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Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

code.claude.com

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

#251

Post by hhh »

mirzap wrote: post #155
paxys wrote: post #31

I don't think it's a secret that AI companies are losing a ton of money on subscription plans. Hence the stricter rate limits, new $200+ plans, push towards advertising etc. The real money is in per-token billing via the API (and large companies having enough AI FOMO that they blindly pay the enormous invoices every month).

They are not losing money on subscription plans. Inference is very cheap - just a few dollars per million tokens. What they’re trying to do is bundle R&D costs with inference so they can fund the training of the next generation of models. Banning third-party tools has nothing to do with rate limits. They’re trying to position themselves as the Apple of AI companies -a walled garden. They may soon discover that screwi…

What walled garden man? There’s like four major API providers for Anthropic.

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

#252

Post by techpression »

theptip wrote: post #219
techpression wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not true, the market loves pay per use, see ”cloud”. It outperforms subscriptions by a lot, it’s not ”one-off”. And your example is not how companies building on top tend to charge, you either have your own infrastructure (key) or get charged at-cost + fees and service costs. I don’t think Anthropic has any desire to be some B2C platform, they want high paying reliable customers (B2B, Enterprise).

> the market loves pay per use, see ”cloud”. Cloud goes on the books as recurring revenue, not one-off; even though it's in principle elastic, in practice if I pay for a VM today I'll usually pay for one tomorrow. (I don't have the numbers but the vast majority of cloud revenue is also going to be pre-committed long-term contracts from enterprises.) > I don’t think Anthropic has any desire to be some B2C platform Thi…

Sure, but even if a subscription and per per use are both recurring revenue, pay per use is not a subscription. The point I was trying to make is that there’s a lot of money to be made in the model Anthropic seems to be going for, more than a monthly subscription fee would allow for.

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

#253

Post by gbear605 »

mirzap wrote: post #155
paxys wrote: post #31

I don't think it's a secret that AI companies are losing a ton of money on subscription plans. Hence the stricter rate limits, new $200+ plans, push towards advertising etc. The real money is in per-token billing via the API (and large companies having enough AI FOMO that they blindly pay the enormous invoices every month).

They are not losing money on subscription plans. Inference is very cheap - just a few dollars per million tokens. What they’re trying to do is bundle R&D costs with inference so they can fund the training of the next generation of models. Banning third-party tools has nothing to do with rate limits. They’re trying to position themselves as the Apple of AI companies -a walled garden. They may soon discover that screwi…

I’m not familiar with the Claude Code subscription, but with Codex I’m able to use millions of tokens per day on the $200/mo plan. My rough estimate was that if I were API billing, it would cost about $50/day, or $1200/mo. So either the API has a 6x profit margin on inference, the subscription is a loss leader, or they just rely on most people not to go anywhere near the usage caps.

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

#254

Post by stingrae »

sambull wrote: post #80
paxys wrote: post #31

I don't think it's a secret that AI companies are losing a ton of money on subscription plans. Hence the stricter rate limits, new $200+ plans, push towards advertising etc. The real money is in per-token billing via the API (and large companies having enough AI FOMO that they blindly pay the enormous invoices every month).

The secret is there is no path on making that back.

the path is by charging just a bit less than the salary of the engineers they are replacing.

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

#255

Post by baq »

chickensong wrote: post #231

Your core customers are clearly having a blast building their own custom interfaces, so obviously the thing to do is update TOS and put a stop to it! Good job lol. I know, I know, customer experience, ecosystem, gardens, moats, CC isn't fat, just big boned, I get it. Still a dick move. This policy is souring the relationship, and basically saying that Claude isn't a keeper. I'll keep my eye-watering sub for now becau…

Don’t be mad at it, be happy you were able to throw some of that sweet free vc money at your hobbies instead of paying the market rate.

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

#256

Post by baq »

echelon wrote: post #249
g-mork wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine having a finite pool of GPUs worth more than their weight in gold, and an infinite pool of users obsessed with running as many queries against those GPUs in parallel as possible, mostly to review and generate copious amounts of spam content primarily for the purposes of feeling modern, and all in return for which they offer you $20 per month. If you let them, you must incur as much credit liability as OpenAI.…

Why do you fundamentally dislike him as a person? The only thing I've seen from him that I don't like is the "SWEs will be replaced" line (which is probably true and it's more that I don't like the factuality of it).

It’s kinda obvious he’s a well spoken shark. Personally not an issue for me, you have to be at the top of a unicorn, but it isn’t something people in general like.

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

#257

Post by baq »

dakolli wrote: post #199
paxys wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how they can get more clear about this, considering they have repeatedly answered it the exact same way. Subscriptions are for first-party products (claude.com, mobile and desktop apps, Claude Code, editor extensions, Cowork). Everything else must use API billing.

And at that point, you might as well use OpenRouter's PKCE and give users the option to use other models.. These kinds of business decisions show how these $200.00 subscriptions for their slot/infinite jest machines basically light that $200.00 on fire, and in general how unsustainable these business models are. Can't wait for it all to fail, they'll eventually try to get as many people to pay per token as possible,…

It’s been obvious from the start that the $200 point is the free tier

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

#258

Post by weird-eye-issue »

chickensong wrote: post #231

Your core customers are clearly having a blast building their own custom interfaces, so obviously the thing to do is update TOS and put a stop to it! Good job lol. I know, I know, customer experience, ecosystem, gardens, moats, CC isn't fat, just big boned, I get it. Still a dick move. This policy is souring the relationship, and basically saying that Claude isn't a keeper. I'll keep my eye-watering sub for now becau…

That's what the API is for.

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

#259

Post by charcircuit »

chickensong wrote: post #231

Your core customers are clearly having a blast building their own custom interfaces, so obviously the thing to do is update TOS and put a stop to it! Good job lol. I know, I know, customer experience, ecosystem, gardens, moats, CC isn't fat, just big boned, I get it. Still a dick move. This policy is souring the relationship, and basically saying that Claude isn't a keeper. I'll keep my eye-watering sub for now becau…

They offer an API for people who want to build their own clients. They didn't stop people from being able to use Claude.

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

#260

Post by turblety »

artdigital wrote: post #164
adastra22 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Codex ok with any other third party applications, or just those?

By default, assume no. The lack of any official integration guide should be a clear sign. Even saying that you reverse-engineer Codex for apps to pretend to be Codex makes it clear that this is not an officially endorsed thing to do

Codex is Open Source though, so I wonder at what stage me adding features to Codex is different from me starting a new project and using the subscription.

But I believe OpenAI does let you use their subscription in third parties, so not an issue anyway.

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