18 ms·

Tell HN: Anthropic expires paid credits after a year

272 points by maytc 1y ago

> Your organization “xxx” has $xxx Anthropic API credits that will expire on September 03, 2025 UTC. > > To ensure uninterrupted service, we recommend enabling auto-reload for your organization. When enabled, we’ll automatically add credits when your balance reaches a specified minimum. You can enable auto-reload in the Anthropic Console.

vizzah 1y ago
Same with OpenAI / ChatGPT. Thieves.
mediumsmart 1y ago
Pirates.
mrbungie 1y ago
Unfortunately that's what one gets for offloading intelligence into a XaaS (Intelligence as a Service?, we already got IaaS though). The only hope is that "the market / invisible hand" forces actors to implement more forgiving billing mechanisms and rules via competition or eventual diminished demand. I wouldn't hold my breath though. Anyways, a very good reason to not depend that much on these tools. Especially on a personal level (i.e. if your programming/moat/skill depends on these tools and you go broke for a time, you can get seriously fucked).
- senkora 1y ago
  AIaaS seems like the right term: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/cloud-computing-dictionary/what-is-aiaas https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/cloud-computing-...
- beacon294 1y ago
  Definitely Gaas (generation)
just-ok 1y ago
So does OpenAI (last I checked) which I sadly learned the hard way.
- georgel 1y ago
  I lost my free credits they were giving away a couple years back, but when you pay they make it fairly clear they will expire. I see no issues here from any provider doing this, as long as it is made clear.
  - OutOfHere 1y ago
    Even though they do make it clear, one should still have an issue with providers doing it. The reason is that various providers like Uber, Lyft, Namecheap, and some cloud vendors, etc. do not do it at all. As such it is a fairly unethical practice.
    - richwater 1y ago
      > Even though they do make it clear > As such, it is theft, plain and simple What?
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - anigbrowl 1y ago
        These aren't contradictory. If I say I'm going to steal your phone and then I do, notifying you beforehand doesn't absolve me of criminal liability. One could argue that it's a contractual arrangement, but there's a well established doctrine of unconscionability in contract law. It's especially applicable when contracts are unilateral rather than being negotiated between peers.
  - kelnos 1y ago
    I have many issues with providers doing that. The reason they take your money and give you credits in exchange is because that gives them lower credit card processing fees (one larger transaction vs. many smaller ones). If they're going to do that to make things cheaper for them, then they should let me use those credits whenever I want, no matter how far into the future I want to use them. If not, they should refund them. They absolutely should refund them if I close my account. If I'm going to give you money, I expect something in return for every cent of it. That's just basic decency.
reactordev 1y ago
“Oops, we burned through your money, please give us more by this date” - are you serious? Unfortunately they basically can do whatever they want with credits. https://www.anthropic.com/legal/credit-terms https://www.anthropic.com/legal/credit-terms
- mrbungie 1y ago
  Gets "funnier" when you think those credits can be burned in useless tokens (i.e. they have almost negative skin on the game regarding outcomes and incentives to maximize token usage).
  - msgodel 1y ago
    Do they? useless tokens take just as much compute to generate as useful tokens. Burning a customer means acquiring a new one which is super expensive.
    - mrbungie 1y ago
      Yes, obviously it does cost compute (to them) but customers are not paying for the compute per-se, but rather for correct results/outcomes. This is a big alignment and accountability problem, relevant enough to some make companies like Lovable refund credits to customers when errors and token/credit mishandlings are too serious to ignore. That seems unsustainable in the long run though. I expect this to become even bigger when the hype cools down and companies start looking for ROIs. PS: I obviously talking about model errors (i.e. like use N tokens in a LLM solving a problem by just deleting/deactivating a test), and not end-user mistakes.
      - msgodel 1y ago
        Users are charged for compute and whether the outcome is positive or negative doesn't cost more for the company. I don't see where you got the idea that there are incentives to waste tokens. EDIT (can't reply): Have you never run a business before? Dating apps are weird because you can't have repeat customers without failing to deliver. With literally everything else repeat customers are what you want to optimize for. If your AI product fails to deliver your customers can't integrate it into their operations and you'll lose them eventually. That's a disaster.
backprop1989 1y ago
Accounting rules. If the credits last indefinitely, any unused credits cannot be counted as revenue. Ran into this at my last company when we signed a big contract and gave them hundreds of thousands of dollars in non-expiring credits. Our accountant went nuts when we told him.
- stingraycharles 1y ago
  Correct, then you effectively become a holder of someone else’s money, which creates all kinds of legal trouble (you need to put that money into a separate, third party’s account that shields it from bankruptcy etc). What they could do is automatically refund the credits to the original account as soon as they expire, but that would mean it’s not the deposit but every API request that would be counted as revenue, which creates a whole lot of other complications. Let alone the fact that refunding after a year is problematic as the original payment methods may have expired, changed, and that you’re still the holder of someone else’s money until the credits are used. Bottom line: this is industry practice, but given how much flack Anthropic has been getting about the lack of transparency lately, this just adds more fuel to the fire and could be defused by some additional explanation from Anthropic’s side.
  - backprop1989 1y ago
    Exactly, now you’re a bank (or maybe selling unlicensed securities, either way it’s jeopardy). We ended up revising the contract so that the credits expired after three years. That opened up its own suboptimal outcomes. It was a lesson that was very much learned by us. On the topic itself - agreed that Anthropic should take a step back and review its policy around comms and good will in general. They’re supposed to be the “good guys” in the AI game - being up front about this stuff is table stakes for them at this point.
    - jkaplowitz 1y ago
      > Exactly, now you’re a bank (or maybe selling unlicensed securities, either way it’s jeopardy). This seems unlikely - after all, a US federal law (the Credit CARD Act of 2009) requires closed-loop (store/brand-specific) gift cards to be valid for at least 5 years after activation and some states like Florida and California don't allow them to expire at all, so for simplicity national companies don't usually let them expire at all regardless of state. But neither a 5-year expiration nor indefinite validity turns the seller into a bank or an unlicensed securities seller or otherwise puts them in jeopardy. Naturally, service credits and gift cards are probably treated differently by the CARD Act, but service credits are still not a source of legal jeopardy in the sense you were describing of being an unauthorized participant in the regulated financial world, any more than gift cards are. I can completely believe, however, that an approach similar to how gift cards must be handled is financially worse on the company's accounting statements than quickly expiring credits. That worse financial accounting consequence would be a completely sufficient explanation for why the company switched approaches.
pzo 1y ago
Happenned the same for me recently with anthropic and before with openai. It's yearly inflation is infinity which is crazy I switched to openrouter but will find out if they do the same
- bakugo 1y ago
  I believe OpenRouter currently does not expire credits, but in their terms, they explicitly reserve the right to expire them after 1 year, so they might do it in the future.
- rsanek 1y ago
  OpenRouter takes its cut though
blindriver 1y ago
This doesn’t sound legal in California at least. I know gift certificates are not allowed to expire in California and I would hazard a guess that prepaid credits probably wouldn’t be allowed to expire either.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- siffin 1y ago
  I guess there is a difference in the fact that gift certificates are always devaluing with monetary inflation, whereas prepaid credit can be used to purchase a service which is just as energy intensive (cost to provider) in 10 years, as it is if used in the next month. Yet in 10 years, the cost to the provider will be more to deliver the same energy (due again to monetary inflation). There doesn't seem to be a neutral option here, because it's very hard to account for inflation without the holding party paying dividends at the exact rate to offset it.
copypaper 1y ago
Genuine question: is this an issue with auto-reload? Why not just keep a smaller amount in there at a time and let it auto-reload?
sometimes_all 1y ago
This is not unique to Anthropic: most LLM providers (including OpenAI and Perplexity) do this, and it is explicitly mentioned before you buy the credits that they will expire within a year.
ranguna 1y ago
They sign post that everywhere when you buy said credits. When I first ordered credits and saw that, I moved the amount from 25$ to 10$ and top up 10 whenever I need. Worst case, I lose 10$, which is still bad. But understandable.
verdverm 1y ago
Here's an idea, bill me for usage and let me set limits, instead of this pay upfront and if you don't use it we keep it model Anthropic tried to charge my card a few weeks back, but fortunately it was declined by my card. I haven't used their service in 6+ months, but they still want to try and take my money
rgbrgb 1y ago
That's the exact day my credits expire. Weird coincidence?
aldousd666 1y ago
I got a notice like this about my credits. It was only $30, so it was a good reason to try out claude code for the first time. I probably would have kept putting it off if I hadn't run into the threat of expiring credits. I know that isn't why they do it, but it had that effect on me.
freedomben 1y ago
To be fair, this is prominently displayed in the console, so they aren't trying to hide it. I personally hate the idea of expiring, but as other commenters have mentioned there are pretty good reasons for this (accounting, banking laws, etc).
korkybuchek 1y ago
Accounting rules: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakage_(accounting) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakage_(accounting)
peteforde 1y ago
I suppose this is the same reason that they quietly expire Audible credits after a year. Drives me absolutely bonkers.
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
I think this is common. I use Shutterstock, and their credits do the same thing (but I have the cheapest plan).
archerx 1y ago
I got the same email. This is theft and not only will this not make me buy more credits, it will make sure I will never buy credits on anthropic ever again. I was using haiku to run a small free webapp and the llm provider can be changed. There is nothing special about anthropic.
gloosx 1y ago
Anthropic also doesn't provide any way to remove your credit card once you add it to your account, which tells it's a very greedy company.
lvl155 1y ago
Guys, crypto solves this. (sarcasm) But it kinda does I think.

272 points by maytc 1y ago

vizzah 1y ago

Same with OpenAI / ChatGPT. Thieves.

mediumsmart 1y ago

Pirates.

mrbungie 1y ago

Unfortunately that's what one gets for offloading intelligence into a XaaS (Intelligence as a Service?, we already got IaaS though). The only hope is that "the market / invisible hand" forces actors to implement more forgiving billing mechanisms and rules via competition or eventual diminished demand. I wouldn't hold my breath though. Anyways, a very good reason to not depend that much on these tools. Especially on a personal level (i.e. if your programming/moat/skill depends on these tools and you go broke for a time, you can get seriously fucked).

senkora 1y ago
AIaaS seems like the right term: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/cloud-computing-dictionary/what-is-aiaas https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/cloud-computing-...
beacon294 1y ago
Definitely Gaas (generation)

just-ok 1y ago

So does OpenAI (last I checked) which I sadly learned the hard way.

georgel 1y ago
I lost my free credits they were giving away a couple years back, but when you pay they make it fairly clear they will expire. I see no issues here from any provider doing this, as long as it is made clear.
- OutOfHere 1y ago
  Even though they do make it clear, one should still have an issue with providers doing it. The reason is that various providers like Uber, Lyft, Namecheap, and some cloud vendors, etc. do not do it at all. As such it is a fairly unethical practice.
  - richwater 1y ago
    > Even though they do make it clear > As such, it is theft, plain and simple What?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - anigbrowl 1y ago
      These aren't contradictory. If I say I'm going to steal your phone and then I do, notifying you beforehand doesn't absolve me of criminal liability. One could argue that it's a contractual arrangement, but there's a well established doctrine of unconscionability in contract law. It's especially applicable when contracts are unilateral rather than being negotiated between peers.
- kelnos 1y ago
  I have many issues with providers doing that. The reason they take your money and give you credits in exchange is because that gives them lower credit card processing fees (one larger transaction vs. many smaller ones). If they're going to do that to make things cheaper for them, then they should let me use those credits whenever I want, no matter how far into the future I want to use them. If not, they should refund them. They absolutely should refund them if I close my account. If I'm going to give you money, I expect something in return for every cent of it. That's just basic decency.

reactordev 1y ago

“Oops, we burned through your money, please give us more by this date” - are you serious? Unfortunately they basically can do whatever they want with credits. https://www.anthropic.com/legal/credit-terms https://www.anthropic.com/legal/credit-terms

mrbungie 1y ago
Gets "funnier" when you think those credits can be burned in useless tokens (i.e. they have almost negative skin on the game regarding outcomes and incentives to maximize token usage).
- msgodel 1y ago
  Do they? useless tokens take just as much compute to generate as useful tokens. Burning a customer means acquiring a new one which is super expensive.
  - mrbungie 1y ago
    Yes, obviously it does cost compute (to them) but customers are not paying for the compute per-se, but rather for correct results/outcomes. This is a big alignment and accountability problem, relevant enough to some make companies like Lovable refund credits to customers when errors and token/credit mishandlings are too serious to ignore. That seems unsustainable in the long run though. I expect this to become even bigger when the hype cools down and companies start looking for ROIs. PS: I obviously talking about model errors (i.e. like use N tokens in a LLM solving a problem by just deleting/deactivating a test), and not end-user mistakes.
    - msgodel 1y ago
      Users are charged for compute and whether the outcome is positive or negative doesn't cost more for the company. I don't see where you got the idea that there are incentives to waste tokens. EDIT (can't reply): Have you never run a business before? Dating apps are weird because you can't have repeat customers without failing to deliver. With literally everything else repeat customers are what you want to optimize for. If your AI product fails to deliver your customers can't integrate it into their operations and you'll lose them eventually. That's a disaster.

backprop1989 1y ago

Accounting rules. If the credits last indefinitely, any unused credits cannot be counted as revenue. Ran into this at my last company when we signed a big contract and gave them hundreds of thousands of dollars in non-expiring credits. Our accountant went nuts when we told him.

stingraycharles 1y ago
Correct, then you effectively become a holder of someone else’s money, which creates all kinds of legal trouble (you need to put that money into a separate, third party’s account that shields it from bankruptcy etc). What they could do is automatically refund the credits to the original account as soon as they expire, but that would mean it’s not the deposit but every API request that would be counted as revenue, which creates a whole lot of other complications. Let alone the fact that refunding after a year is problematic as the original payment methods may have expired, changed, and that you’re still the holder of someone else’s money until the credits are used. Bottom line: this is industry practice, but given how much flack Anthropic has been getting about the lack of transparency lately, this just adds more fuel to the fire and could be defused by some additional explanation from Anthropic’s side.
- backprop1989 1y ago
  Exactly, now you’re a bank (or maybe selling unlicensed securities, either way it’s jeopardy). We ended up revising the contract so that the credits expired after three years. That opened up its own suboptimal outcomes. It was a lesson that was very much learned by us. On the topic itself - agreed that Anthropic should take a step back and review its policy around comms and good will in general. They’re supposed to be the “good guys” in the AI game - being up front about this stuff is table stakes for them at this point.
  - jkaplowitz 1y ago
    > Exactly, now you’re a bank (or maybe selling unlicensed securities, either way it’s jeopardy). This seems unlikely - after all, a US federal law (the Credit CARD Act of 2009) requires closed-loop (store/brand-specific) gift cards to be valid for at least 5 years after activation and some states like Florida and California don't allow them to expire at all, so for simplicity national companies don't usually let them expire at all regardless of state. But neither a 5-year expiration nor indefinite validity turns the seller into a bank or an unlicensed securities seller or otherwise puts them in jeopardy. Naturally, service credits and gift cards are probably treated differently by the CARD Act, but service credits are still not a source of legal jeopardy in the sense you were describing of being an unauthorized participant in the regulated financial world, any more than gift cards are. I can completely believe, however, that an approach similar to how gift cards must be handled is financially worse on the company's accounting statements than quickly expiring credits. That worse financial accounting consequence would be a completely sufficient explanation for why the company switched approaches.

pzo 1y ago

Happenned the same for me recently with anthropic and before with openai. It's yearly inflation is infinity which is crazy I switched to openrouter but will find out if they do the same

bakugo 1y ago
I believe OpenRouter currently does not expire credits, but in their terms, they explicitly reserve the right to expire them after 1 year, so they might do it in the future.
rsanek 1y ago
OpenRouter takes its cut though

blindriver 1y ago

This doesn’t sound legal in California at least. I know gift certificates are not allowed to expire in California and I would hazard a guess that prepaid credits probably wouldn’t be allowed to expire either.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
siffin 1y ago
I guess there is a difference in the fact that gift certificates are always devaluing with monetary inflation, whereas prepaid credit can be used to purchase a service which is just as energy intensive (cost to provider) in 10 years, as it is if used in the next month. Yet in 10 years, the cost to the provider will be more to deliver the same energy (due again to monetary inflation). There doesn't seem to be a neutral option here, because it's very hard to account for inflation without the holding party paying dividends at the exact rate to offset it.

copypaper 1y ago

Genuine question: is this an issue with auto-reload? Why not just keep a smaller amount in there at a time and let it auto-reload?

sometimes_all 1y ago

This is not unique to Anthropic: most LLM providers (including OpenAI and Perplexity) do this, and it is explicitly mentioned before you buy the credits that they will expire within a year.

ranguna 1y ago

They sign post that everywhere when you buy said credits. When I first ordered credits and saw that, I moved the amount from 25$ to 10$ and top up 10 whenever I need. Worst case, I lose 10$, which is still bad. But understandable.

verdverm 1y ago

Here's an idea, bill me for usage and let me set limits, instead of this pay upfront and if you don't use it we keep it model Anthropic tried to charge my card a few weeks back, but fortunately it was declined by my card. I haven't used their service in 6+ months, but they still want to try and take my money

rgbrgb 1y ago

That's the exact day my credits expire. Weird coincidence?

aldousd666 1y ago

I got a notice like this about my credits. It was only $30, so it was a good reason to try out claude code for the first time. I probably would have kept putting it off if I hadn't run into the threat of expiring credits. I know that isn't why they do it, but it had that effect on me.

freedomben 1y ago

To be fair, this is prominently displayed in the console, so they aren't trying to hide it. I personally hate the idea of expiring, but as other commenters have mentioned there are pretty good reasons for this (accounting, banking laws, etc).

korkybuchek 1y ago

Accounting rules: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakage_(accounting) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakage_(accounting)

peteforde 1y ago

I suppose this is the same reason that they quietly expire Audible credits after a year. Drives me absolutely bonkers.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

I think this is common. I use Shutterstock, and their credits do the same thing (but I have the cheapest plan).

archerx 1y ago

I got the same email. This is theft and not only will this not make me buy more credits, it will make sure I will never buy credits on anthropic ever again. I was using haiku to run a small free webapp and the llm provider can be changed. There is nothing special about anthropic.

gloosx 1y ago

Anthropic also doesn't provide any way to remove your credit card once you add it to your account, which tells it's a very greedy company.

lvl155 1y ago

Guys, crypto solves this. (sarcasm) But it kinda does I think.