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A flat pricing subscription for Claude Code
- jbellis 1y ago[flagged]
- ghuntley 1y ago[flagged]
- jbellis 1y agoyou're right about the context limits i pinged what i think is the right ghuntley on linkedin, rizzler looks like the next feature i'm building for brokk :)
- ghuntley 1y agoThis is me - speak soon. https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffreyhuntley https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffreyhuntley
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- owebmaster 1y ago> Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- foobahhhhh 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- infecto 1y agoAgree with the other commenter. I have seen at least 2 other posts today where you plug your project.
- ghuntley 1y agothe new Claude code “max plan” would last me all of [1] 5mins… I don’t get why people are excited about this. High powered tools aren’t cheap and aren’t for the consumer… [1] https://www.youtube.com/live/khr-cIc7zjc?si=oI9Fj33JBeDlQEYG https://www.youtube.com/live/khr-cIc7zjc?si=oI9Fj33JBeDlQEYG
- iLoveOncall 1y agoIf that's the case you should stop using it, because there's no way you see any ROI when you spend that much to just do some coding stuff. It would be cheaper to your company to literally pay your salary while you do nothing.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- postalrat 1y agoI'd love to see your math.
- pclmulqdq 1y agoIt's pretty simple: that usage in 5 min is probably at least $10 worth of API credits in that time (maybe $100). A year has 2000 working hours, which is 24000 5-minute intervals. That means the company spending at least $240,000 on the Claude API (conservatively). So they would be better off having $100-200k you do nothing and hiring someone competent for that $240k.
- F7F7F7 1y agoClaude Max is less than a 1/2 percentage point of a Jr. Devs average salary. If you can't make that work then....
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- justanotheratom 1y agoI am sure this is worth every dime, but my workflow is so used to Cursor now (cursor rules, model choice, tab complete, to be specific), that I can't be bothered to try this out.
- s17n 1y agoIf you're using Cursor with Claude it's gonna be pretty much the same thing. Personally I use Claude Code because I hate the Cursor interface but if you like it I don't think you're missing much.
- justanotheratom 1y agoI don't enjoy the interface as such, rather the workflows that it enables.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- tkzed49 1y agoThe problem is that this is $100/mo with limits. At work I use Cursor, which is pretty good (especially tab completion), and at home I use Copilot in vscode insiders build, which is catching up to Cursor IMO. However, as long as Microsoft is offering copilot at (presumably subsidized) $10/mo, I'm not interested in paying 10x as much and still having limits. It would have to be 10x as useful, and I doubt that.
- tkzed49 1y agoI'll add on to this: I don't really use agent modes a lot. In an existing codebase, they waste a lot of my time for mixed results. Maybe Claude Code is so much better at this that it enables a different paradigm of AI editing—but I'd need easy, cheap access to try it.
- koakuma-chan 1y ago> but I'd need easy, cheap access to try it. You can try it for cheap with the normal pay-as-you-go way.
- warp 1y agoYou don't need a max subscription to use Claude Code. By default it uses your API credits, and I guess I'm not a heavy AI user yet (for my hobby projects), but I haven't spent more than $5/month on Claude Code the past few months.
- EnPissant 1y agoI spent $5 in 10 minutes when I tried it.
- christophilus 1y agoFor me, it was $10 in 2 hours. That’s super cheap if it saves me significant time. Jury’s out on that, though.
- koakuma-chan 1y ago
- I_am_tiberius 1y agoDo you still need a phone number to register with claude?
- flynumber 1y agoJudging by your username you're in Israel? If so just get yourself an Israeli mobile virtual number (which can receive SMS) https://www.flynumber.com/cities/israel/mobile/ https://www.flynumber.com/cities/israel/mobile/
- I_am_tiberius 1y agoHaha. No I'm not from Israel. Just a Star Trek fan:). But thanks for the info. My issue with that is that I don't want to give a way my phone number, and I certainly don't want to pay for a service that gives me a phone number.
- abetaha 1y agoI wonder how successful this pricing model ($100-$200 a month with limits) is going to be. It is very hard to justify, when other tooling in the ~$20/month range offers unlimited usage, and comparable quality.
- jsheard 1y agoIs any of the ~$20/month with unlimited usage tooling actually profitable though? It goes without saying that if all else is equal then the product sold at a greater loss will be more popular, but that only works until the vendor runs out of money to light on fire.
- turnsout 1y agoCursor keeps raising money… I for one personally enjoy burning all those VC dollars. Consider it a very tiny version of wealth redistribution.
- slrainka 1y agoAgent mode without rails is like a boat without a rudder. What worked for me was coming up with an extremely opinionated way to develop an application and then generating instructions (mini milestones) by combining it with the requirements. These instructions end up being very explicit in the sequence of things it should do (write the tests first), how the code should be written and where to place it etc. So the output ended up being very similar regardless of the coding agent being used.
- F7F7F7 1y agoI've tried every variation of this very thing. Even managed to build a quick and dirty ticketing system that I could assign to the LLM of my choosing. WITH context. Talking Graph Codebase's diagrams, mappings, tree structure of every possibility, simple documentation, complex documentation, a bunch of OSS to do this very thing automatically etcetcetc. In the codebase I've tried modularity via monorepo, or faux microservices with local apis, monoliths filled with hooks and all the other centralized tricks in the book. Down to the very very simple. Whatever I could do to bring down the context window needed. Eventually.....your return diminish. And any time you saved is gone. And by the time you've burned up a context window and you're ready to get out. Now you're expeciting it to output a concise artifact to carry you to the next chat so you don't have to spend more context getting that thread up to speed. Inevitably the context window and the LLMs eagerness to touch shit that it's not supposed (the likelihood of which increases with context) always gets in the way. Anything with any kind of complexity ends up in a game of too much bloat or the LLM removing pieces that kill other pieces that it wasn't aware about. /VENT
- slrainka 1y agoSo, relying on a large context can be tricky. Instead I’ve tried to get to a ER model quickly. And from there build modules that don’t have tight dependencies. Using Gemini 2.5 for generating instructions This is the guide I use https://github.com/bluedevilx/ai-driven-development/blob/main/architecture-guide.md https://github.com/bluedevilx/ai-driven-development/blob/mai...
- energy123 1y ago
- cye131 1y agoI'm curious whether anyone's actually using Claude code successfully. I tried it on release and found it negative value for tasks other than spinning up generic web projects. For existing codebases of even a moderate size, it burns through cash to write code that is always slightly wrong and requires more tuning than writing it myself.
- ramoz 1y agoYes. For small apps, as well distributed systems. You have to puppeteer it and build a meta context/tasking management system. I spend a lot of time setting Claude code up for success. I usually start with Gemini for creating context, development plans, and project tasking outlines (I can feed large portions of codebase to Gemini and rely on its strategy). I’ve even put entire library docsites in my repos for Claude code to use - but today they announced web search. They also have todos built in which make the above even more powerful. The end result is insane productivity - I think the only metric I have is something like 15-20k lines of code for a recent distributed processing system from scratch over 5 days.
- broof 1y agoCan you share more about what you mean by a meta context/tasking management system? I’m always curious when I see people who have happily spent large amounts on api tokens.
- conception 1y agoSo i use roo and you have the architecture mode draft out in as much detail as you want, plans, tech stack choices, todos, etc. Switch to orchestration mode to execute the plan, including verifying things are done correctly. It sub tasks out the todos. Tell it to not bother you unless it has a question. Cone back in thirty and see how it’s doing. You can have it commit to a branch per task if you want. Etc etc.
- ramoz 1y agoHere is some insight... I had gemini obfuscate my business context so if something sounds weird it is probably because of that. https://gist.github.com/backnotprop/4a07a7e8fdd76cbe054761b986a6f853 https://gist.github.com/backnotprop/4a07a7e8fdd76cbe054761b9... The framework is basically the instructions and my general guidance for updating and ensuring the details of critical information get injected into context. some of those prompts I commented here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43932858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43932858 For most planning I use Gemini. I copy either the entire codebase (if less than ~200k tokens) or select only that parts that matter for the task in large codebases. I built a tool to help me build these prompts, keep the codebase organized well in xml structure. https://github.com/backnotprop/prompt-tower https://github.com/backnotprop/prompt-tower
- light_hue_1 1y agoThis isn't flat pricing. It's exactly the same API credits but you prepay for the month and lose anything you don't use. Whether it turns out to be cheaper depends on your usage. I thought Claude Code was absurdly expensive and not at all more capable than something like chatgpt combined with copilot.
- esha_manideep 1y agoClaude's limits are so vague - its not clear if buying Claude Max is cheaper than just using the API. Has anyone benchmarked this?
- varispeed 1y agoSounds like they are great fans of Numberwang.
- dham 1y agoBoth Anthropic and OpenAI don't have Linux desktop clients (to use MCP), so yea I'll skip.
- turnsout 1y agoClaude Code runs in the terminal
- varispeed 1y agoThey could make $1000 a month version that runs on tape.
- auggierose 1y agoBut at least Claude Desktop runs on my Intel Mac.
- dham 1y agoI'm sorry - Apple
- auggierose 1y agoIt's more like: I'm sorry - Open AI
- pier25 1y ago$200/month? Do people really get that much value from these tools? I use Github's Copilot for $10 and I'm somewhat happy for what I get... but paying 10x or 20x that just seems insane.
- lkbm 1y agoIf your employer spends $20k a month on you (salary + everything else), $200 a month breaks even at around a 1% boost in productivity.
- pier25 1y agoMaybe if you're working in FAANG...
- 0x6c6f6c 1y agoLots of jobs where employers pay that much per head, not just FAANG. Honestly FAANG is probably spending double that for senior+ level engineers.
- conradkay 1y agoAverage US salary for SWE is 10-12k/month. Fully-loaded cost (what they spend) is 1.5-2x salary so that's not an unrealistic number
- pier25 1y agoSo you're arguing about the top 10-20% earners in the US? Also the world is much bigger than the US.
- vel0city 1y agoThe point is you don't have to have FAANG salaries to hit $20k/mo in cost to your employer. Tons of software developer jobs in the US for non-FAANG tier or unicorn startup companies are >$100k and easily hit $120-150k. Also the fourth quintile mean was like $120k in the US in 2022. So you'd be in the top 30% of earners making that kind of money, not the top 10%. https://taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/household-income-quintiles https://taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/household-income-quin...
- 999900000999 1y agoWorth it, but I’m chilling until the next major model release. It still double downs on non working solutions
- oidar 1y agoIt would really be helpful if Anthropic let user know the useage limits and what has been used and what is left instead of these vague X5 X20 vs Pro.
- bionhoward 1y agoYes, let’s all agree not to compete with something that competes with us. Galaxy brain
- anonzzzies 1y agoMy first language is not English, but is this changing the meaning of 'flat'? To me this is not flat.
- designed 1y agoIt's flat as in flat rate, similar to fixed rate, meaning a set cost per month, instead of pay-as-you-go. Hope that helps. It's flat if you graph your spend over multiple months :)
- tippytippytango 1y agoI prefer just paying for metered use on every request. I hope monthly fees don’t carry over from the last era of tech. It’s fine to charge consumers $10 per month. But once it’s over $50 let’s not pretend you are hoping I under utilize the service, and you want me to think I’m over utilizing it. These premium subscriptions are too much for me to pretend that math doesn’t exist.
- Daviey 1y agoDoesn't per-call pricing reduce your usage? When I see the price of a session go to >$3, for a handful of interactions I self-limit my usage. I'd love to have an all-you-can-eat, but $100 p/m isn't compelling enough compared to copy/paste for $20 p/m via chat. That's not to say the value doesn't exceed $100, I just don't want to pay it.
- londons_explore 1y ago> Doesn't per-call pricing reduce your usage? Yes, and thats why phone contracts migrated from "$0.0X per minute" to "$X for up to 500 minutes", and finally "$X for unlimited calls". When the service you provide has near zero marginal cost, you'd prefer the customer use it as much as possible, because then it'll provide more value to them and they'll be prepared to pay more.
- tippytippytango 1y agoSort of, but in a good way, if I’ve spent $15 on a problem and it’s not solved, it reminds me to stop wasting tokens and think of a better strategy. On net it makes me use less tokens, but more for efficiency. I mostly love that I don’t need to periodically do math on a subscription to see if I’m getting a good deal this month.
- throwaway_0351 1y agoBack when I used dial-up, I experienced a lot of stress when I was connected. I felt I had to be as effective as possible, because we had to pay for every minute spent. When I switched to DSL the stress went away, and I found myself using internet in different ways than before, because I could explore freely without time pressure. I think this applies to Claude as well. I will probably feel more free to experiment if I don't have to worry about costs. I might do things I would never think of if I'm only focused on using it as little as possible to save money.
- jumski 1y agoIt is kinda sad that the information about how many tokens are included is not provided - its hard to judge versus pay-as-you-go api usage because of that
- PeterStuer 1y agoTbh, for these types of systems I do not like the rate limiting at all. I might go days without a need, then folowed by a day of very intense usage. Also, the 'reputation grind' some of these systems set up where you have to climb 'usage Tiers' before being 'allowed' to use more? Just let me pay and use. I can't compare your system to my current provider before weeks of being throttled at unusable rates? This makes potentially switching to you for serious users way harder than it should be. Is that realy the outcome you want? And no, I am not willing to 'talk to sales' for running a quick feasibilty eval.
- jarym 1y agoI cancelled my Claude subscription. I was happily using it for months - asking it the odd question or sometimes having longer discussions to talk through an idea. Then one day I got nagged to upgrade or wait a few hours. I was pretty annoyed, I didn’t regard my usage as high and felt like a squeeze. I cancelled my pro plan and now happily using Gemini which costs nothing. These AI companies are still finding their feet commercially!
- jwr 1y ago> now happily using Gemini which costs nothing …and you think this is going to last? :-)
- wyre 1y agoGoogle is easily in the best position to hold competitive pricing with their LLMS. They can rely on their multi-billion dollar ad business to prop up their AI advancements, compared to OpenAI or Anthropic that only exist with heavy investment from VC. Google will probably put 2.5 Pro behind a Google One account once it is out of preview, but I don't see a compelling reason they wouldn't keep Gemini incredibly price competitive with Claude or ChatGPT.
- netdevphoenix 1y agoDoes anyone feel like the biggest selling point of LLMs so far is basically for programmers? Feels like most of the products that look like could generate revenue are for programmers. While you can see them as a productivity enhancing tool, in times of tight budgets, they can be useful to lay off more programmers because a single one is now way more productive than pre-LLM. I feel that LLMs will increase the barrier to entry for newcomers while also make it easier for companies to layoff more devs as you don't need as many. All in all, I expect salaries for non FAANG devs to decrease while salaries for FAANG devs to increase slightly (given the increased value they can now make). Any thoughts on this?
- otabdeveloper4 1y agoLLM's don't increase programmer productivity. In fact, they actively harm it. Programmers aren't paid for coding, they're paid for following a formal spec in a particular problem domain. (Something that LLM's can't do at all.) Improving coding speed is a red herring and a scam.
- vidarh 1y agoIn my 30 years of software development, maybe 5 of them were in places were getting people to provide a formal spec was ever an option. It's also irrelevant if LLM's can follow them - the way I use Claude Code is to have it get things roughly working, supply test cases showing where it fails, then review and clean up the code or go additional rounds with more test cases. That's not much different to how I work with more junior engineers, who are slower and not all that much less error-prone, though the errors are different in character. If you can't improve coding speed with LLM's, maybe your style of working just isn't amenable to it, or maybe you don't know the tooling well enough - for me it's sped things up significantly.
- otabdeveloper4 1y agoYou don't understand. The fact that getting a formal spec is impossible is precisely why you need to hire a developer with a big salary and generous benefits. The formal spec lives only in the developer's head. It's the only way. Does an LLM coding agent provide any value here? Hardly. It's just an excuse for the developer to waste time futzing around "coding" when what they're really paid to do is cram that ineffable but very much important formal spec into their heads.
- LouisSayers 1y agoAs someone that's happily on the Pro plan (I got a deal at $17 per month) I'm a bit confused seeing people pay $100+ per month ... like what benefits are you getting over the cheaper plan? When coding with Claude I cherry pick code context, examples etc to provide for tasks so I'm curious to hear what other's workflows are like and what benefits you feel you get using Claude Code or the more expensive plans? I also haven't run into limits for quite some time now.
- psankar 1y agoI wish these tools like Cursor, Windsurf etc. provide free option for working with open source projects, after all they trained their models via open source code.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jjice 1y agoTangential, but I don't want to use LLMs for writing code because it's one of the things I enjoy the most in life, but it's feeling that I'm going to need to have to to get ready for the next years of my career. I've had some experiences with Claude that have seriously impressed me, but it takes away the fun that I've found in my jobs since I was in middle school writing small programs. Does anyone have advice for maintaining this feeling but also going with the flow and using LLMs to be more productive (since it feels like it'll be required in the next few years at many jobs)? Do I just have to accept that work will become work and I'll have to get my fix through hobby projects?
- swader999 1y agoHave a side project where you control the entire experience and let your main job bend to the beast.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ljm 1y agoI think there will always be jobs out there that don't demand you write code with an LLM, just the same that most jobs don't demand you use vim or emacs or LSP-based autocomplete as part of your workflow. You don't have to go with the flow. I took a step back from AI tech because a lot of startups in that field come with extra cultural baggage that doesn't sit well with me.
- GuardianCaveman 1y agoAre you using it for other things? I think you can write code without it but it’s so good for research and stack overflow replacement. Last night I used it to look through some project in an open source code base in a language I’m not familiar with to get a report on how that project works. I wanted to know what are its capabilities and integrations with these other specialized tools, because the documentation is so limited. It saved me time and didn’t help me write code. Beyond that it’s good for asking really stupid questions about complex topics that you’d get roasted on for stack overflow.
- Arubis 1y agoBeen on this about a week at the $100/mo mark. I’m not hitting quota limits (I’d swap to the $200/mo in a heartbeat if I were), using Claude Code on multiple tasks simultaneously without abandon. Prior to the flat plan I was spending nearly $1k/mo on tokens. That figure was justifiable but painful. Paying a tenth of it is lovely.
- asymmetric 1y agoHas anyone tried Claude Code with Vertex/Bedrock instead? How does it compare in terms of pricing?
- saralily 1y agoIsn't it exactly the same on Bedrock as in the API?
- asymmetric 1y agoYeah you're right, the price is exactly the same, it seems.
- Fairburn 1y agoThey could charge me anything. But unless they knock off the msg rate limiting, won't touch them.
- replwoacause 1y agoAnthropic's pricing is crazy IMO. Still haven't tried the Code product because of it.
- hendersoon 1y agoLittle tip, you can get pretty close to this with a $20 Claude subscription using the desktop commander MCP.
- koolala 1y agoAider using the web interface of Gemini Pro seems like the cheapest way to get flat pricing. All it needs is a bookmarklet to automate it.
- bicepjai 1y agoI just burned 200$ over a weekend trying to finish my pet project with cline and Claude. But soon I realized, this is not sustainable and I was half there. I tried Gemini pro 2.5 and with in 30 mins I hit 30$ and had to back off. Now trying deepseek. Now trying to see if I can have local models in cline act mode. Let me know if anyone had success with this. My project is in rust