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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

#451

Post by barrkel »

stavros wrote: post #438
hobofan wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I'm paying for usage You are not paying for usage. You are paying for usage via their application. If their business plan is based on how quickly a human can enter requests and react to the results, and Claude Code is optimized for that, why should you be allowed to use an alternative client that e.g. always tries to saturate the token limits?

But a) I'm not doing that and b) they can just ban that, like they have rate limits. Why ban OpenCode?

They have rate limits, but they also want to control the nozzle, and not all their users use all their allocation all the time.

In reality, heavy subscription users are subsidized by light subscription users. The rate limits aren't everything.

If agent harnesses other than Claude Code consume more tokens than average, or rather, if users of agent harnesses other than CC consume more tokens than average, well, Anthropic wouldn't be unhappy if those consumers had to pay more for their tokens.

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

#452

Post by _kb »

seu wrote: post #330
andreagrandi wrote: post #273

I'm only waiting for OpenAI to provide an equivalet ~100 USD subscription to entirely ditch Claude. Opus has gone down the hill continously in the last week (and before you start flooding with replies, I've been testing opus/codex in parallel for the last week, I've plenty of examples of Claude going off track, then apologising, then saying "now it's all fixed!" and then only fixing part of it, when codex nailed at t…

> Opus has gone down the hill continously in the last week Is a week the whole attention timespan of the late 2020s?

Unfortunately, and “Attention Is All You Need”.

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

#453

Post by dgellow »

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…

Inference might be cheap, but I'm 100% sure Anthropic has been losing quite a lot of money with their subscription pricing with power users. I can literally see comparison between what my colleagues Claude cost when used with an API key vs when used with a personal subscription, and the delta is just massive

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

#455

Post by andreagrandi »

dannersy wrote: post #291
andreagrandi wrote: post #273

I'm only waiting for OpenAI to provide an equivalet ~100 USD subscription to entirely ditch Claude. Opus has gone down the hill continously in the last week (and before you start flooding with replies, I've been testing opus/codex in parallel for the last week, I've plenty of examples of Claude going off track, then apologising, then saying "now it's all fixed!" and then only fixing part of it, when codex nailed at t…

No offense, but this is the most predicable outcome ever. The software industry at large does this over and over again and somehow we're surprised. Provide thing for free or for cheap, and then slowly draw back availability once you have dominant market share or find yourself needing money (ahem). The providers want to control what AI does to make money or dominate an industry so they don't have to make their money b…

No offense taken here :)

First, we are not talking about a cheap service here. We are talking about a monthly subscription which costs 100 USD or 200 USD per month, depending on which plan you choose.

Second, it's like selling me a pizza and pretending I only eat it while sitting at your table. I want to eat the pizza at home. I'm not getting 2-3 more pizzas, I'm still getting the same pizza others are getting.

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

#456

Post by xvector »

stavros wrote: post #430
dragonwriter wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't paying for usage, you are paying for the product that the subscription is offered to. If you are paying for usage, well, that's their billed by token-usage API plan, which they are quite happy for you to use with any client you want.

Even worse, if I'm paying a subscription for the product, and I don't want to use the product, what's it to them?

Do you not understand that they run the regular subscription at a huge loss? In exchange they require you to stick with Claude Code.

You are free to use the API.

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

#457

Post by patapong »

DrammBA wrote: post #266
KingMob wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably because their flat rate pricing is based off their ability to manage token use via their first-party tools. A third-party tool may be less efficient in saving costs (I have heard many of them don't hit Anthropic LLMs' caches as well). Would you be willing to pay more for your plan, to subsidize the use of third-party tools by others? --- Note, afaik, Anthropic hasn't come out and said this is the reason, b…

But wouldn't a less efficient tool simply consume your 5-hour/weekly quota faster? There's gotta be something else, probably telemetry, maybe hoping people switch to API without fighting, or simply vendor lock-in.

Presumably most people also do not use their full quota when using the official client, whereas third-party clients could be set up to start back up every 5 hours to use 100% of the quota every day and week.

It's the whole "unlimited storage" discussion again.

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

#458

Post by terminalbraid »

stavros wrote: post #404
Loic wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They put no limits on the API usage, as long as you pay. Here, they put limits on the "under-cover" use of the subscription. If they can provide a relatively cheap subscription against the direct API use, this is because they can control the stuff end-to-end, the application running on your system (Claude Code, Claude Desktop) and their systems. As you subscribe to these plans, this is the "contract", you can use onl…

I don't see how it's fair. If I'm paying for usage, and I'm using it, why should Anthropic have a say on which client I use? I pay them $100 a month and now for some reason I can't use OpenCode? Fuck that.

Stop giving money to the company that doesn't give you what you want.

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

#459

Post by TZubiri »

bilekas wrote: post #314

It might be some confirmation bias here on my part but it feels as if companies are becoming more and more hostile to their API users. Recently Spotify basically nuked their API with zero urgency to fix it, redit has a whole convoluted npm package your obliged to use to create a bot, Facebook requires you to provide registered company and tax details even for development with some permissions. Am I just old man screa…

But this ban is precisely on circumventing the API.

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

#460

Post by well_ackshually »

andersmurphy wrote: post #413
well_ackshually wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPUs do not wear down from being ran at 100%, unless they're pushed past their voltage limits, or gravely overheating. You can buy a GPU that's been used to mine bitcoin for 5 years with zero downtime, and as long as it's been properly taken care of (or better, undervolted), that GPU functions the exact same as a 5 year old GPU in your PC. Probably even better. GPUs are rated to do 100%, all the time. That's the poin…

Yeah that's not how it works in practice in a datacenter with the latest GPUs, they are basically perishable goods. You don't run your gaming PC 24/7.

No, you're fundamentally wrong. There's the regular wear & tear of GPUs that all have varying levels of quality, you'll have blown capacitors (just as you do with any piece of hardware), but running in a datacenter does not damage them more. If anything, they're better taken care of and will last longer. However, since instead of having one 5090 in a computer somewhere, you have a million of them. A 1% failure rate quickly makes a big number. My example included mining bitcoin because, just like datacenters, they were running in massive farms of thousands of devices. We have the proof and the numbers, running at full load with proper cooling and no over voltage does not damage hardware.

The only reason they're "perishable" is because of the GPU arms race, where renewing them every 5 years is likely to be worth the investment for the gains you make in power efficiency.

Do you think Google has a pile of millions of older TPUs they threw out because they all failed, when chips are basically impossible to recycle ? No, they keep using them, they're serving your nanobanana prompts.

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