Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#231

Post by brookst » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 1:25 AM UTC

goosejuice wrote: post #194

jmalicki wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't paying to be using that limit all of the time. You are paying to be using that limit some of the time. There are 5 hour windows when you are sleeping and can't use it. There are weekend limits. Theoretically you can max out every 5 hour window, but they lose money on that. It's structured so users can have bursts of unlimited usage, and spend ~15% of the theoretical max cap, and that's still cheaper than a…

> Theoretically you can max out every 5 hour window, but they lose money on that. Then it's not priced correctly. As I said, you can do all of this without OpenClaw.. claude code ships with everything you need to maximize the limits.

No, it is priced correctly.

Just because outliers can be money-losing doesn’t mean you should raise the price for everyone.

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#232

Post by crawshaw » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 1:26 AM UTC

Based on this and recent product releases, Anthropic seems keen on building a closed ecosystem around their excellent model. That is their business choice, I suspect it will work well. But I cannot say I am particularly excited to have my entire development stack owned by one company.

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#233

Post by renewiltord » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 1:26 AM UTC

benn67 wrote: post #71

Haha, I almost expected this. Say goodbye to my 600$/ month Anthropic.

Three Claude Max subs maxed out? I think that's exactly what they do want to say goodbye to. This might be the most unregretted "unregretted attrition" they have.

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#234

Post by infecto » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 1:29 AM UTC

arewethereyeta wrote: post #70

Marketing geniuses. They had 2 options here: 1. Make a better product/alternative to Openclaw and start eating their userbase. They hold the advantage because the ones "using their servers too much" are already their clients so they could reach out and keep trying to convert. Openclaw literally brought them customers at the door. 2. Do everyone royally and get them off their platform - with a strong feeling of dislik…

Such a small minority of the customers they want use openclaw and in aggregate a lot of compute use is coming from the total group. Better to stop customers you don’t want. This has zero impact on top line revenue

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#235

Post by mccoyb » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 1:30 AM UTC

beering wrote: post #219

zmmmmm wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> building products around claude -p But OpenClaw is not a product. It's just a pile of open source code that the user happens to choose to run. It's the user electing to use the functionality provided to them in the manner they want to. There's nothing fundamental to distinguish the user from running claude -p inside OpenClaw from them running it inside their own script. I've mostly defended Anthropic's position on…

Claude Code is not a platform and you’re not meant to be building on it. Netflix is also not a platform and you shouldn’t be running code (open source or not) to mass download Netflix movies either.

https://code.claude.com/docs/en/overview#what-you-can-do

Try this one: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/overview#run-agent-teams-and...

Or perhaps: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/overview#pipe-script-and-aut...

You know what they say about looking and quacking.

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#236

Post by cute_boi » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 1:31 AM UTC

Idk why people are complaining when they know subscription are currently heavily subsidized. If they don't like they can always choose alternative service.

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#237

Post by nemomarx » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 1:31 AM UTC

PostOnce wrote: post #205

jesse_dot_id wrote: post #73

There seem to be a ton of people who don't understand how subscription services work. Every single one of them oversells their capacity. The power users that use the services a lot are subsidized by those who don't use it as much, which tends to be the vast majority of the user base. OpenClaw is an autonomous power user. The growing adoption of this walking attack surface was either going to A) cause the cost of Clau…

The entire point of AI is for it to do shit autonomously? The whole point is that the users can have it doing shit for them instead of them having to babysit the computer. The fact that users still have to sit there and argue with it erodes their value proposition. The proposition you can pay fewer salaries.

They could probably offer enough tokens for that but it would be at a higher price than the sub, I think. You could still pay fewer salaries at 3k a year or per token enterprise prices or whatever.

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#238

Post by wolttam » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 1:32 AM UTC

nfw2 wrote: post #223

I don't understand exactly what is being banned. I have a vibe coded context manager + chat thread UI that I use to manage multiple claude code cli sessions simultaneous. Is this allowed? If not how would this get identified vs other cli usage? How is this different than openclaw?

Check into the CC source leaks, they're doing some relatively sophisticated attestation

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#239

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 1:33 AM UTC

firloop wrote: post #15

jasonlotito wrote: post #11

Yes, this was made clear a while back and should not be a surprise. (Honestly, I had to double-check the date/time to see if this was actually posted today. You can use your Claude Code subscription with third-party tools, but you have to use the Claude Code harness. Or, you use the API. OpenClaw could use the Claude Code harness, but they don't.

FWIW I am sympathetic to Anthropic here, but OpenClaw _is_ using the Claude Code harness (via claude -p). But yes, Anthropic has made it clear they don’t like this.

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

#240

Post by muyuu » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 1:33 AM UTC

jesse_dot_id wrote: post #73

There seem to be a ton of people who don't understand how subscription services work. Every single one of them oversells their capacity. The power users that use the services a lot are subsidized by those who don't use it as much, which tends to be the vast majority of the user base. OpenClaw is an autonomous power user. The growing adoption of this walking attack surface was either going to A) cause the cost of Clau…

It's one thing to pay $5 or $20 per month, which although it's a substantial difference, people pay that much for the convenience of having stuff ready and available - and it's a completely different thing to pay $200 per month. People don't pay that much for occasional usage and many/most people will organise themselves to use all or most of their weekly allowance when the expense is in that ballpark.

If Anthropic miscalculated the amount of tokens, or simply pushed too hard to capture market share, that is a costly mistake because people in this market are very sensitive to price hikes.

They have to be honest about what they can offer for $200. Sure, people don't max their subscriptions but when they're large they make the best of it, or they will likely cancel it. The typical subscription works well below capacity because it's cheap enough that the optionality may be worth it. $200 is not the typical subscription.