Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

code.claude.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 827 posts

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

#521

Post by admx8 »

TZubiri wrote: post #462
stavros wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Read the ToS, you are paying to use their products. If you want to use other products that integrate with the Anthropic LLMs they offer a product which is the API. You can use Opencode by connecting your API and being charged per token. Doesn't that make sense? If you use it more you get charged more, if you use it less you get charged less.

Sure, that's why I'm cancelling my max subscription because I'm tied to opencode :)

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

#522

Post by regularfry »

rglullis wrote: post #501
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…

> If they can provide a relatively cheap subscription against the direct API use Except they can't. Their costs are not magically lower when you use claude code vs when you use a third-party client. > For me, this is fair. This is, plain and simple, a tie-in sale of claude code. I am particularly amused by people accepting it as "fair" because in Brazil this is an illegal practice.

> Except they can't. Their costs are not magically lower when you use claude code vs when you use a third-party client.

I don't have a dog in this fight but is this actually true? If you're using Claude Code they can know that whatever client-side model selection they put into it is active. So if they can get away with routing 80% of the requests to Haiku and only route to Opus for the requests that really need it, that does give them a cost model where they can rely on lower costs than if a third-party client just routes to Opus for everything. Even if they aren't doing that sort of thing now, it would be understandable if they wanted to.

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

#523

Post by everdrive »

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.

Now just imagine the rug-pull if you ever get really dependent on the product.

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

#524

Post by admx8 »

mmasu wrote: post #437
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…

I think that these companies are understanding that as the barrier to entry to build a frontend gets lower and lower, APIs will become the real moat. If you move away from their UI they will lose ad revenue, viewer stats, in short the ability to optimize how to harness your full attention. It would be great to have some stats on hand and see if and how much active API user has increased decreased in the last two year…

What ad revenue? In their terminal cli?

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

#525

Post by admx8 »

cryptoegorophy wrote: post #326
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…

Can you sell ads via api? If answer is no then this “feature” would be at the bottom of the list

What kind of ads they sell in terminal Claude code? Are you bor?

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

#526

Post by admx8 »

hobofan wrote: post #432
stavros wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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?

Btw API is not for coding, it's designed for pipelines, automation, products. They just kill competition making better software like opencode.

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

#527

Post by admx8 »

narrator wrote: post #461
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 think what most people don't realize is running an agent 24/7 fully automated is burning a huge hole in their profitability. Who even knows how big it is. It could be getting it on the 8/9 figures a day for all we know. There's this pervasive idea left over from the pre-llm days that compute is free. You want to rent your own H200x8 to run your Claude model, that's literally going to cost $24/hour. People are just…

Coder doing the coding should use subscription, and now they ban the choice of your preferred ide for agentc coding. API is for automation not coding. I'm going to cancel their subscription today, I already use codex with opencode.

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

#528

Post by windexh8er »

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…

Everyone has heard the word "enshittification" at this point and this falls in line. But if you haven't read the book [0] it's a great deep dive into the topical area.

But the real issue is that these companies, once they have any market leverage, do things in their best interest to protect the little bit of moat they've acquired.

[0] https://www.mcdbooks.com/books/enshittification

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

#529

Post by agentic_lawyer »

Loic wrote: post #369
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…

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…

[dead]

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

#530

Post by heliumtera »

PierceJoy wrote: post #450
stavros wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The speculative reasoning I've seen is that they have optimizations in their CC client that reduces their costs. If that's true, I think it's fair that they can limit subscription usage to their client. If you don't want those optimizations and prefer more freedom, use the API.

They rather have yolo permissions to run arbitrary code on your machine and phone home all the time, then opencode having it and phoning home all the time.
Post reply on HN