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

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

#251

Post by goosejuice »

brookst wrote: post #231
goosejuice wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

If they are losing money then it's not priced correctly. That's what I responded to.

Yes, subscriptions work as you say. Plenty of people under utilize subscriptions from prime, to credit cards, to netflix. But if they lost money overall, they too would raise prices. Because that's how economics works. Shortage of capacity, high demand, raise prices until equilibrium.

There's other knobs beyond ToS. They just didn't choose those options.

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

#252

Post by ffsm8 »

datahack wrote: post #125

Ok. Someone explain to me why they would f themselves this hard with software engineers when they are absolutely winning. This just seems like a bad move. Is it infrastructure? Are they unable to control costs? Everyone else is spending like money is water to try to get adoption. Claude has it and is dialing back utility so that its most passionate users will probably leave. I don’t understand this move.

Honestly I suspect they're just getting ready to release a new feature for autonomous usage. I mean it was one of the leaked feature toggles. If I'm right it'll likely mean we'll get an announcement within the next 2 weeks for "long running prompts/agents"

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

#253

Post by goosejuice »

brookst wrote: post #228
goosejuice wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is conceptually true for subscription services in general, but thats not why they are making this change. There's a 5 hour limit and a weekly limit. Those are hard token limits. Everyone on a plan pays for the max set of tokens in that plan. The limits manage capacity. The solution to that isn't a change of ToS, it's adjusting the limits. In other words this is about Anthropic subsidizing their own…

> The agent consuming those tokens is irrelevant. This is so wrong. The subscription is to Claude (the app, Claude code, etc) not the API. Anthropic subsidizes Claude code because they collect a ton of super useful telemetry and logs so they can improve… Claude code. Wanting to pay for a subscription to Claude and treat it like an API discount is like going to an all you can eat buffet and asking them to bring unlimi…

> Anthropic subsidizes Claude code because they collect a ton of super useful telemetry and logs so they can improve… Claude code.

You just paraphrased my argument

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

#254

Post by bombcar »

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…

> Every single one of them oversells their capacity

This is (almost) universally true of flat rate subscriptions; but there are usage-billed ones, too (and even those often have an aspect of subsidies).

A great example of the shakeup is when dial-up went from "connect, do the thing, disconnect" to "leave the computer online all the time" - they had to change the billing model because it wasn't built for continuous connections.

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

#255

Post by figmert »

Can they actually realistically do this? Nothing technical can stop a client from masquerading as another, and with the right level of dedication, this wouldn't be very hard to do. And since they're mostly targeting power users, seems like they're barking up the wrong tree. Have I missed something?

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

#256

Post by bsder »

a10c wrote: post #216
dboreham wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fine with it. I don't want my subscription subsidizing the claw people.

How about the people that don't use OpenClaw, but alternative agent harnesses that are vastly better than Claude Code?

> alternative agent harnesses that are vastly better than Claude Code?

Okay, that got my attention. What harnesses are those?

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

#257

Post by Jimmc414 »

alasano wrote: post #3

"these tools put an outsized strain on our systems" AKA when you fully use the capacity you paid for, that's too much!

I’m not sure why people expect Anthropic to subsidize tokens through Open Claw when it’s specifically forbidden in the ToS.

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

#258

Post by [deleted] »

brookst wrote: post #228
goosejuice wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is conceptually true for subscription services in general, but thats not why they are making this change. There's a 5 hour limit and a weekly limit. Those are hard token limits. Everyone on a plan pays for the max set of tokens in that plan. The limits manage capacity. The solution to that isn't a change of ToS, it's adjusting the limits. In other words this is about Anthropic subsidizing their own…

> The agent consuming those tokens is irrelevant. This is so wrong. The subscription is to Claude (the app, Claude code, etc) not the API. Anthropic subsidizes Claude code because they collect a ton of super useful telemetry and logs so they can improve… Claude code. Wanting to pay for a subscription to Claude and treat it like an API discount is like going to an all you can eat buffet and asking them to bring unlimi…

[deleted]

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

#259

Post by stavros »

Aurornis wrote: post #154
SkyPuncher wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally hit my 5 hour window limit in 1.5 hours every single day now. 2 weeks ago, I had only hit my limit a single time and that was when I had multiple agents doing codebase audits.

Anthropic had a special extra usage promotion going on during non-peak hours that ended recently. They didn’t do a great job of explaining it. I wonder how many people got used to the 2X limits and now think Anthropic has done something bad by going back to normal

They also reduced the peak time limits, so it's not just the promotion.

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

#260

Post by muyuu »

rovr138 wrote: post #248
muyuu wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

>They have to be honest about what they can offer for $200 Their expectation must have been a human using the service at a human capacity. This is different from an automated agent orchestrating a ton of different agents at the same time doing a lot of things. There is a difference.

You are correct, but you don't need openclaw to batch your work. People will figure out ways to use their tokens at that fixed price.

Sure there is a difference. It's like when most mobile companies wouldn't allow tethering because then people would actually use the service.

You can try to stop that, but people will price in those inconveniences. They will simply learn that the fee pays for much less than the token limit and that the company is enforcing some unwritten limits by adding extra limitations to usage.

We will see it play out.

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