My annual Claude Pro plan renewed in late July. Opus 5 underperformed with a greater token cost, and by late August I asked Fin, Anthropic’s support chatbot, for a refund over the performance problems. It replied that my purchase “doesn’t meet our refund eligibility criteria due to falling outside of the timeframe for our policy”. Time for a creative solution.

The method itself is simple. If an annual Pro subscriber upgrades to Max and the remaining balance, when prorated, is higher than the Max price, $100 for Max 5x, Claude returns the remaining balance as “credit” toward the subscription. On the web, under Settings > Billing, select “Adjust plans”, then choose Max 5x and confirm. Each app has a different interface.

It is not a full refund, but the balance is reclaimed as credit instead of wasting away every month. You can stop the subscription, and have more control over when and how to start another one.

When I upgraded mine, Opus 5.5 had not been released yet, and there wasn’t a model I wanted. It was either commit to a one-year subscription with Opus 5 and Sonnet 5, both troubled, or make the most out of Fable. I had already been weighing the latter. I knew Fable was a capable model, and I was planning to use 50% of the weekly quota on it if there was no other option available.

The upgrade takes effect immediately, and the annual Pro plan ends with it; Max is billed monthly only. Anthropic doesn’t disclose the prorating formula in detail. But for regular users, the method gives a month of Max 5x when usage for a particular month goes beyond the usual, while also freeing you to try out competitors the following month without the worry of missing out.

Keep in mind the credit issued is subscription credit, not usage credit. Anthropic applies it to future subscription costs, so it cannot pay for pay-as-you-go usage past the plan’s limits.