Anthropic Tests Claude Code Paywall, Reverses Course After Backlash

Anthropic quietly updated its pricing page to remove Claude Code from the $20-per-month Pro plan, making the coding agent exclusive to $100-per-month or $200-per-month Max tiers. The change, made without announcement, was spotted by users and archived by the Internet Archive before the company reversed it hours later. Developer Simon Willison, who first reported the change, noted that the pricing grid showed Claude Code removed from Pro while Claude Cowork, described as "a rebranded version of Claude Code," remained available on the $20 plan. Anthropic Head of Growth Amol Avasare later said on Twitter that the company was "running a small test on ~2% of new prosumer signups" and that existing subscribers were not affected. The move triggered criticism across Reddit, Hacker News, and Twitter. Willison wrote that the uncertainty had shaken his trust in Anthropic's pricing transparency and raised strategic concerns about investing time in teaching a tool that might become unaffordable. He noted that Claude Code "defined the category of coding agents" and is "responsible for billions of dollars in annual revenue for Anthropic already." OpenAI's Codex engineering lead, Thibault Sottiaux, responded by stating that Codex would "continue to be available both in the FREE and PLUS ($20) plans" and that "transparency and trust are two principles we will not break." Anthropic has since restored the Claude Code checkbox on the Pro tier of its public pricing page. Avasare said the broader visibility of the test was a "mistake" and that the landing page and documentation changes had been reverted, though he did not confirm whether the experiment itself had ended.