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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

#281

Post by mvdtnz »

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…

"They're not losing money on subscriptions, it's just their revenue is smaller than their costs". Weird take.

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

#282

Post by dawnerd »

charcircuit wrote: post #259
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.

at a significantly higher price... which of course is why they're doing this.

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

#283

Post by fla »

tappio wrote: post #212
sambull wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

these subscriptions have limits.. how could someone use $200 worth on $20/month.. is that not the issue with the limits they set on a $20 plan, and couldn't a claude code user use that same $200 worth on $20/month? (and how do i do this?)

The limits in the max subscriptions are more generous and power users are generating loss. I'm rather certain, though cannot prove it, that buying the same tokens would cost at least 10x more if bought from API. Anecdotally, my cursor team usage was getting to around 700$ / month. After switching to claude code max, I have so far only once hit the 3h limit window on the 100$ sub. What Im thinking is that Anthropic is…

This exactly. I think this is why Anthropic simply don’t want 3rd party businesses to max out the subscription plans by sharing them across their own clients.

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

#284

Post by JumpCrisscross »

nostromo wrote: post #262
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'll all do this eventually. We're in the part of the market cycle where everyone fights for marketshare by selling dollar bills for 50 cents. When a winner emerges they'll pull the rug out from under you and try to wall off their garden. Anthropic just forgot that we're still in the "functioning market competition" phase of AI and not yet in the "unstoppable monopoly" phase.

> They'll all do this eventually

And if the frontier continues favouring centralised solutions, they'll get it. If, on the other hand, scaling asymptotes, the competition will be running locally. Just looking at how much Claude complains about me not paying for SSO-tier subscriptions to data tools when they work perfectly fine in a browser is starting to make running a slower, less-capable model locally competitive with it in some research contexts.

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

#285

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ai-x wrote: post #277
bambax wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unstoppable monopoly will be extremely hard to pull off given the number of quality open (weights) alternatives. I only use LLMs through OpenRouter and switch somewhat randomly between frontier models; they each have some amount of personality but I wouldn't mind much if half of them disappeared overnight, as long as the other half remained available.

This is saying we have hundreds of open source OSes and Windows will never be a monopoly. Software always gets monopoly simply by usage. Every time a model gets used by esoteric use cases, it gets more training data (that a decentralized open weight model doesn't get) and it starts developing its moat.

> Software always gets monopoly simply by usage

Most software isn't made by monopolies. More directly, enterprise-software stocks are getting hammered because AI offers them competition.

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

#286

Post by carderne »

mvdtnz wrote: post #281
mirzap wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"They're not losing money on subscriptions, it's just their revenue is smaller than their costs". Weird take.

It means the marginal cost to sell another subscription is lower than what they sell it for. I don't know if that's true, but it seems plausible.

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

#287

Post by illiac786 »

ai-x wrote: post #277
bambax wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unstoppable monopoly will be extremely hard to pull off given the number of quality open (weights) alternatives. I only use LLMs through OpenRouter and switch somewhat randomly between frontier models; they each have some amount of personality but I wouldn't mind much if half of them disappeared overnight, as long as the other half remained available.

This is saying we have hundreds of open source OSes and Windows will never be a monopoly. Software always gets monopoly simply by usage. Every time a model gets used by esoteric use cases, it gets more training data (that a decentralized open weight model doesn't get) and it starts developing its moat.

I think windows has historical monopoly.

They bundled it with PC hw and the vast majority of apps only ever got published for windows, and this over decades (one would argue it’s still true).

The starting point for LLMs is very different. Who would publish today a software that only integrates with chatGPT? Only a small minority.

Thus I agree, I struggle to see how a monopoly can exist here. A GPU monopoly or duopoly though, perhaps.

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

#288

Post by trymas »

gbear605 wrote: post #253
mirzap wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I use GLM lite subscription for personal use. It is advertised as 3x claude code pro (the 20$ one).

5h allowance is somewhere between 50M-100M tokens from what I can tell.

On 200$ claude code plan you should be burning hundreds of millions of token per day to make anthropic hurt.

IMHO subscription plans are totally banking on many users underusing them. Also LLM providers dont like to say exact numbers (how much you get , etc)

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

#289

Post by kelipso »

ai-x wrote: post #277
bambax wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unstoppable monopoly will be extremely hard to pull off given the number of quality open (weights) alternatives. I only use LLMs through OpenRouter and switch somewhat randomly between frontier models; they each have some amount of personality but I wouldn't mind much if half of them disappeared overnight, as long as the other half remained available.

This is saying we have hundreds of open source OSes and Windows will never be a monopoly. Software always gets monopoly simply by usage. Every time a model gets used by esoteric use cases, it gets more training data (that a decentralized open weight model doesn't get) and it starts developing its moat.

It’ll be a bunch of tiny moats in that scenario. LLMs are way too generic, adaptable, flexible in how you use it to make a big most out of it.

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

#290

Post by jongjong »

I have no issues with this. Anthropic did a great job with Claude Code.

It's a little bit sleazy as a business model to try to wedge one's self between Claude and its users.

OpenAI acquiring OpenClaw gives me bad vibes. How did OpenClaw gain so much traction so quickly? It doesn't seem organic.

I definitely feel much more aligned with Anthropic as a company. What they do seems more focused, meritocratic, organic and genuine.

OpenAI essentially appropriated all their current IP from the people... They basically gutted the non-profit and stole its IP. Then sold a huge chunk to Microsoft... Yes, they literally sold the IP they stole to Microsoft, in broad daylight. Then they used media spin to make it sound like they appropriated it from Elon because Elon donated a few millions... But Elon got his tax deduction! The public footed the bill for those deductions... The IP belonged to the non-profit; to the public, not Elon, nor any of the donors. I mean let's not even mention Suchir Balaji, the OpenAI researcher who supposedly "committed suicide" after trying to warn everyone about the stolen IP.

OpenAI is clearly trying to slander Anthropic, trying to present themselves as the good guys after their OpenClaw acquisition and really rubbing it in all over HN... Over which they have much influence.

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