5 ms·

Why does it matter to Anthropic if my $200 plan usage is coming from Claude Code or a third party? Doesn’t both count towards my usage limits the same?

minimaxir 8mo ago
Any user who is using a third-party client is likely self-selected into being a power user who is less profitable.
operatingthetan 8mo ago
Probably because the $20 plan is essentially a paid demo for the higher plans.
digdugdirk 8mo ago
They don't get as much visibility into your data, just the actual call to/from the api. There's so much more value to them in that, since you're basically running the reinforcement learning training for them.
bluegatty 8mo ago
If you buy a 'Season's Pass' for Disneyland, you cant 'sublet' it to another kid to use on the days you don't; It's not really buying a 'daily access rate'. Anthropic subs are not 'bulk tokens'. It's not an unreasonable policy and it's entirely inevitable that they have to restrict.
- scwoodal 8mo ago
  I’m not subletting my sub to anyone. I’m the only one using the third party harness. I’m using their own SDK in my own CLI tool.
  - Unearned5161 8mo ago
    It’s not a literal sublet to someone else, it’s subletting your tokens to another tool. At its core it’s a tragedy of commons situation. Using a third party tool like OpenClaw is augmenting your usage far beyond what was anticipated when the subscription plan was made. Same deal for unlimited storage on drive until people started abusing it.
    - scwoodal 8mo ago
      My Claude sub isn’t unlimited. I didn’t set the limits on the plan; change those if it’s a problem, not irritate your customer base.
      - Unearned5161 8mo ago
        You have strong dedication towards taking things literally. The issue is not that it's limited or unlimited, but rather about expected token usage across a user cohort. When you set a usage limit on something like Claude, or a gym, or a tutoring center, you need to do two things at once; set the limit high enough to attract the aspirations of your intended client base ("oh good this gym lets me go every day of the month if I want to"), but priced accurately enough so that you actually turn a profit on the average usage across most users (you ended up going 20 times the first month, but settled into 15 times a month after). If there was suddenly a drug that you could take that would, while you slept, make your body walk to the gym and workout, so that you could max out that usage, the gym would be entitled to adjust either the pricing, the limit, or prohibit going to the gym while on the drug, given that they can't actually sustain all their members going every day. As a correction, I've done some reading and when I said tragedy of the commons, what would fit better is a "congestion externality in a club good".
  - paradox460 8mo ago
    Running with the Disney analogy, it's like if Disney didn't let you wear a shirt with a universal or Warner property on it in their parks Absurd, and not beyond the realm of possibility
- JimmaDaRustla 8mo ago
  Disingenuous analogy. It's more buying a season pass for Disneyland, then getting told you can't park for free if you're entering the park even though free parking is included with the pass. Still not unreasonable, but brings to light the intention of the tool is to force the user into an ecosystem rather.
  - bluegatty 8mo ago
    It's not a disingenuous analogy ... whatever it is. But 'you can't park even though the ticket includes parking' is not an appropriate analogy because 3rd party use is definitely not intended. They did not 'state one thing' and the 'disallow it'. This is a pretty straight forward case of people using their subscription for 'adjacent' use, and Anthropic being more explicit about it. There's nothing fancy going on here.
    - JimmaDaRustla 8mo ago
      Disingenuous or not, it was a bad analogy because it inferred that it was intentionally being abused which is completely false. The proof of that is this original post - Anthropic did not clearly (or even at all) identify how you could use your tokens with the subscription regardless of their intentions. You're now misinterpreting my argument and misrepresenting it. I did not, in any way, suggest that Anthropic was "pulling the rug" to its users nor that they were entitled to use their tokens using the API with third parties. Full stop. Of course, third-party API usage wasn't intended to be allowed for consuming subscription tokens. This is exactly what my analogy was structured to explain; a Disneyland season pass isn't intended to be used solely for parking. Anthropic did not intend for subscription tokens to be consumed by third-parties the same way users did not intend to abuse the subscription to derive more value than what was allotted to them. Your analogy missed that last part, which is absolutely crucial to understand. I don't understand how you're making the exact arguments I'm making, then somehow completely misunderstanding what's being said.
- croes 8mo ago
  It’s still me going to Disneyland, I just take a different route
hackingonempty 8mo ago
Increasing the friction of switching providers as much as possible is part of their strategy to push users to higher subscription tiers and deny even scraps to their competitors.
zb3 8mo ago
They're losing money on this $200 plan and they're essentially paying you to make you dependent on Claude Code so they can exploit this (somehow) in the future.
- esafak 8mo ago
  It's a bizarre plan because nobody is 'dependent' on Claude Code; we're begging to use alternatives. It's the model we want!
  - alexandre_m 8mo ago
    You’re not really paying for the model, you’re paying for the tool, the ecosystem, and the application layer around it. Sonnet 4.6 in CC doesn’t behave the same way as Sonnet 4.6 in Antigravity.
    - code51 8mo ago
      Skills is a generic construct. System prompt is generic as well. Subagents, AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md etc. these are generic, "please care for my instruction" kind of constructs without any real guarantee to close gaps. Tool is generic (CC vs OpenCode) Ecosystem is already same everywhere. I don't understand what's the point.
      - alexandre_m 8mo ago
        The point is that wrappers matter. Orchestration, tool calls, reasoning loops, system prompts, agentic capabilities. Output is different, quality is different. This is the moat for AI frontier companies.
  - duskdozer 8mo ago
    And it's their 'ecosystem' they want to sell you.
- psoundy 8mo ago
  When using Claude Code, it's possible to opt out of having one's sessions be used for training. But is that opt out for everything? Or only message content, such that there could remain sufficient metadata to derive useful insight from?

minimaxir 8mo ago

Any user who is using a third-party client is likely self-selected into being a power user who is less profitable.

operatingthetan 8mo ago

Probably because the $20 plan is essentially a paid demo for the higher plans.

digdugdirk 8mo ago

They don't get as much visibility into your data, just the actual call to/from the api. There's so much more value to them in that, since you're basically running the reinforcement learning training for them.

bluegatty 8mo ago

If you buy a 'Season's Pass' for Disneyland, you cant 'sublet' it to another kid to use on the days you don't; It's not really buying a 'daily access rate'. Anthropic subs are not 'bulk tokens'. It's not an unreasonable policy and it's entirely inevitable that they have to restrict.

scwoodal 8mo ago
I’m not subletting my sub to anyone. I’m the only one using the third party harness. I’m using their own SDK in my own CLI tool.
- Unearned5161 8mo ago
  It’s not a literal sublet to someone else, it’s subletting your tokens to another tool. At its core it’s a tragedy of commons situation. Using a third party tool like OpenClaw is augmenting your usage far beyond what was anticipated when the subscription plan was made. Same deal for unlimited storage on drive until people started abusing it.
  - scwoodal 8mo ago
    My Claude sub isn’t unlimited. I didn’t set the limits on the plan; change those if it’s a problem, not irritate your customer base.
    - Unearned5161 8mo ago
      You have strong dedication towards taking things literally. The issue is not that it's limited or unlimited, but rather about expected token usage across a user cohort. When you set a usage limit on something like Claude, or a gym, or a tutoring center, you need to do two things at once; set the limit high enough to attract the aspirations of your intended client base ("oh good this gym lets me go every day of the month if I want to"), but priced accurately enough so that you actually turn a profit on the average usage across most users (you ended up going 20 times the first month, but settled into 15 times a month after). If there was suddenly a drug that you could take that would, while you slept, make your body walk to the gym and workout, so that you could max out that usage, the gym would be entitled to adjust either the pricing, the limit, or prohibit going to the gym while on the drug, given that they can't actually sustain all their members going every day. As a correction, I've done some reading and when I said tragedy of the commons, what would fit better is a "congestion externality in a club good".
- paradox460 8mo ago
  Running with the Disney analogy, it's like if Disney didn't let you wear a shirt with a universal or Warner property on it in their parks Absurd, and not beyond the realm of possibility
JimmaDaRustla 8mo ago
Disingenuous analogy. It's more buying a season pass for Disneyland, then getting told you can't park for free if you're entering the park even though free parking is included with the pass. Still not unreasonable, but brings to light the intention of the tool is to force the user into an ecosystem rather.
- bluegatty 8mo ago
  It's not a disingenuous analogy ... whatever it is. But 'you can't park even though the ticket includes parking' is not an appropriate analogy because 3rd party use is definitely not intended. They did not 'state one thing' and the 'disallow it'. This is a pretty straight forward case of people using their subscription for 'adjacent' use, and Anthropic being more explicit about it. There's nothing fancy going on here.
  - JimmaDaRustla 8mo ago
    Disingenuous or not, it was a bad analogy because it inferred that it was intentionally being abused which is completely false. The proof of that is this original post - Anthropic did not clearly (or even at all) identify how you could use your tokens with the subscription regardless of their intentions. You're now misinterpreting my argument and misrepresenting it. I did not, in any way, suggest that Anthropic was "pulling the rug" to its users nor that they were entitled to use their tokens using the API with third parties. Full stop. Of course, third-party API usage wasn't intended to be allowed for consuming subscription tokens. This is exactly what my analogy was structured to explain; a Disneyland season pass isn't intended to be used solely for parking. Anthropic did not intend for subscription tokens to be consumed by third-parties the same way users did not intend to abuse the subscription to derive more value than what was allotted to them. Your analogy missed that last part, which is absolutely crucial to understand. I don't understand how you're making the exact arguments I'm making, then somehow completely misunderstanding what's being said.
croes 8mo ago
It’s still me going to Disneyland, I just take a different route

hackingonempty 8mo ago

Increasing the friction of switching providers as much as possible is part of their strategy to push users to higher subscription tiers and deny even scraps to their competitors.

zb3 8mo ago

They're losing money on this $200 plan and they're essentially paying you to make you dependent on Claude Code so they can exploit this (somehow) in the future.

esafak 8mo ago
It's a bizarre plan because nobody is 'dependent' on Claude Code; we're begging to use alternatives. It's the model we want!
- alexandre_m 8mo ago
  You’re not really paying for the model, you’re paying for the tool, the ecosystem, and the application layer around it. Sonnet 4.6 in CC doesn’t behave the same way as Sonnet 4.6 in Antigravity.
  - code51 8mo ago
    Skills is a generic construct. System prompt is generic as well. Subagents, AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md etc. these are generic, "please care for my instruction" kind of constructs without any real guarantee to close gaps. Tool is generic (CC vs OpenCode) Ecosystem is already same everywhere. I don't understand what's the point.
    - alexandre_m 8mo ago
      The point is that wrappers matter. Orchestration, tool calls, reasoning loops, system prompts, agentic capabilities. Output is different, quality is different. This is the moat for AI frontier companies.
- duskdozer 8mo ago
  And it's their 'ecosystem' they want to sell you.
psoundy 8mo ago
When using Claude Code, it's possible to opt out of having one's sessions be used for training. But is that opt out for everything? Or only message content, such that there could remain sufficient metadata to derive useful insight from?