Comment by cedws
9 hours ago
In what way would it be abused? The usage limits apply all the same, they aren't client side, and hitting that limit is within the terms of the agreement with Anthropic.
9 hours ago
In what way would it be abused? The usage limits apply all the same, they aren't client side, and hitting that limit is within the terms of the agreement with Anthropic.
The subscription services have assumptions baked in about the usage patterns; they're oversubscribed and subsidized. If 100% of subscriber customers use 100% of their tokens 100% of the time, their business model breaks. That's what wholesale / API tokens are for.
> hitting that limit is within the terms of the agreement with Anthropic
It's not, because the agreement says you can only use CC.
> The subscription services have assumptions baked in about the usage patterns; they're oversubscribed and subsidized.
Selling dollars for $.50 does that. It sounds like they have a business model issue to me.
This is how every cloud service and every internet provider works. If you want to get really edgy you could also say it's how modern banking works.
Without knowing the numbers it's hard to tell if the business model for these AI providers actually works, and I suspect it probably doesn't at the moment, but selling an oversubscribed product with baked in usage assumptions is a functional business model in a lot of spaces (for varying definitions of functional, I suppose). I'm surprised this is so surprising to people.
6 replies →
That's on Anthropic for selling a mirage of limits they don't want people to actually reach for.
It's within their capability to provision for higher usage by alternative clients. They just don't want to.
> It's not, because the agreement says you can only use CC.
it's like Apple: you can use macOS only on our Macs, iOS only on iPhones, etc. but at least in the case of Apple, you pay (mostly) for the hardware while the software it comes with is "free" (as in free beer).