While waiting yet again for Claude's servers to come back online, I decided to calculate exactly how much money I'm losing. The results were worse than I expected.
I pay $200/month for Claude Max 20x. Here's what I actually get:
| What They Promise | What I Get |
|---|---|
| "Premium experience" | 5+ days unable to work in January-February 2026 |
| 99.41% uptime (claimed) | 96.7% (official) / ~83% (real experience) |
| Compensation for outages | $0.00 |
| My actual loss | $784/month (work time + subscription waste) |
On status.claude.com, Anthropic proudly displays:
- claude.ai: 99.41% uptime
- Claude API: 99.68% uptime
- Claude Code: 99.70% uptime
Sounds great, right? It's a lie.
I tracked every official incident on status.claude.com from January 20 to February 3, 2026:
| Date | Incident | Downtime |
|---|---|---|
| Feb 2 | Opus 4.5 errors | 6 min |
| Feb 1 | Sonnet 4.5 errors | 19 min |
| Feb 1 | Opus 4.5 errors | 10 min |
| Jan 28 | Opus 4.5 (x2) + Sonnet 3.7 | 114 min |
| Jan 27 | Console + Haiku 3.5 | 72 min |
| Jan 26 | Opus 4.5 | ~120 min |
| Jan 23 | Signature errors | ~160 min |
| Jan 22 | Multiple incidents | ~50 min |
| Jan 21 | Sonnet 4.5 | 48 min |
| Jan 20 | Opus + Sonnet | 53 min |
| TOTAL | 19 incidents | ~652 min (~11 hours) |
Official Math:
- 14 days = 336 hours
- 11 hours of "official" downtime
- (336 - 11) / 336 = 96.7% uptime
What Anthropic DOESN'T count as downtime:
-
❌ "Degraded performance" — when the service is so slow it's unusable, but technically "up"
-
❌ Rate limits hit early — you paid for 100%, you got cut off at 70%, but service is "available"
-
❌ Memory leak in Claude Code 2.1.27 — CLI literally crashed with OOM in 20 seconds for ~24 hours, but listed as "some users experiencing issues"
-
❌ Slowdowns without official incident — service crawling for hours, no status page update
-
❌ Credit/billing issues — can't use what you paid for, but technically "operational"
Their definition of "uptime" = "servers respond to ping" Your definition of "uptime" = "I can actually do my work"
These are not the same thing.
My personal experience in January-February 2026:
Minimum 5 days where I could not work — service either down, throwing errors, rate limited early, or so slow it was unusable.
5 days out of 30 = 83.3% real uptime
The Three Uptimes:
| Metric | Value | What It Means |
|---|---|---|
| Claimed | 99.41% | Marketing fantasy |
| Official incidents | ~96.7% | "Server responded to ping" |
| Real user experience | ~83% | "I could actually work" |
And I'm not alone. From Hacker News (Feb 3, 2026):
"Feels like the whole infra is built on a house of cards and badly struggles 70% of the time."
"Even when Claude isn't down on status indicator, I get issues with Claude all the time being very slow where it is basically down. I have to kill the request and then restart it."
"Claude 2.1.x is 'literally unusable' because it frequently completely hangs (requires kill -9) and uses 100% cpu"
$200/month for Max 20x subscription
| Claimed Uptime | Real Uptime | Lost Value |
|---|---|---|
| 99.41% | 84.1% | 15.3% = $30.60/month |
But that's the optimistic calculation using their own (incomplete) status page data.
| Days in Month | Days Lost | Lost Value |
|---|---|---|
| 30 | 5+ | 16.7% = $33.40/month minimum |
Here's where it gets serious.
I use Claude Max for professional work. When Claude is down, I'm not just losing subscription value — I'm losing billable hours and missing deadlines.
Mid-level developer daily rate (remote): ~$150/day
| Category | Amount |
|---|---|
| COST (what I paid) | $200/month |
| LOSS (what I didn't receive): | |
| — Unusable subscription time (~17%) | $34 |
| — Lost work productivity (5 days × $150) | $750 |
| TOTAL LOSS | $784 |
Let me repeat that:
I spend $200/month. I lose $784/month in value.
And that's conservative. For different developer levels:
| Developer Level | Daily Rate | 5 Days Lost | + Unused Sub (17%) | Total Loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Junior | $100 | $500 | $34 | $534 |
| Mid-level | $150 | $750 | $34 | $784 |
| Senior | $250 | $1,250 | $34 | $1,284 |
| Consultant | $400 | $2,000 | $34 | $2,034 |
Missed deadline penalty? Client trust damage? Not even calculated.
I pay $200/month. I lose $784. The real cost is nearly 4x the subscription.
Add to that:
- Missed deadlines → damaged client relationships
- Context switching → productivity drain even after service returns
- Stress and frustration → priceless
The $200 subscription isn't the cost. The $784 in lost work is.
| Uptime | Credit |
|---|---|
| < 99.99% | 10% credit |
| < 99.9% | 25% credit |
| < 99.0% | 50% credit |
| < 95.0% | 100% credit |
With 84.1% uptime, I would get 100% credit — a full refund — from any major cloud provider.
No automatic credits for ChatGPT Plus, but Enterprise customers have SLAs.
Nothing.
No SLA. No credits. No refunds. No apology beyond a generic "we're sorry" in a postmortem.
You pay $200/month. Service is unusable ~17% of the time. You get nothing back.
"We're sorry for the downtime... We have identified follow-up improvements to prevent similar issues and to improve our monitoring and alerting."
- ❌ No compensation offered
- ❌ No SLA commitments
- ❌ No refund policy
- ❌ No explanation for gap between claimed 99.41% and real ~83% uptime
- ❌ No acknowledgment of user financial losses
| Tier | Price | Real Value (at ~83% uptime) |
|---|---|---|
| Pro | $20/month | $16.60/month |
| Max 5x | $100/month | $83.00/month |
| Max 20x | $200/month | $166.00/month |
You're paying a 17% premium for service you don't receive.
| Loss Type | Amount |
|---|---|
| Work productivity (5 days × $150) | $750 |
| Subscription value lost (~17%) | $34 |
| TOTAL LOSS | $784 |
I pay $200. I lose $784. No compensation.
-
Why do you claim 99.41% uptime when real user experience is ~83%?
-
When will you implement an SLA with automatic credits like every other major cloud service?
-
How do you justify $200/month pricing for a service that "struggles 70% of the time"?
-
What compensation will you offer to users who lost work during your 19 incidents in 14 days?
-
Why should anyone trust your premium tiers when Max produces shorter output than Pro?
- Screenshot every error
- Log every failed request
- Track your actual downtime (not their status page)
Use this formula:
Monthly Loss = (Days Lost × Daily Rate) + (Subscription × Downtime%)
Example (mid-level dev):
$784 = (5 days × $150) + ($200 × 17%)
- Contact [email protected]
- Reference specific incidents
- Include your calculated losses
- Mention SLA practices of competitors
- OpenAI Pro: $20/month, reportedly more stable
- Google AI Pro: $16/month (annual), includes extras
- Local models: One-time cost, 100% uptime
Share this. Companies only change when it affects their revenue.
| Metric | Claimed | Official | Real |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uptime | 99.41% | 96.7% | ~83% |
| Incidents (14 days) | — | 19 | + uncounted |
| Compensation | — | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| My monthly loss | — | — | $784 |
No money back. No service. No honey.
Anthropic's motto should be: "Pay premium prices, get beta quality, receive zero accountability."
February 3, 2026
Author: A paying Max 20x customer who's done subsidizing Anthropic's infrastructure problems