There’s the argument that Anthropic has built Claude Code to use the models efficiently, which the subscription pricing is based on.
Maybe there’s some truth to that, but then why haven’t OpenAI made the same move? I believe the main reason is platform control. Anthropic can’t survive as a pipeline for tokens, they need to build and control a platform, which means aggressively locking out everybody else building a platform.
Alternatively products like openclaw have an outsized impact on Anthropic's infrastructure for essentially no benefit to them. Especially when you're taking advantage of the $200 plan.
OpenAI has never shyed away from burning mountains of cash to try and capture a little more market share. They paid a billion dollars for a vibe coded mess just for the opportunity to associate themselves with the hype.
No, I'm paying $200 a month for a premium product that I expect premium service for. It's the single most expensive IT expense I have. Taking advantage my foot.
Can you imagine paying the actual cost of it, or a subscription cost that at least ballpark matched it? I don't think I have a single friend or acquaintance who realistically would.
You are simply a bit too entitled. It's not a premium product and honestly not that expensive in my opinion either (though that is going to depend on your location).
You may want to learn the difference between someone being able to pay API rates and someone willing to pay API rates. I'm sure many people on HN are able to pay API rates and almost all of them aren't willing to pay API rates. The providers know this hence why subscriptions exist. API is almost solely used by companies as almost no private person would be willing to pay that.
“You may want to learn” such choice way to introduce your position which is really not much of one.
If you are going to come and complain about a $200 subscription that gives you $400 worth of API tokens there is only so much room to complain. Only so many lemons can be squeezed. Hope that was a helpful for you.
It is not a premium service, it simply is buying you more tokens. Those $200 gives you at least $400 in API cost tokens.
Don't confused price with "premium service". It was not that long ago that folks would be spending $100-200 on their cable service bundle. You are buying a subsidized product when using the plan and the more you spend the more tokens you get, has nothing to do with being a premium service.
This is a messaging issue on their part, which I think is partially intentional.
It’s not unreasonable for people to expect the most expensive subscription plan to be “premium”. That’s how it works everywhere else. They typically have better margins on the premium plans, and the monthly payment gives them reliable cash flow at that higher margin.
You’re right that that’s not true at Anthropic (or really most AI providers). You’re not even really buying tokens because you get billed whether you use it or not, the tokens don’t carry over like buying API tokens, and they get to dictate what an acceptable way to use those tokens is. They are cheaper though, assuming you actually use them. Which Anthropic et al would really prefer you didn’t.
Sorry still not sure what you’re going on about . The majority of LLM plans are simply a token purchase. The $200 account buys you nothing but tokens. It’s not a premium service, it’s simply more tokens. This is true for most of the companies out there.
The original comment was they are paying for a premium service. No they are paying for more tokens. You lot going on and on arguing over some small hill.
I guess if you want to go that deep sure they sometimes offer early access, access to new agents/models but ultimately it’s a function of tokens. The selling point for most/all providers is x times the usage. You are upgrading for the token access.
Claude was the topic at hand and higher tiers buy you more tokens. I know some like Gemini bundle a ton of junk alongside the tokens but you really are still buying yourself more tokens. There is nothing premium in a $200 Claude account. You are buying more tokens, $100 is the same as $200 except token count. Hope that helps. ;)
But I was making an argument about the $10 plans, not the $100 plans.
Claude doesn't even go that low. Except the free plan which has a very reduced feature list.
Claude's $20 and $100 are pretty similar except tokens, that part is true. So they're a bit higher priced and more of the "it's just tokens" model. But the market as a whole is mostly selling a limited feature set down at lower price points. On average, getting up to the point where you have full access and are paying per-token is itself a premium jump.
You are standing on top of an ant hill and I still don’t fully understand your position. The original post was about the premium service Anthropic plans. There is no such thing, you are simply paying for more tokens. Hope that helps.
I know why I typically don’t respond to your posts. So much said and I am still not sure your point. You have ignored the original point and gone off on a tangent.
It is not a premium service that deserves special care which was what the original commenter stated. It is a $200 account that buys you $400+ on tokens.
Hope that helps recenter this weird path we are following. :)
What? What I just said was my one and only point from the very beginning. The price is so much higher than the median that that makes it premium and deserving of some special care.
I understand your point of view here, and it's fine if you disagree with mine but it's weird if you don't at least understand my point by now. You saying my last comment is a tangent suggests you don't understand me. But it's a simple point and I'm not sure how to make it clearer.
I think it's a training data thing. They can only gather valid training data from real human interactions, so they don't want to subsidize tokens for purely automated interactions.
> Why were third party harnesses banned? Surely they'd want sticking power over the ecosystem.
Third-party harnesses are the exact opposite of stickiness!
Ditching Claude Code for a third party harness while using the Claude Code subscription means it's trivial to switch to a different model when you {run out of credits | find a cheaper token provider | find a better model}.
To be clear they weren’t banned from Claude usage, they were required to use the API and API rates rather than Claude Max tokens.
Claude code uses a bunch if best practices to maximize cache hit rate. Third party harnesses are hit or miss, so often use a lot more tokens for the same task.
I'm watching a conference talk right now from 2 weeks ago: "I Hated Every Coding Agent So I Built My Own - Mario Zechner (Pi)", and in the middle he directly references this.
He demonstrates in the code that OpenCode aggressively trims context, by compacting on every turn, and pruning all tool calls from the context that occurred more than 40,000 tokens ago. Seems like it could be a good strategy to squeeze more out of the context window - but by editing the oldest context, it breaks the prompt cache for the entire conversation. There is effectively no caching happening at all.
They are working with the same tools and knowledge like Anthropic does as Caching practices are documented. And they have as much incentive as Anthropic does to not waste compute. Can we stop acting like people who build harnesses be it Opencode oder Mario Zechners Pi are dumbfucks who don't understand caching?
Yep, that's the reason for the new Extra Credit feature in Claude Code. Some people were wiring up "Claude -p" with OpenClaw, so now Anthropic detects if the system prompt contains the phrase OpenClaw, and bills from Extra Credit if that happens:
Claude Code was the best harness from roughly around release to January this year. Ever since then, it's become more and more bloated with more and more stuff and seemingly no coherent plan or vision to it all other than "let's see what else that sounds cool we can cram in there."
1. openclaw like - using the LLM endpoint on subscription billing, different prompts than claude code
2. using claude cli with -p, in headless mode
The second runs through their code and prompts, just calls claude in non-interactive mode for subtasks. I feel especially put off by restricting the second kind. I need it to run judge agents to review plans and code.
