Claude's Max Plan

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Plans, Pricing, and Perceived Value

  • Max is seen as mostly “more of the same”: higher rate limits and output sizes at $100–$200/month, but no clearly new capabilities or models.
  • Several commenters say $200/month is reasonable for heavy professional use or vs API spend; others say that’s more than their monthly groceries and not justifiable for “no new features.”
  • Many want capability-based tiers (e.g., Deep Research‑like tools, better coding, large-context or voice) rather than pure usage tiers.

Usage Limits, Reliability, and Transparency

  • Strong frustration that “more usage” and free/pro limits are vague and seemingly dynamic; users feel limits have quietly tightened on Pro, possibly to make Max more attractive.
  • Reports of frequent downtime, dropped responses, and “overloaded” API errors; some canceled Pro specifically over reliability.
  • “Priority access during high traffic” is interpreted as an admission that lower tiers will be throttled more as higher tiers arrive.

Claude vs Competitors

  • For coding:
    • Some say Claude 3.7 with extended thinking is roughly on par with o1‑pro for many tasks.
    • Others find Gemini 2.5 Pro significantly better for large codebases, long context, and test-passing reliability; still others say o1‑pro clearly wins.
    • A subset feel Claude 3.7 has regressed (“dumber,” over‑refactors, misunderstandings).
  • Gemini 2.5 Pro + Deep Research is repeatedly cited as strong value, often making OpenAI/Anthropic subscriptions feel unnecessary.
  • Claude is praised for design help and UI features but criticized as over‑censored by some.

Clients, UI, and Developer Workflows

  • Some like Claude’s web UI (speed, diagrams, search in chats) and project organization; others think recent redesign broke basic UX (scrolling, selection, copy/paste).
  • Heavy coders gravitate to editors and wrappers (Cursor, Roo Code, Cline, etc.), where API usage can easily reach tens or hundreds of dollars per week.
  • Several argue that for $200/month, people are better off with pay‑as‑you‑go API plus their own UI, unless Max meaningfully improves reliability and exclusives.

Open Source and Self‑Hosting

  • Rising subscription prices push interest toward open models (DeepSeek, Qwen, QwQ) and self-hosting with UIs like OpenWebUI, LibreChat, LobeChat.
  • Commenters note that even open models require substantial hardware, so “free” isn’t actually free, but the control and predictability are appealing.