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Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

code.claude.com

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

#181

Post by resonious »

kovek wrote: post #166
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…

Does https://happy.engineering/ need to use the API keys or can use oauth? It's basically a frontend for claude-cli.

If it's a wrapper that invokes the `claude` binary then I believe it's fine.

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

#182

Post by ac29 »

scwoodal wrote: post #117
ac29 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The usage limit on your $20/month subscription is not $20 of API tokens (if it was, why subscribe?). Its much much higher, and you can hit the equivalent of $20 of API usage in a few days.

So I’m not allowed to use the $20 plan and max out its limits?

You can max it out via first party clients only.

I dont like it either, but its not an unreasonable restriction.

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

#183

Post by Gigachad »

zb3 wrote: post #150
Gigachad wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably are but I don’t think that’s what this confirms. Most consumer flat rate priced services restrict usage outside of the first party apps, because 3rd party and scripted users can generate orders of magnitude more usage than a single user using the app can. So it makes sense to offer simple flat pricing for first party apps, and usage priced apis for other usage. It’s like the difference between Google Dr…

I get your point - they might count on the user not using their full quota they're officially allowed to use (and if that's the case, Anthropic is not losing money). But then still - IF the user used the whole quota, Anthropic loses.. so what's advertised is not actually honest. For me, flat rates are simply unfair either ways - if I'm not using the product much, I'm overpaying (and they're ok with that), otherwise i…

At any rate, they offer the option to be billed exactly on your usage via the API. But if you tell the average person the service costs $x/million tokens they will have no idea how much that actually costs, they won't know what a token is or how much their employees are likely to use. While $30/user/month is something they can easily budget for and get approved.

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

#185

Post by rjh29 »

mirzap wrote: post #155
paxys wrote: post #31

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).

They are not losing money on subscription plans. Inference is very cheap - just a few dollars per million tokens. What they’re trying to do is bundle R&D costs with inference so they can fund the training of the next generation of models. Banning third-party tools has nothing to do with rate limits. They’re trying to position themselves as the Apple of AI companies -a walled garden. They may soon discover that screwi…

> "just a few dollars per million tokens"

Google AI Pro is like $15/month for practically unlimited Pro requests, each of which take million tokens of context (and then also perform thinking, free Google search for grounding, inline image generation if needed). This includes Gemini CLI, Gemini Code Assist (VS Code), the main chatbot, and a bunch of other vibe-coding projects which have their own rate limits or no rate limits at all.

It's crazy to think this is sustainable. It'll be like Xbox Game Pass - start at £5/month to hook people in and before you know it it's £20/month and has nowhere near as many games.

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

#186

Post by avaer »

edg5000 wrote: post #178

Their model actually doesn't have that much of a moat if at all. Their agent harness also doesn't, at least not for long. Writing an agent harness isn't that difficult. They are desperately trying to stay in power. I don´t like being a customer of this company and am investing lots of my time in moving away from them completely.

They are obviously losing money on these plans, just like all of the other companies in the space.

They are all desperately trying to stay in power, and this policy change (or clarification) is a fart in the wind in the grand scheme of what's going on in this industry.

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

#187

Post by edg5000 »

herbturbo wrote: post #119
theptip wrote: post #52

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…

I think they are smart making a distinction between a D2C subscription which they control the interface to and eat the losses for vs B2B use where they pay for what they use. Allows them to optimize their clients and use private APIs for exclusive features etc. and there’s really no reason to bootstrap other wannabe AI companies who just stick a facade experience in front of Anthropic’s paying customer.

> eat the losses

Look at your token usage of the last 30 days in one of the JSON files generated by Claude Code. Compare that against API costs for Opus. Tell me if they are eating losses or not. I'm not making a point, actually do it and let me know. I was at 1 million. I'm paying 90 EUR/m. That means I'm subsidizing them (paying 3-4 times what it would cost with the API)! And I feel like I'm a pretty heavy user. Although people running it in a loop or using Gas Town will be using much more.

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

#188

Post by alexandre_m »

scwoodal wrote: post #117
ac29 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The usage limit on your $20/month subscription is not $20 of API tokens (if it was, why subscribe?). Its much much higher, and you can hit the equivalent of $20 of API usage in a few days.

So I’m not allowed to use the $20 plan and max out its limits?

Max out on their terms, not yours.

Their bet is that most people will not fill up 100% of their weekly usage for 4 consecutive weeks of their monthly plan, because they are humans and the limits impede long running tasks during working hours.

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

#189

Post by KingMob »

croes wrote: post #131
artdigital wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But why does it matter which program consumes the tokens?

Presumably because their flat rate pricing is based off their ability to manage token use via their first-party tools.

A third-party tool may be less efficient in saving costs (I have heard many of them don't hit Anthropic LLMs' caches as well).

Would you be willing to pay more for your plan, to subsidize the use of third-party tools by others?

---

Note, afaik, Anthropic hasn't come out and said this is the reason, but it fits.

Or, it could also just be that the LLM companies view their agent tools as the real moat, since the models themselves aren't.

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

#190

Post by margalabargala »

croes wrote: post #129
eleventyseven wrote: post #9

Earlier 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…

What flatrate? Pro and Max are both limited

Flat rate does not imply unlimited.
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