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A flat pricing subscription for Claude Code

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Re: A flat pricing subscription for Claude Code

#251

Post by kridsdale1 »

asaddhamani wrote: post #148
ziofill wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many prompts does Claude code send per user prompt? Is it 1:1?

Nope, it can be even a dozen (because agentic). Claude usage limits are actually based on token usage, and Claude Code uses a mix of Haiku and Sonnet. So your limits are split among those two models. I gave an estimation of how much usage you can expect in another comment on this thread, but you will find it hard to max out the $100 plan unless you are using it very, very extensively.

I didn’t realize they were tuning cost optimization by switching models contextually. That’s very clever. I bet the whole industry of consumer LLM apps moves that way.

Re: A flat pricing subscription for Claude Code

#252

Post by lugu »

Dlemo wrote: post #159
netdevphoenix wrote: post #142

Does anyone feel like the biggest selling point of LLMs so far is basically for programmers? Feels like most of the products that look like could generate revenue are for programmers. While you can see them as a productivity enhancing tool, in times of tight budgets, they can be useful to lay off more programmers because a single one is now way more productive than pre-LLM. I feel that LLMs will increase the barrier…

I think it's an enabler for everyone. So many people benefit from basic things like sorting tables, searching and filtering data etc. Things were I might just use excel or a small script, they can now use an LLM for it. And for now, we are still in dire need for more developers and not less. But yes I can imagine that after a golden phase of 5-15 years it will start to go down to the bottom when automaisation and ai…

I like to think that AI is to code what digital electronic was to analog electronic: a step backward in term of efficiency and 10 steps forward in term of flexibility.

Some of us will always maintain code, but most will move higher in the stack to focus on products and their real world application.

Re: A flat pricing subscription for Claude Code

#253

Post by stavros »

vidarh wrote: post #157
stavros wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you prefer, between Aider and CC? I use Aider for when I want to vibe code (I just give the LLM a high-level description and then don't check the output, because it's so long), and Cursor when I want to AI code (I tell the AI to do low-level stuff and check every one of the five lines it gives me). AI coding saves me a lot of time writing high-quality code, as it takes care of the boilerplate and documentatio…

I tested Aider a few times, and gave up because at the time it was so bad - it might be time to try it again, and I'll add that my experience with seeing how Claude Code works for me while lots of other people struggle with it suggests to me that my experience with Aider might well be that my style of working just meshes better with Claude Code than Aider. Claude Code was the first assistant that gelled for me, and I…

Makes sense, thanks. I've used Claude Code but it goes off on its own too much, whereas Aider is more focused. If you do give Aider another shot, use the architect/editor mode, with Gemini 2.5 Pro and Claude 3.7, respectively. It's produced the best results for me.

Re: A flat pricing subscription for Claude Code

#254

Post by divan »

asaddhamani wrote: post #147
lelanthran wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $100 is something most people on this forum could make back in 1 day of work. I expect so. The question is "How many days does the limit last for?" Maybe they have a per-day limit, maybe it's per-month (I'm not sure), but paying $100/m and hitting the limit in the first day is not economical.

I wrote about this on my blog: https://www.asad.pw/llm-subscriptions-vs-apis-value-for-mone... But basically you get ~300Mn input tokens and ~100Mn output tokens per month with Sonnet on the $100 plan. These are split across 50 sessions you are allowed, each session is 5 hrs starting from the first time you send a message until 5 hrs after the first message. During this time, you get ~6Mn input and ~2Mn output tokens…

Thanks for the link and explainer. My first experience with Claude Code left mixed feelings because of the pricing. I have Pro subscription, but for Claude Code can only use API mode. So I added 5$ just to check it, and exhausted 4.5$ in the first 8m session. It left me wondering if switching to Max plan will exhaust it at the same rate or not.

Re: A flat pricing subscription for Claude Code

#255

Post by conartist6 »

netdevphoenix wrote: post #142

Does anyone feel like the biggest selling point of LLMs so far is basically for programmers? Feels like most of the products that look like could generate revenue are for programmers. While you can see them as a productivity enhancing tool, in times of tight budgets, they can be useful to lay off more programmers because a single one is now way more productive than pre-LLM. I feel that LLMs will increase the barrier…

People forget that software engineers are already speculated to come in 10x and 100x variants, so the impact that one smart dedicated person could make is almost certainly not the problem and not changed at all by AI.

The fact is you could be one is the most insanely valuable and productive engineers in the planet might only write a few lines of code most days, but you'll be writing them in a programming language, OS, or kernel. Value is created by understanding direction and by theory-building, and LLMs do neither.

I built a genuinely new product by working hard as a single human while all my competitors tried to be really productive with LLMs. I'm sure their metrics are great, but at the end of the day I, a human working with my hands and brain and sharpening my OWN intelligence have created what productivity metrics cannot buy: real innovation

Re: A flat pricing subscription for Claude Code

#256

Post by divan »

tkzed49 wrote: post #15
tkzed49 wrote: post #14

The problem is that this is $100/mo with limits. At work I use Cursor, which is pretty good (especially tab completion), and at home I use Copilot in vscode insiders build, which is catching up to Cursor IMO. However, as long as Microsoft is offering copilot at (presumably subsidized) $10/mo, I'm not interested in paying 10x as much and still having limits. It would have to be 10x as useful, and I doubt that.

I'll add on to this: I don't really use agent modes a lot. In an existing codebase, they waste a lot of my time for mixed results. Maybe Claude Code is so much better at this that it enables a different paradigm of AI editing—but I'd need easy, cheap access to try it.

AI Agent should be treated like a human developer. If you bring a new human developer to your codebase and give them a task it will take a lot of time to read and understand the codebase before making proper solution. If you want to use AI agent regularly it makes sense to have some sort of memory of the codebase.

And it seems like community realizes it and invents different solutions. RooCode has task orchestration built in already, there is a claude task-manager that allows splitting and remembering tasks so AI agent can pick it up quicker, there are different solutions with files like memory bank. Windsurf cursor upgraded their .widsurf/rules functionality to allow more solutions like that for instructing AI agents about the codebase/tasks. Some people even write their own scripts that feed every file to LLM and store the summary description in the separate file that AI agent tool can use instead of searching codebase.

I'm eager to see how some of these solutions will become embedded into every AI agent solution. It's one of the missing stones to make AI agents order of magnitude more efficient and productive.

Re: A flat pricing subscription for Claude Code

#257

Post by conartist6 »

conartist6 wrote: post #255
netdevphoenix wrote: post #142

Does anyone feel like the biggest selling point of LLMs so far is basically for programmers? Feels like most of the products that look like could generate revenue are for programmers. While you can see them as a productivity enhancing tool, in times of tight budgets, they can be useful to lay off more programmers because a single one is now way more productive than pre-LLM. I feel that LLMs will increase the barrier…

People forget that software engineers are already speculated to come in 10x and 100x variants, so the impact that one smart dedicated person could make is almost certainly not the problem and not changed at all by AI. The fact is you could be one is the most insanely valuable and productive engineers in the planet might only write a few lines of code most days, but you'll be writing them in a programming language, OS…

Imagine the problem is picking a path against an unexplored desolate desert wasteland. One guide says that he's the fastest. Runs not walks, at a fork in the way always picks a path within 5 seconds. They promise you that they are the fastest guide out there by a factor of two.

You decide on a second opinion, and find an old wizened guide who says they always walk not run, never picks a path more quickly than 5 minutes, and promises you that no matter what sales pitch the other guide gives they can get you across the desert in half the time and half the risk to your life.

Both can't be true. Who do you believe and why?

Re: A flat pricing subscription for Claude Code

#258

Post by wyre »

uludag wrote: post #212
tkzed49 wrote: post #14

The problem is that this is $100/mo with limits. At work I use Cursor, which is pretty good (especially tab completion), and at home I use Copilot in vscode insiders build, which is catching up to Cursor IMO. However, as long as Microsoft is offering copilot at (presumably subsidized) $10/mo, I'm not interested in paying 10x as much and still having limits. It would have to be 10x as useful, and I doubt that.

I always imagined that these $10/mo plans are essentially loss leaders and that in the long run, the price should be much higher. I'm not even sure if that $100/mo plan pays for its underlying costs.

I think their free tiers are by definition of loss leaders, but I think you're right, all of there offerings are loss leaders. I know I can get more from my $20 using Claude Pro than I can using their API Workbench. It is such a competitive space that I don't think its unrealistic for these companies to ever be cash positive because all cash they have needs to be spent on competing in this space.

Re: A flat pricing subscription for Claude Code

#259

Post by hamilyon2 »

netdevphoenix wrote: post #142

Does anyone feel like the biggest selling point of LLMs so far is basically for programmers? Feels like most of the products that look like could generate revenue are for programmers. While you can see them as a productivity enhancing tool, in times of tight budgets, they can be useful to lay off more programmers because a single one is now way more productive than pre-LLM. I feel that LLMs will increase the barrier…

It is a bit like incandescent light was early selling point of electricity.

Stable odourless on-demand light was in short supply, so it helped to jump-start a new industry and network.

The real range of possible uses is near endless, for tech available today. It is just a coincidence that coding is in short supply today.

Re: A flat pricing subscription for Claude Code

#260

Post by wyre »

jwr wrote: post #170
jarym wrote: post #139

I cancelled my Claude subscription. I was happily using it for months - asking it the odd question or sometimes having longer discussions to talk through an idea. Then one day I got nagged to upgrade or wait a few hours. I was pretty annoyed, I didn’t regard my usage as high and felt like a squeeze. I cancelled my pro plan and now happily using Gemini which costs nothing. These AI companies are still finding their fe…

> now happily using Gemini which costs nothing …and you think this is going to last? :-)

Google is easily in the best position to hold competitive pricing with their LLMS. They can rely on their multi-billion dollar ad business to prop up their AI advancements, compared to OpenAI or Anthropic that only exist with heavy investment from VC.

Google will probably put 2.5 Pro behind a Google One account once it is out of preview, but I don't see a compelling reason they wouldn't keep Gemini incredibly price competitive with Claude or ChatGPT.

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