2 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Jul 20, 2026 09:34 AM IST
Anthropic has been putting off charging Claude subscribers for usage-based access to its best consumer AI model, Claude Fable 5, for months now. This bonus usage phase is coming to an end on July 20, at least somewhat.
In its latest revised Fable 5 access plans, Anthropic has announced that Claude Max and Team Premium subscribers will still be able to use the model as part of their subscription but at a sharply reduced 50 per cent usage limit.
Meanwhile, Pro and Team Standard subscribers will effectively lose all access to Fable 5 under the paid plans and will have to pay API prices to continue using the model. However, they will be given a one-time $100 usage credit, which is not expected to last very long.
Anthropic has repeatedly pushed back the deadline for removing Claude Fable 5 from its subscription plans. The change marks a significant shift away from the traditional all-you-can-use AI subscription model and toward token-based pricing, a move that could substantially increase costs for Claude power users.
Anthropic has previously acknowledged that it has been hard to manage the surging demand for Fable 5, which may have been frustrating for users at times. However, it has also continued to invest in more compute capacity.Earlier this week, Reuters reported that Anthropic and Meta are in talks for a potential $10 billion compute lease deal that would see Anthropic lease Meta’s computing infrastructure for up to two years.
Given that the IPO-bound AI startup initially planned to remove Fable 5 from subscription plans entirely, the new arrangement is likely a response to rising competition from rivals such as OpenAI, which has released GPT-5.6 Sol, a model that it claims can achieve performance similar to Fable 5 at a third of the cost. A wave of new open-weight models released from Chinese competitors such as Moonshot AI is also likely to have added to the massive pricing pressure.
