Live data from Hacker News

Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use

code.claude.com

741–750 of 827 posts

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

#741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What law is actually being broken in Brazil? Are MMO’s illegal in Brazil? Is PlayStation Plus illegal in Brazil? Is Spotify, Apple Music, etc etc etc also illegal in Brazil? It would be ridiculous to argue that I could pay for a subscription to World of Warcraft and make my own third party client to play the game with. (Obviously you are free to argue it all you want but I would be very surprised if this was actually…

> What law is actually being broken in Brazil? "Tie-in sale": the business practice where a seller conditions the sale of one product (the tying good) on the buyer’s agreement to purchase a different product (the tied good). The examples you are giving are not "tie-in" sales because the service from Playstation Plus, Spotify, Apple Music, etc is the distribution of digital goods. > Unless I am mistaken Claude Code do…

> "Tie-in sale": the business practice where a seller conditions the sale of one product (the tying good) on the buyer’s agreement to purchase a different product (the tied good)

I will keep my response to this part in particular limited because I have limited understanding of this law. However based on doing a little bit of searching around the law is not as cut and dry as you are presenting it to be. It is possible that Claude code would fall under being fine under that law or no one has gone after them. I honestly don’t know and I don’t feel like having an argument that it is highly likely both of us don’t fully understand the law.

That being said I do question how exactly “Claude code” differs from those services as a digital good.

> I don't care about Claude Code. I do not want it and do not need it. All I care about is the access to the models through the client that I was already using!

OK! That is not what you’re paying for as part of Claude Pro, end of story. You are not paying for the API. It is no different that the people that have a free plan and can only chat through the web and the app also don’t get access to the API even though it is obviously using an API to access those endpoints as well.

Or are you also going to argue that free users should have access to the API because they are already using them in the browser.

> No, it is not! I paid for Claude Pro. Claude != Claude Code.

Claude Code is one of the features you are paying for as part of Claude Pro so yes in a way you are paying for it. And again not on that list is the API.

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

#742

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…

> At some point Claude Code will become an ecosystem with preferred cloud and database vendors, observability, code review agents, etc.

i've been wondering how anthropic is going to survive long term. If they could build out an infrastructure and services to complete with the hyperscalers but surfaced as a tool for claude to use then maybe. You pay Anthropic $20/user/month for ClaudeCode but also $100k/month to run your applications.

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

#743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What else would it mean?

That you are charged a single fixed fee regardless of usage. Nothing about that prevents a usage cap.

A cap pretty much is the opposite of regardless of usage

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

#744
post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A flat fee, also referred to as a flat rate or a linear rate refers to a pricing structure that charges a single fixed fee for a service, regardless of usage.

That's one definition. There are others. I'm sure you can use context clues to figure this one out. You're so close! Just put the pieces together.

There are no other definitions that‘s why they why internet flat rates got throttled instead of capped. Throttling is the loop bole because you paid for usage not for speed but flat rate with a cap is simply a lie.

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

#745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that's not a product that they're offering Of course it was. - It was possible to do it. - OpenCode did not break any security protocol in order to integrate with them. - OAuth is *precisely* a system to let third-party applications use their resources. It's not what they wanted , but it's not my problem. The fact that I was a customer does not mean that I need to protective of their profits. > (from their busi…

> Of course it was. You'd have to point me to an authoritative source on that (explicitly saying users are allowed to use their models via private APIs in apps of the user's choosing). If something isn't explicitly provided in the contract, then it can be changed at any point in any way without notice. Honestly, I'm not big on capitalism in general, but I don't understand why people should expect companies to provide…

> I don't understand why people should expect companies to provide things exactly the way they want at exactly the prices they would like to be charged

This is a gross misrepresentation of my argument.

I wouldn't be complaining at all if they went up and said "sorry, we are not going to subsidize anyone anymore, so the prices are going up", and I wouldn't be complaining if they came up and said "sorry, using a third party client incurs an extra cost of on our side, so if you want to use that you'd have to pay extra".

What I am against is the anti-competitive practice of price discrimination and the tie-in sale of a service. If they are going to play this game, then they better be ready for the case the strategy backfires. Otherwise it's just a game of "heads I win, tails you lose" where they always get to make up the rules.

> Emigration is a far more effective message than complaining.

Why not both? I cancelled my Pro subscription today. I will stick with just Ollama cloud.

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

#746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mining rigs also used more milk cartons than datacenter racks; [hot/cold] aisles? No, piles! Not to mention the often questionable power delivery...

AI data centers are also incentivised to reduce costs as far as they can. They could absolutely be running them in questionable setups

Indeed, fair point. I'd hope the larger players would be better... but I know better

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

#747
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest reason why this is confusing is the Claude Agent SDK[0] will use subscription/oauth credentials if present. The terms update implies that there's some use cases where that's ok and other use cases (commercial?) where using their SDK on a user's device violates terms. [0] https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/overview

The SDK is Claude Code in a harnesss, so it works with your credentials the same way CC does. But they're stating you can only use your subscription for your personal usage, not someone else's for their usage in your product. I honestly think they're being short sighted not just giving a "3rd party quota" since they already show users like 4 quotas. If the fear is 3rd party agents screwing up the math, just make it l…

> not someone else's for their usage in your product.

what if the "product" is a setup of documents that concisely describe the product so that a coding agent can reliable produce it correctly. Then the install process becomes "agent, write and host this application for the user's personal use on their computer". Now all software is for personal use only. Companies released these things and, like Frankenstein, there's a strong possibility they will turn on their creators.

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

#748
post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to say what platform but it's an agentic coding tool, I know for a fact the platform loses in the mid $200.00s on a $20.00 plan. 10:1 loss leader for customer acquisition is crazy, and they'll have to make that up in the future somehow, they're all fumbling on how to vendor lock their customers, and its not necessarily clear they're going to be able to. I expect some big falls from 10 figure businesses…

That's crazy. I'm already barely willing to pay $10/month on Github Copilot. A product I love. Best value for money. If they pump it up to $200 (or to $20). I'll simply use crappier local model. It won't be as good. But I already own my gaming PC that can run local models, and electricity is cheap.

> I'll simply use crappier local model. It won't be as good. But I already own my gaming PC that can run local models,

this is UNIX and Linux all over again lol. It's pretty amazing and nostalgic.

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

#749

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…

It's because AI is being trained on all of these APIs and the platforms are at risk of losing what makes them valuable (their data). So they have to take the API down or charge enough that it wouldn't be worth it for an AI.

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

#750
post #411

This is how you gift wrap the agentic era to the open source chinese LLMs. devs don't need the best model, they need one without lawyers attached.

introducing moderation, steerage and censorship in your LLM is a great way to not even show up to the table with a competitive product. builders have woken up to this reality and are demanding local models
Post reply on HN