Claude Pro Subscription May Remove Claude Code Access, Existing Subscribers Unaffected
Recently, users have noticed that signing up for a Claude Pro subscription indicates it no longer includes Claude Code privileges. For many developers, the primary reason for subscribing is to use Claude Code, so removing this benefit would require them to pay more for other plans.
Currently, Company A offers a $20 per month Claude Pro subscription and a Claude Max subscription starting at $100 per month. Originally, both subscriptions included all paid benefits, although the Max subscription provided higher Claude Code usage quotas (5x or 20x).
Therefore, if the $20 subscription removes Claude Code privileges, developers would need to pay at least $100 per month to subscribe to Claude Max. If a developer doesn't have that much usage, subscribing to the $100 Claude Max would be wasteful.
An engineer from Company A also responded to this news. Essentially, the current situation is that Company A is quietly conducting A/B testing. Approximately 2% of new users preparing to sign up for a Claude Pro subscription will not be able to use Claude Code, while the remaining 98% of new users can use Claude Code as normal.
Existing Claude Pro and Claude Max subscribers can continue to use Claude Code, and their benefits are completely unaffected. As for why this is being tested, it is likely that Company A wants to force developers to pay more to use Claude Code.
How to deal with this differential treatment: If developers really want to sign up for Claude Pro and use Claude Code, they should carefully check the benefits when signing up. If they find that Claude Code is not included, they can consider changing their IP address + registering a new account for testing, to avoid their paid benefits being affected.