Anthropic lifts context windows to 1M and opens Projects on Free
By Rob Litterst, Co-founder, PricingSaaS
Published
Anthropic’s pricing page · Change detected
What changed
Context window across Free, Pro, and Max plans increased from a flat 200k tokens to "Up to 1M, varies by model." The Free tier gained access to Projects (up to 5) for the first time. A new site banner announces plan changes rolling out to Pro and Max, "Claude Cowork" was dropped as a standalone comparison-table feature row, and Max 5x/20x lost its annual billing option (monthly only now).
Why it matters
Anthropic is using its free tier as an acquisition lever while simplifying its paid-tier structure elsewhere. Watch whether the 1M-token ceiling narrows in practice by model, and whether competitors follow with their own free-tier context bumps, given how common free-plan moves are across the index right now.
In context
Anthropic's free tier keeps absorbing capabilities once reserved for paid plans — this follows March's move of cross-conversation memory to Free and 2025's addition of web search to Free, now joined by Projects and a 1M-token context ceiling. The gap since Anthropic's last change is telling: 56 days, well past its own ~38-day average, suggesting this was bundled as a single coordinated release rather than incremental tweaks. Elsewhere in the index, free-plan changes are a well-worn pattern — 5.8% of all changes tracked in six months, with movers like Zoho and HubSpot doing similar — but Anthropic pairs its free-tier generosity with a quieter tightening: Max plans lose their annual billing option in the same release.