I don't think it's a secret that AI companies are losing a ton of money on subscription plans. Hence the stricter rate limits, new $200+ plans, push towards advertising etc. The real money is in per-token billing via the API (and large companies having enough AI FOMO that they blindly pay the enormous invoices every month).
Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use
31–40 of 827 posts
Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is pretty obviously no. API keys billed by the token, yes, Oauth to the flat rate plans no. > OAuth authentication (used with Free, Pro, and Max plans) is intended exclusively for Claude Code and Claude.ai. Using OAuth tokens obtained through Claude Free, Pro, or Max accounts in any other product, tool, or service — including the Agent SDK — is not permitted and constitutes a violation of the Consumer Terms of Ser…
If you look at this tweet [1] and in particular responses under it, it still seems to me like some parts of it need additional clarification. For instance, I have seen some people interpret the tweet as meaning using the OAuth token is actually ok for personal experimentation with the Agent SDK, which can be seen as a slight contradiction with what you quoted. A parent tweet also mentioned the docs clean up causing s…
Read the actual ToS. What you describe is NOT allowed.
Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use
#33I really hope someone from any of those companies (if possible all of them) would publish a very clear statement regarding the following question: If I build a commercial app that allows my users to connect using their OAuth token coming from their ChatGPT/Claude etc. account, do they allow me (and their users) to do this or not? I totally understand that I should not reuse my own account to provide services to other…
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Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see how they can get more clear about this, considering they have repeatedly answered it the exact same way. Subscriptions are for first-party products (claude.com, mobile and desktop apps, Claude Code, editor extensions, Cowork). Everything else must use API billing.
What if you wrap the service using their Agent SDK?
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Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use
#35Thariq has clarified that there are no changes to how SDK and max suscriptions work: https://x.com/i/status/2024212378402095389 --- On a different note, it's surprising that a company that size has to clarify something as important as ToS via X
What's wrong with using X?
Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use
#36I really hope someone from any of those companies (if possible all of them) would publish a very clear statement regarding the following question: If I build a commercial app that allows my users to connect using their OAuth token coming from their ChatGPT/Claude etc. account, do they allow me (and their users) to do this or not? I totally understand that I should not reuse my own account to provide services to other…
That’s very clearly a no, I don’t understand why so many people think this is unclear. You can’t use Claude OAuth tokens for anything. Any solution that exists worked because it pretended/spoofed to be Claude Code. Same for Gemini (Gemini CLI, Antigravity) Codex is the only one that got official blessing to be used in OpenClaw and OpenCode, and even that was against the ToS before they changed their stance on it.
Is Codex ok with any other third party applications, or just those?
Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see how they can get more clear about this, considering they have repeatedly answered it the exact same way. Subscriptions are for first-party products (claude.com, mobile and desktop apps, Claude Code, editor extensions, Cowork). Everything else must use API billing.
The biggest reason why this is confusing is the Claude Agent SDK[0] will use subscription/oauth credentials if present. The terms update implies that there's some use cases where that's ok and other use cases (commercial?) where using their SDK on a user's device violates terms. [0] https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/overview
Had the same question, comment below quotes their docs saying Agent SDK using oAuth token is also not allowed.
Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use
#38I really hope someone from any of those companies (if possible all of them) would publish a very clear statement regarding the following question: If I build a commercial app that allows my users to connect using their OAuth token coming from their ChatGPT/Claude etc. account, do they allow me (and their users) to do this or not? I totally understand that I should not reuse my own account to provide services to other…
I think you're just trying to see ambiguity where it doesn't exist because the looser interpretation is beneficial to you. It totally makes sense why you'd want that outcome and I'm not faulting you for it. It's just that, from a POV of someone without stake in the game, the answer seems quite clear.
Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Usually, it is already stated in their documentation (auth section). If a statement is vague, treat it as a no. It is not worth the risk when they can ban you at any time. For example, ChatGPT allows it, but Claude and Gemini do not. https://developers.openai.com/codex/auth
Maybe I am missing something from the docs of your link, but I unfortunately don't think it actually states anything regarding allowing users to connect and use their Codex quota in third party apps.
From TFA: “OAuth authentication (used with Free, Pro, and Max plans) is intended exclusively for Claude Code and Claude.ai. Using OAuth tokens obtained through Claude Free, Pro, or Max accounts in any other product, tool, or service — including the Agent SDK — is not permitted and constitutes a violation of the Consumer Terms of Service.”
Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use
#40The pressure is to boost revenue by forcing more people to use the API to generate huge numbers of tokens they can charge more for.
LLMs are becoming common commodities as open weight models keep catching up. There are similarities with pirating in the 90s when users realize they can ctrl+c ctrl+v to copy a file/model and you don't need to buy a cd/use their paid API.