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Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

code.claude.com

701–710 of 827 posts

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

#701

It might be some confirmation bias here on my part but it feels as if companies are becoming more and more hostile to their API users. Recently Spotify basically nuked their API with zero urgency to fix it, redit has a whole convoluted npm package your obliged to use to create a bot, Facebook requires you to provide registered company and tax details even for development with some permissions. Am I just old man screa…

Google now wants $30,000 a month for customsearch (minimum charge), up from 1c per search or thereabouts in January 2026...

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

#702
post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 onl…

> 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.

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).

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

#703

I'm only waiting for OpenAI to provide an equivalet ~100 USD subscription to entirely ditch Claude. Opus has gone down the hill continously in the last week (and before you start flooding with replies, I've been testing opus/codex in parallel for the last week, I've plenty of examples of Claude going off track, then apologising, then saying "now it's all fixed!" and then only fixing part of it, when codex nailed at t…

> And don't even let me get started on how bad Claude client has become

The latest versions of claude code have been freezing and then crashing while waiting on long running commands. It's pretty frustrating.

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

#705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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 pay…

It's basically the difference between pro-market capitalism and pro-business capitalism. The value to the society comes from competition in the market and from the businesses' ability to choose freely how they do business. When those two goals are in conflict, which one should be prioritized?

Anthropic provides an API third-party clients can use. The pro-market position is that the API must be available at every pricing tier, as the benefits from increased competition outweigh the imposed restrictions to business practices. The pro-business position is that Anthropic must be allowed to choose which tiers can use the API, as the benefits from increased freedom outweigh the reduced competition in the market.

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

#706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have it exactly backwards, and that "owning the stack" is going to be important. Yes the harness is important, yes the model is important, but developing the harness and model together is going to pay huge dividends.

https://mariozechner.at/posts/2025-11-30-pi-coding-agent/ This coding agent is minimal, and it completely changed how I used models and Claude's cli now feels like extremely slow bloat. I'd not be surprised if you're right in that this is companies / management will prefer to "pay for a complete package" approach for a long while, but power-users should not care for the model providers. I have like 100 lines of code…

> I'd not be surprised if you're right in that this is companies / management will prefer to "pay for a complete package" approach for a long while

I mean I suspect for corporate usage Microsoft already has this wrapped up with Microsoft & GitHub Co-Pilots.

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

#707

It might be some confirmation bias here on my part but it feels as if companies are becoming more and more hostile to their API users. Recently Spotify basically nuked their API with zero urgency to fix it, redit has a whole convoluted npm package your obliged to use to create a bot, Facebook requires you to provide registered company and tax details even for development with some permissions. Am I just old man screa…

You're correct in your observations. In the age of agents, the walls are going up. APIs are no longer a value-add; they're a liability. MCP and the equivalent will be the norm interface. IMO.

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

#709

Reading these comments aren't we missing the obvious? Claude Code is a lock in, where Anthropic takes all the value. If the frontend and API are decoupled, they are one benchmark away from losing half their users. Some other motivations: they want to capture the value. Even if it's unprofitable they can expect it to become vastly profitable as inference cost drops, efficiency improves, competitors die out etc. Or wor…

>Claude Code is a lock in, where Anthropic takes all the value.

I wouldn't all the value, but how else are you going to run the business? Allow other to take all the value you provide?

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

#710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if video service came with a free TV that watched you, and was really opinionated about what you watch, and you could only watch your videos on the creeper TV.

The Telly comes with a second screen for ads that you're not allowed to shut off. https://www.telly.com/

That’s definitely a pitch lol
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