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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#451

Post by tomnipotent »

dimmke wrote: post #396
what wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t need to change how they bill. Your subscription is for Claude app/code. Otherwise you pay per token. It’s always been this way.

Claude Code is a subscription tier explicitly designed for agentic, automated, heavy usage. So the 'subscriptions are for human use, API is for automation' line is already blurry by their own offerings. If the actual concern is use pattern, enforce that directly. What we have instead is metered usage + behavioral restrictions + product fragmentation across three separate offerings. That's not a clean billing philosop…

> Claude Code is a subscription tier explicitly designed for agentic, automated, heavy usage

Except it's not. It's a desktop, web, mobile, and CLI subscription product built on top of a usage-based API with a generous token allowance bundled with it. That generous allowance comes with the restriction that those tokens can only be spent through Claude product surfaces. Why would Anthropic offer their API at a loss and subsidize the profits and growth of other businesses?

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

#452

Post by Yokohiii »

fluoridation wrote: post #413
jmalicki wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your capital costs for buying those machines don't go away.

That's a problem that already exists in power generation and delivery, and it's already been solved. Bills are sums of fixed terms and variable terms.

Custom payment schemes are late stage profit generation. It requires hoards of salespeople or an AI that can actually do math.

It's just how hyperscaling works. You are not wrong, but in the wrong timeline.

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

#453

Post by msh »

asgraham wrote: post #103
nightski wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine, their moat is thin. Frontier models as a service isn't really in the best interest of anyone anyways. Only a matter of time.

Are you arguing that eventually a competitor will emerge that does support OpenClaw with a subscription model? Wouldn’t that just be more expensive for the exact same reason Anthropic is banning it?

Kimi seems to support this with their 39 usd a month plan.

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

#455

Post by tiarafawn »

Could the real reason for this be more centered around generation and control of new training data?

I suspect the same for the forced high AI usage quotas for developers at MS etc. We've had multiple generations of models trained on all of the code that's available and there are diminishing returns on how much that data can do for training now. Newly published publicly available data is also made up of a significant portion of slop.

The best way to get fresh training data from real human brains might be to have real humans use your first party tools where you control all of the telemetry.

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

#456

Post by chii »

Nevermark wrote: post #326
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…

> Everyone on a plan pays for the max set of tokens in that plan. From Anthropic's perspective, everyone pays to be in bins with a given max. And to everyone's benefit, there is a wide distribution of actual use. Most people pay for the convenience of knowing they have a max if they need it, not so they always use it. So Anthropic does something nice, and drops the price for everyone. They kick back some of the (actu…

> there is a wide distribution of actual use

except when people start using openclaw, and the distribution narrows (to that of a power user).

I hate companies that try to oversell capacity but hides it in the expected usage distribution. Same goes for internet bandwidth from ISP (or download limit - rarer these days, but exists).

Or airplane seats. Or electricity.

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

#457

Post by chii »

aenis wrote: post #429
goosejuice wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, mostly what I'm saying, but forgetting the important part: From the email: > but these tools put an outsized strain on our systems. Capacity is a resource we manage carefully and we need to prioritize our customers using our core products OpenClaw doesn't put an outsized strain on their systems any more than Anthropics own tools. They just happen to have more demand than they can serve and they benefit more when…

If this was a gym subscription, it would be an equivalent of some people going to the gym, and some people sending their android to the gym every day, for the whole day, and using as much equipment as the gym policy allows.

> using as much equipment as the gym policy allows.

which said customer paid for. And now they want to back out of it because it turns out they thought users wouldn't do that.

I say they ought to be punished by consumer competition laws - they need to uphold the terms of the subscription as understood by the customer at the time of the sign up.

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

#459

Post by fabbbbb »

goosejuice wrote: post #449
guelo wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many tokens does the $20/month buy me? I want to know what those hard token limits are but they refuse to tell me. I'm pretty sure they've reduced those limits the last week but they won't admit it. It feels like a scammy pricing model.

I agree, I think consumers appreciate transparency.

To some degree sure, is it about the number tokens you can max out?

I’m pretty happy knowing that it supports my development workflow for a week. Recent features like the Code Desktop built in browser, Cowork with Claude in Chrome and remote control matter to me way more than the number of tokens. But that’s me.

Depends on their targeted ICP also, which they are free to define. Is it those users maxing out tokens for the buck? I have the feeling there’s even better alternatives on the market right now.

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