Anthropic to Add Usage-Based Fees for Claude's Top Consumer Model

Anthropic said that starting after 11:59 p.m. PT on July 12, 2026, paying Claude subscribers will have to pay additional usage-based fees to access Claude Fable 5, its highest-performing consumer AI model. The move reworks how models are bundled into flat-rate subscriptions and is described as the first case of a frontier AI lab placing a consumer model behind usage-based billing.