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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

#641

Post by mccoyb »

bluelightning2k wrote: post #559

Reading these comments aren't we missing the obvious? Claude Code is a lock in, where Anthropic takes all the value. If the frontend and API are decoupled, they are one benchmark away from losing half their users. Some other motivations: they want to capture the value. Even if it's unprofitable they can expect it to become vastly profitable as inference cost drops, efficiency improves, competitors die out etc. Or wor…

"Training the specific harness" is marginal -- it's obvious if you've used anything else. pi with Claude is as good as (even better! given the obvious care to context management in pi) as Claude Code with Claude.

This whole game is a bizarre battle.

In the future, many companies will have slightly different secret RL sauces. I'd want to use Gemini for documentation, Claude for design, Codex for planning, yada yada ... there will be no generalist take-all model, I just don't believe RL scaling works like that.

I'm not convinced that a single company can own the best performing model in all categories, I'm not even sure the economics make it feasible.

Good for us, of course.

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

#642

Post by canibal »

naveen99 wrote: post #569
9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using an API key is orders of magnitude more expensive. That's the difference here. The Claude Code subscriptions are being heavily subsidized by Anthropic, which is why people want to use their subscriptions in everything else.

They are subsidized by people who underuse their subscriptions. There must be a lot of them.

This move feels poorly timed. Their latest ad campaigns about not having ads, and the goodwill they'd earned lately in my book was just decimated by this. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's still just dipping their toes into the AI pool. And am very much a user that under utilizes what I pay for because of that. I have several clients who are scrambling to get on board with cowork. Eliminating API usage for subscription members right before a potentially large wave of turnover not only chills that motivation it signals a lack of faith in their marketing, which from my POV, put out the only AI super bowl campaign to escape virtually unscathed.

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

#643

Post by pocksuppet »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #578
nerdjon wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 I am very curious what is particularly illegal about this. On the sales page nowhere do they actually talk about the API https://claude.com/pricing Now we all know obviously the API is being used because that is how things work, but you are not actually pay…

Imagine if video service came with a free TV that watched you, and was really opinionated about what you watch, and you could only watch your videos on the creeper TV.

Video service does work like that. They call it DRM.

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

#644

Post by bluesnowmonkey »

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…

More than 20x actually. According to ccusage I’ve consumed the equivalent of $4500 worth of API tokens in the last 30 days on my $200 subscription.

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

#645

Post by mccoyb »

herzigma wrote: post #640
jamiemallers wrote: post #629

[dead]

More than just the real value: the real intelligence is in the harness.

The opposite is true.

There is barely any magic in the harness, the magic is in the model.

Try it: write your own harness with (bash, read, write, edit) ... it's trivial to get a 99% version of (pick your favorite harness) -- minus the bells and whistles.

The "magic of the harness" comes from the fun auxiliary orchestration stuff - hard engineering for sure! - but seriously, the model is the key item.

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

#646

Post by canibal »

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…

You're not wrong. Reddit & Elon started it and everyone laughed at them and made a stink. But my guess is the "last dying gasp of the freeloader" /s wasn't enough to dissuade other companies from jumping on the bandwagon, cause fiduciary responsibility to shareholders reigns supreme at the end of the day.

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

#647

Post by ac29 »

sambull wrote: post #542
ac29 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can max it out via first party clients only. I dont like it either, but its not an unreasonable restriction.

I do believe it's unreasonable. The limits are the limits, you reach them there's no more free lunch after. Fix the limits, so the limits are reached at a rate that sustains their business.. ? obviously this WILL happen eventually when they need to pay for things.

"A rate that sustains their business" at the moment probably looks like API pricing or maybe even higher. That means subscriptions get significantly more expensive and/or limited, which is maybe where things are headed.

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

#648

Post by gbear605 »

msh wrote: post #478
zdragnar wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it more expensive, people will prefer subscription pricing over pay per use. When you ask it to do something and it goes off the rails, the payment plans have wildly different effects: Subscription- oh well, let's try again with a different prompt Pay per use- I just wasted money, this product sucks Even if it is less common than not, it has an outsized impact on how people feel using it.

And it also caps your maximum expenses. A subscription user don’t have to worry something goes wrong and end up with a huge bill.

At least theoretically, the bill would work on a “wallet” system, where you fill up your account with $X every month, and then you’re charged per use. That keeps there from being a huge bill, worst case you’re just on hold until the next fill up.

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

#649

Post by JimmaDaRustla »

eru wrote: post #105
JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My crude metaphor to explain to my family is gasoline has just been invented and we're all being lent Bentley's to get us addicted to driving everywhere. Eventually we won't be given free Bentley's, and someone is going to be holding the bag when the infinite money machine finally has a hiccup. The tech giants are hoping their gasoline is the one that we all crave when we're left depending on driving everywhere and t…

Why? Computers and anything computer related have historically been dropping in prices like crazy year after year (with only very occasional hiccups). What makes you think this will stop now?

Please show me where any AI company is currently turning a profit with their current offering and price structure, then let's have that conversation.

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

#650

Post by canibal »

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.

But they could charge the third-party client for access to the API.
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