Anthropic class action alleges Claude subscribers paid for degraded AI service

A California consumer filed a class action lawsuit against Anthropic PBC on Tuesday alleging the artificial intelligence company improperly retained subscription fees after reducing the value of its paid Claude Pro and Max plans through backend changes and service issues. Plaintiff Isabelo Pascual claims subscribers received materially diminished services without refunds or credits for the affected periods. According to the complaint, Anthropic implemented changes beginning in March that allegedly caused subscribers' usage limits to deplete more quickly and degraded the performance of Claude Code, the company's AI coding assistant included with paid subscriptions. The complaint alleges Anthropic announced on March 26 that Pro and Max subscribers would move through their five-hour session limits more quickly during weekday peak hours, even though weekly limits would remain the same. Pascual further alleges Anthropic later acknowledged separate backend issues affecting Claude Code between March and April 2026, explaining that backend changes reduced the tool's reasoning capability, caused it to lose context, repeat tasks and generate cache misses. Although Anthropic later reset subscribers' usage limits and announced on May 6 that it would increase usage limits and eliminate the peak-hour reduction, the lawsuit alleges the changes left subscribers uncompensated for the earlier period of allegedly degraded service. The proposed class action lawsuit seeks to represent a nationwide class of consumers who purchased Claude Pro, Max 5x or Max 20x subscriptions directly from Anthropic and used them between March 4 and May 6, 2026, along with a California subclass. The lawsuit brings claims for alleged violations of California's Unfair Competition Law, False Advertising Law and Consumers Legal Remedies Act as well as breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing and unjust enrichment.