Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

Post by merlindru » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 8:52 AM UTC

bethekind wrote: post #171

g-mork wrote: post #77

My answer to this is simply rolling back to the pro plan for interactive usage in the coming month, and forcefully cutting myself over to one of the alternative Chinese models to just get over the hump and normalise API pricing at a sensible rate with sensible semantics. Dealing with Claude going into stupid mode 15 times a day, constant HTTP errors, etc. just isn't really worth it for all it does. I can't see myself…

I think my next steps are: 1) try out openai $20/month. I've heard they're much more generous. 2) try out open router free models. I don't need geniuses, so long as I can see the thinking (something that Claude code obfuscates by default) I should be good. I've heard good things about the CLIO harness and want to try openrouter+clio

Post by kruxigt » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 9:01 AM UTC

goosejuice wrote: post #160

jesse_dot_id wrote: post #73

There seem to be a ton of people who don't understand how subscription services work. Every single one of them oversells their capacity. The power users that use the services a lot are subsidized by those who don't use it as much, which tends to be the vast majority of the user base. OpenClaw is an autonomous power user. The growing adoption of this walking attack surface was either going to A) cause the cost of Clau…

What you're saying is conceptually true for subscription services in general, but thats not why they are making this change. There's a 5 hour limit and a weekly limit. Those are hard token limits. Everyone on a plan pays for the max set of tokens in that plan. The limits manage capacity. The solution to that isn't a change of ToS, it's adjusting the limits. In other words this is about Anthropic subsidizing their own…

Post by kay_o » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 9:03 AM UTC

jmalicki wrote: post #190

goosejuice wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is conceptually true for subscription services in general, but thats not why they are making this change. There's a 5 hour limit and a weekly limit. Those are hard token limits. Everyone on a plan pays for the max set of tokens in that plan. The limits manage capacity. The solution to that isn't a change of ToS, it's adjusting the limits. In other words this is about Anthropic subsidizing their own…

You aren't paying to be using that limit all of the time. You are paying to be using that limit some of the time. There are 5 hour windows when you are sleeping and can't use it. There are weekend limits. Theoretically you can max out every 5 hour window, but they lose money on that. It's structured so users can have bursts of unlimited usage, and spend ~15% of the theoretical max cap, and that's still cheaper than a…

Post by rane » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 9:11 AM UTC

krupan wrote: post #517

rane wrote: post #511

Why doesn't OpenAI introduce $100/mo plan? Surely many would switch in a heartbeat

Maybe because they don't want to lose money even faster than Anthropic is?

Post by crote » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 9:15 AM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #514

dimmke wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like Anthropic is going down a bad path here with billing things this way. Especially as local LLM continues to develop so fast. I downgraded from my $200 a month plan to my $20 plan and hit limits constantly. I try to use the API access I purchased separately, and it doesn't work with Claude Code (something about the 1 million context requiring extra usage) so I have to use it Continue. Then I get instantly r…

> I feel like Anthropic is going down a bad path here with billing things this way. What do you expect them to do? You are looking at a business currently running at a loss, and complaining about their billing even though this is not a price-rise? Unrelated, is it still possible to use $10k/m worth of tokens on their $200/plan?