efficient models to support it. For important changes, we will communicate with the community in advance."

The timing and wording of this statement are very pointed.

OpenAI's Codex, as the main competitor of Claude Code, currently provides a usage limit of 30 to 150 messages every 5 hours under the ChatGPT Plus ($20/month) plan, and basic access is also available in the free plan. Moreover, OpenAI released a Codex plugin designed specifically for Claude Code users weeks ago, allowing developers to call Codex directly for code review or task delegation within the Claude Code workflow.

Google also hasn’t been idle; Gemini CLI is currently completely free. According to The New Stack, Anthropic has recently faced pressure in terms of computing supply, having not only removed Claude Code's Pro access but also cut off the channels through which third-party client OpenClaw could use Claude via subscription accounts. Issues with platform stability and frequent downtime have also provided opportunities for competitors.