[Loic]

They put no limits on the API usage, as long as you pay.

Here, they put limits on the "under-cover" use of the subscription. If they can provide a relatively cheap subscription against the direct API use, this is because they can control the stuff end-to-end, the application running on your system (Claude Code, Claude Desktop) and their systems.

As you subscribe to these plans, this is the "contract", you can use only through their tools. If you want full freedom, use the API, with a per token pricing.

For me, this is fair.

[rglullis]

> If they can provide a relatively cheap subscription against the direct API use

Except they can't. Their costs are not magically lower when you use claude code vs when you use a third-party client.

> For me, this is fair.

This is, plain and simple, a tie-in sale of claude code. I am particularly amused by people accepting it as "fair" because in Brazil this is an illegal practice.

[nerdjon]

> This is, plain and simple, a tie-in sale of claude code. I am particularly amused by people accepting it as "fair" because in Brazil this is an illegal practice

I am very curious what is particularly illegal about this. On the sales page nowhere do they actually talk about the API https://claude.com/pricing

Now we all know obviously the API is being used because that is how things work, but you are not actually paying a subscription for the API. You are paying for access to Claude Code.

Is it also illegal that if you pay for Playstation Plus that you can't play those games on an Xbox?

Is it illegal that you can't use third party netflix apps?

I really don't want to defend and AI company here but this is perfectly normal. In no other situation would we expect access to the API, the only reason this is considered different is because they also have a different service that gives access to the API. But that is irrelevant.

[theturtletalks]

I've heard they actually cache the full Claude Code system prompt on their servers and this saves them a lot of money. Maybe they cache the MCP tools you use and other things. If another harness like Opencode changes that prompt or adds significantly to it, that could increase costs for them.

What I don't understand is why start this game of cat and mouse? Just look at Youtube and YT-DLP. YT-DLP, and the dozens of apps that use it, basically use Youtube's unofficial web API and it still works even after Youtube constantly patches their end. Though now, YT-DLP has to use a makeshift JS interpreter and maybe even spawn Chromium down the line.

[cma]

> Their costs are not magically lower when you use claude code vs when you use a third-party client.

If subsidizing that offering is a good hook to get higher paying API users on board, then some of that cost is a customer aquisition cost, whereas the cost to them of providing the API doesn't have the same proportion that they can justify as a customer acquisition cost.

[rogerthis]

Unless it's illegal in more places, I think they won't care. In my experience, the percentage of free riders in Brazil is higher (due to circumstances, better said).

[pigpop]

While the cost may not be lower the price certainly can be if they are operating like any normal company and adding margin.

[canibal]

But they could charge the third-party client for access to the API.

[regularfry]

> Except they can't. Their costs are not magically lower when you use claude code vs when you use a third-party client.

I don't have a dog in this fight but is this actually true? If you're using Claude Code they can know that whatever client-side model selection they put into it is active. So if they can get away with routing 80% of the requests to Haiku and only route to Opus for the requests that really need it, that does give them a cost model where they can rely on lower costs than if a third-party client just routes to Opus for everything. Even if they aren't doing that sort of thing now, it would be understandable if they wanted to.

[narrator]

I think what most people don't realize is running an agent 24/7 fully automated is burning a huge hole in their profitability. Who even knows how big it is. It could be getting it on the 8/9 figures a day for all we know.

There's this pervasive idea left over from the pre-llm days that compute is free. You want to rent your own H200x8 to run your Claude model, that's literally going to cost $24/hour. People are just not thinking like that. I have my home PC, it does this stuff I can run it 24/7 for free.

[starkgoose]

there are usage limits preventing you from running it 24/7 on all subscriptions tiers

[Xunjin]

I understand you mean for free in the sense that you don't pay a third party to use it, however let's no forget that you still use the power grid and that's not free. Also worth to note that energy prices have increased worldwide.

[mickeyp]

Sure it's $24/hour, but it'll crank through tens of thousands of tokens per second --- those beefy GPUs are meant for large amounts of parallel workflow. You'll never _get_ that many tokens for a single request. That's why the mathematics work when you get dozens or hundreds of people using it.

No. The sauce is in KV caching: when to evict, when to keep, how to pre-empt an active agent loop vs someone who are showing signs of inactivity at their pc, etc.

[admx8]

Coder doing the coding should use subscription, and now they ban the choice of your preferred ide for agentc coding. API is for automation not coding. I'm going to cancel their subscription today, I already use codex with opencode.

[notpushkin]

This is honestly the key difference here. I’m morally okay with using Claude Max Whatever with something like OpenCode because it’s literally the same thing from the usage pattern perspective. Plugging Nanoclaw into it is a whole another thing.

[stavros]

I don't see how it's fair. If I'm paying for usage, and I'm using it, why should Anthropic have a say on which client I use?

I pay them $100 a month and now for some reason I can't use OpenCode? Fuck that.

[dragonwriter]

You aren't paying for usage, you are paying for the product that the subscription is offered to. If you are paying for usage, well, that's their billed by token-usage API plan, which they are quite happy for you to use with any client you want.

[hobofan]

> If I'm paying for usage

You are not paying for usage. You are paying for usage via their application.

If their business plan is based on how quickly a human can enter requests and react to the results, and Claude Code is optimized for that, why should you be allowed to use an alternative client that e.g. always tries to saturate the token limits?

[terminalbraid]

Stop giving money to the company that doesn't give you what you want.

[butlike]

You're touching on the eternal App Store debate. "It's my phone, I should be able to install whatever I want on it!" Which is true, but also hasn't been true since the mid-90s (early 2000s at the latest).

[TZubiri]

Read the ToS, you are paying to use their products. If you want to use other products that integrate with the Anthropic LLMs they offer a product which is the API. You can use Opencode by connecting your API and being charged per token.

Doesn't that make sense? If you use it more you get charged more, if you use it less you get charged less.

[everdrive]

Now just imagine the rug-pull if you ever get really dependent on the product.

[arghwhat]

Their subscriptions aren't cheap, and it has nothing really to do with them controlling the system.

It's just price differentiation - they know consumers are price sensitive, and that companies wanting to use their APIs to build products so they can slap AI on their portfolio and get access to AI-related investor money can be milked. On the consumer-facing front, they live off branding and if you're not using claude code, you might not associate the tool with Anthropic, which means losing publicity that drives API sales.

[skerit]

It would be less of an issue if Claude-Code was actually the best coding client, and would actually somehow reduce the amount of tokens used. But it's not. I get more things done with less tokens via OpenCode. And in the end, I hit 100% usage at the end of the week anyway.

[cik]

The problem is incentives. The organization selling the per-token model doesn't have the incentive, at scale to have you reduce token consumption. Other technologies do, hence adding value.

[fauigerzigerk]

It doesn't really make sense to me because the subscriptions have limits too.

But I agree they can impose whatever user hostile restrictions they want. They are not a monopoly. They compete in a very competitive market. So if they decide to raise prices in whatever shape or form then that's fine.

Arbitrary restrictions do play a role for my own purchasing decisions though. Flexibility is worth something.

[randusername]

I'm with the parent comment. It was inevitable Netflix would end password-sharing. It was inevitable you'd have to pick between freeform usage-based billing and a constrained subscription experience. Using the chatbot subscription as an API was a weird loophole. I don't feel betrayed.

[tom_m]

They tier it. So you are limited until you pay more. So you can't just right away get the access you need.

[throwaway24778]

I don't and would never pay for an LLM, but presumably they also want for force ads down your throat eventually, yea? Hard to do if you're just selling API access.

[bilekas]

But the idea of an API is more to encourage creativity and other people/companies building products and services on or around your systems. This used to be seen as a positive as it would mean you were an important cog in other peoples products and so more users, exposure, brand awareness etc.

[k8sToGo]

Compared to the heavily subsidized subscriptions, I don't think API is sold at loss.

Also why would you create a throwaway for this question? Are you trying to rage bait?

[butlike]

1:29 until you're able to push to the `main` branch.

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