Anthropic's support docs told Claude Pro users they'd need to buy extra usage to access Opus models. That policy changed months ago. Nobody updated the article. paywalls Opus for Claude Pro users. Thariq, an Anthropic employee, set the record straight in a Hacker News thread this week. Opus 4.5 has been available on Pro plans since January. No extra purchase required.
The Help Center article for Claude Code model configuration still carried a warning that Opus required enabling and purchasing extra usage on Pro plans. Wayback Machine archives from December show the same stale text sitting there unchanged. That's a problem. Documentation gaps like this don't just waste developers' time. They erode trust. OpenAI and Google maintain clearer changelogs when model access policies shift.
Commenters noted that Opus's heavy compute requirements made it impractical on lower-tier plans anyway, which probably drove the original restriction. The supported model list runs from Opus 4.7 down through Haiku 3.5. Anthropic's lineup is expanding fast. Their docs aren't keeping pace, and a Hacker News comment from an employee is the closest thing to an official changelog.