Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

code.claude.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 827 posts

Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

#51

Post by [deleted] »

firloop wrote: post #28
paxys wrote: post #23

Earlier 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

[deleted]

Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

#52

Post by theptip »

I think this is shortsighted.

The markets value recurring subscription revenue at something like 10x “one-off” revenue, Anthropic is leaving a lot of enterprise value on the table with this approach.

In practice this approach forces AI apps to pay Anthropic for tokens, and then bill their customers a subscription. Customers could bring their own API key but it’s sketchy to put that into every app you want to try, and consumers aren’t going to use developer tools. And many categories of free app are simply excluded, which could in aggregate drive a lot more demand for subscriptions.

If Anthropic is worried about quota, seems they could set lower caps for third-party subscription usage? Still better than forcing API keys.

(Maybe this is purely about displacing other IDE products, rather than a broader market play.)

Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

#53

Post by [deleted] »

eleventyseven wrote: post #9
MillionOClock wrote: post #4

I 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…

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…

[deleted]

Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

#54

Post by adastra22 »

saganus wrote: post #5

Thariq 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

FYI a Twitter post that contradicts the ToS is NOT a clarification.

Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

#55

Post by beoberha »

renewiltord wrote: post #21
eleventyseven wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that if you are just using a cloud service and not running local models, you could have just bought a raspberry pi.

Harder to get at the Apple ecosystem. I have an old Macbook that just serves my reminders over the internet.

who knows when Apple decides to enter the game, but they will absolutely crush the personal agent market when they do.

Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

#57

Post by [deleted] »

slopinthebag wrote: post #11

how can they even enforce this? can't you just spoof all your network requests to appear like it's coming from claude code? in any case Codex is a better SOTA anyways and they let you do this. and if you aren't interested in the best models, Mistral lets you use both Vibe and their API through your vibe subscription api key which is incredible.

[deleted]

Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

#58

Post by minimaxir »

sawjet wrote: post #35
saganus wrote: post #5

Thariq 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?

In the case you are asking in good faith, a) X requires logging in to view most of its content, which means that much of your audience will not see the news because b) much of your audience is not on X, either due to not having social media or have stopped using X due to its degradation to put it generally.

Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

#59

Post by tbrownaw »

slopinthebag wrote: post #11

how can they even enforce this? can't you just spoof all your network requests to appear like it's coming from claude code? in any case Codex is a better SOTA anyways and they let you do this. and if you aren't interested in the best models, Mistral lets you use both Vibe and their API through your vibe subscription api key which is incredible.

> how can they even enforce this?

I would think that different tools would probably have different templates for their prompts?

Re: Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

#60

Post by Uehreka »

slopinthebag wrote: post #11

how can they even enforce this? can't you just spoof all your network requests to appear like it's coming from claude code? in any case Codex is a better SOTA anyways and they let you do this. and if you aren't interested in the best models, Mistral lets you use both Vibe and their API through your vibe subscription api key which is incredible.

> how can they even enforce this?

Many ways, and they’re under no obligation to play fair and tell you which way they’re using at any given time. They’ve said what the rules are, they’ve said they’ll ban you if they catch you.

So let’s say they enforce it by adding an extra nonstandard challenge-response handshake at the beginning of the exchange, which generates a token which they’ll expect on all requests going forward. You decompile the minified JS code, figure out the protocol, try it from your own code but accidentally mess up a small detail (you didn’t realize the nonce has a special suffix). Detected. Banned.

You’ll need a new credit card to open a new account and try again. Better get the protocol right on the first try this time, because debugging is going to get expensive.

Let’s say you get frustrated and post on Twitter about what you know so far. If you share info, they’ll probably see it eventually and change their method. They’ll probably change it once a month anyway and see who they catch that way (and presumably add a minimum Claude Code version needed to reach their servers).

They’ve got hundreds of super smart coders and one of the most powerful AI models, they can do this all day.

Post reply on HN