No, it's never promised unlimited — it's always had usage limits: 20× the usage of their regular Pro plan, with a limit of 50 sessions per month (a session being a 5-hour window), although I don't know if they ever enforced this.
I can’t find any indication it was ever sold as unlimited.
It always had limits and those limits were not specified as concrete numbers.
It’s amazing how much of the internet outrage is based on the idea that it was unlimited and now it’s not. The main HN thread yesterday was full of comments complaining about losing unlimited access.
It’s so weird to watch people get angry about thinking they’re losing something they never had. Even Anthropic said less than 5% of accounts would even notice the new limits, yet I’ve seen countless comments raging that “everyone must suffer” due to the actions of a few abusing the system.
Yeah the outrage is a little artificial and definitely premature.
Some facts for sanity:
1- The poster of this blog article is Kilocode who makes a (worse) competitor to Claude Code. They are definitely capitalizing on this drama as much as they can. I’ve been getting hit by Reddit ads all day from Kilocode, all blasting Anthropic, with the false claim that their plan was "unlimited".
2- No one has any idea yet what the new limits will be, or how much usage it actually takes to be in the top 5% to be affected. The limits go into effect in a few days. We'll see then if all the drama was warranted.
There is a case to be made that they sold a multiple and are changing x or rate limiting x differently, but the tone seems different from that.