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Anthropic blocks third-party use of Claude Code subscriptions

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Re: Anthropic blocks third-party use of Claude Code subscriptions

#111

Post by bandrami »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #42
creativeSlumber wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A Claude Code subscription should not work with other software. why not though? aren't you paying for the model usage regardless of the client you use?

That's not up to you or me. I think it's pretty clear by the phrase "Claude Code subscription" that it's meant for only "Claude Code". Why are you confused? This could be so easily abused by companies who spend thousands of dollars per month for API costs you could just reverse engineer it and use the subscription tokens to get that down to a few hundred

Can I script and scrape Claude Code to provide the exact same data for consumption by the banned client? (This sounds like an interesting challenge for Claude Code to try...)

Re: Anthropic blocks third-party use of Claude Code subscriptions

#112

Post by dfabulich »

For folks not following the drama: Anthropic's $200/month subscription for Claude Code is much cheaper than Anthropic's pay-as-you-go API. In a month of Claude Code, it's easy to use so many LLM tokens that it would have cost you more than $1,000 if you'd paid via the API.

Why is Anthropic offering such favorable pricing to subscribers? I dunno. But they really want you to use the Claude Code™ CLI with that subscription, not the open-source OpenCode CLI. They want OpenCode users to pay API prices, which could be 5x or more.

So, of course, OpenCode has implemented a workaround, so that folks paying "only" $200/month can use their preferred OpenCode CLI at Anthropic's all-you-can-eat token buffet.

https://github.com/anomalyco/opencode/issues/7410#issuecomme...

Everything about this is ridiculous, and it's all Anthropic's fault. Anthropic shouldn't have an all-you-can-eat plan for $200 when their pay-as-you-go plan would cost more than $1,000+ for comparable usage. Their subscription plans should just sell you API credits at, like, 20% off.

More importantly, Anthropic should have open sourced their Claude Code CLI a year ago. (They can and should just open source it now.)

Re: Anthropic blocks third-party use of Claude Code subscriptions

#113

Post by BoiledCabbage »

dboon wrote: post #103
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyway, this is embarrassing for Anthropic. Why? A few times in this thread I hear people saying "they shouldn't have done this" or something similar but not given any reason why. Listing features you like of another product isn't a reason they shouldn't have done it. It's absolutely not embarrassing, and if anything it's embarrassing they didn't catch and do it sooner.

It is embarrassing to restrict an open source tool that is (IMO) a strictly and very superior piece of software from using your model. It is not immoral, like I said, because it's clearly against the ToC; but it's not like OC is stealing anything from Anthropic by existing. It's the same subscription, same usage. Obviously, I have no idea what's going on internally. But it appears to be an issue of vanity rather than…

> It is embarrassing to restrict an open source tool that is (IMO) a strictly and very superior piece of software from using your model.

> Shutting down the other tool, if that's what's in fact happening, is what is embarrassing.

To rephrase it different as I feel my question didn't land. It's clear to me that you think it's embarrassing. And it's clear what you think is embarrassing. I'm trying to understand why you think it's embarrassing. I don't think it is at all.

Your statements above are simply saying "X is embarrassing because it's embarrassing". Yes I hear that you think it's embarrassing but I don't think it is at all. Do you have a reason you can give why you think it's embarrassing? I think it's very wise and pretty standard to not subsidize people who aren't using your tool.

I'm willing to consider arguments differently, but I'm not hearing one. Other than "it just is because it is".

Re: Anthropic blocks third-party use of Claude Code subscriptions

#114

Post by gpm »

casparvitch wrote: post #83
gpm wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the value proposition that has people pay Anthropic is that it's the best LLM-coding tool around. When you're competing on "we can ban you from using the model we use with the same rate limits we use" everyone knows you have failed to do so. They might or might not currently have the best coding LLM - but they're admitting that whatever moat they thought they were building with claude code is worthless. The b…

Is it that it's the best coding tool or the best model? I still get the best (most accurate) results out of anthropic models (but not out of CC).

Best coding tool is what makes users use something, a good model is just a component of that.

I don't think "we have the current best model for coding" is a particularly good business proposition - even assuming it's true. Staying there looks like it's going to be a matter of throwing unsustainable amounts of money at training forever to stay ahead of the competition.

Meanwhile the coding tool part looks like it could actually be sticky. People get attached to UIs. People are more effective in the UIs they are experienced with. There's a plausible story that codeveloping the UI and model could result in a better model for that purpose (because it's fine tuned on the UIs interactions).

And independently "Claude Code" being the best coding tool around was great for brand recognition. "Open Code with the Opus 4.5 backend - no not the Claude subscription you can't use that - the API" won't be.

Re: Anthropic blocks third-party use of Claude Code subscriptions

#115

Post by sfmike »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #24

The API is not banned only using the Claude Code subscription is I actually tried this several months back to do a regular API request using the CC subscription token and it gave the same error message So this software must have been pretending to be Claude Code in order to get around that A Claude Code subscription should not work with other software, I think this is totally fair

but if something is used in CLI it makes sense it would be in order to be used with other things in the CLI

Re: Anthropic blocks third-party use of Claude Code subscriptions

#116

Post by iwontberude »

protocolture wrote: post #110
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #24

The API is not banned only using the Claude Code subscription is I actually tried this several months back to do a regular API request using the CC subscription token and it gave the same error message So this software must have been pretending to be Claude Code in order to get around that A Claude Code subscription should not work with other software, I think this is totally fair

>A Claude Code subscription should not work with other software, I think this is totally fair Strongly disagree. They are just trying to moat.

It’s a private API. What part of this is hard to understand? This is why you don’t code against undocumented APIs with no contract. It’s self destructive.

Re: Anthropic blocks third-party use of Claude Code subscriptions

#117

Post by weird-eye-issue »

bandrami wrote: post #111
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not up to you or me. I think it's pretty clear by the phrase "Claude Code subscription" that it's meant for only "Claude Code". Why are you confused? This could be so easily abused by companies who spend thousands of dollars per month for API costs you could just reverse engineer it and use the subscription tokens to get that down to a few hundred

Can I script and scrape Claude Code to provide the exact same data for consumption by the banned client? (This sounds like an interesting challenge for Claude Code to try...)

Yes they even offer an SDK for it now so "scraping" is not required

Re: Anthropic blocks third-party use of Claude Code subscriptions

#118

Post by iwontberude »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #42
creativeSlumber wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A Claude Code subscription should not work with other software. why not though? aren't you paying for the model usage regardless of the client you use?

That's not up to you or me. I think it's pretty clear by the phrase "Claude Code subscription" that it's meant for only "Claude Code". Why are you confused? This could be so easily abused by companies who spend thousands of dollars per month for API costs you could just reverse engineer it and use the subscription tokens to get that down to a few hundred

It’s like saying Netflix is wrong to require an official Netflix client to access their service. Total dud of an argument if you ask me.

Re: Anthropic blocks third-party use of Claude Code subscriptions

#119

Post by casparvitch »

dfabulich wrote: post #112

For folks not following the drama: Anthropic's $200/month subscription for Claude Code is much cheaper than Anthropic's pay-as-you-go API. In a month of Claude Code, it's easy to use so many LLM tokens that it would have cost you more than $1,000 if you'd paid via the API. Why is Anthropic offering such favorable pricing to subscribers? I dunno. But they really want you to use the Claude Code™ CLI with that subscript…

I guess one issue is that you pay $200/month whether you use it or not. Potentially this could be better for Anthropic. What was not necessarily foreseeable (ok maybe it was) back when that started was that users have invented all kinds of ways to supervise their agents to be as efficient as possible. If they control the client, you can't do that.

Re: Anthropic blocks third-party use of Claude Code subscriptions

#120

Post by hahahahhaah »

dfabulich wrote: post #112

For folks not following the drama: Anthropic's $200/month subscription for Claude Code is much cheaper than Anthropic's pay-as-you-go API. In a month of Claude Code, it's easy to use so many LLM tokens that it would have cost you more than $1,000 if you'd paid via the API. Why is Anthropic offering such favorable pricing to subscribers? I dunno. But they really want you to use the Claude Code™ CLI with that subscript…

Anthropic and all AI are playing chicken with each other. You need to win userbase and that is worth losing money for but if you sell discount tokens for Loveable clones to profit from that is not in your interest.

Anthropic is futher complicated by mission.

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