Comment by stavros
4 days ago
I don't see how it's fair. If I'm paying for usage, and I'm using it, why should Anthropic have a say on which client I use?
I pay them $100 a month and now for some reason I can't use OpenCode? Fuck that.
4 days ago
I don't see how it's fair. If I'm paying for usage, and I'm using it, why should Anthropic have a say on which client I use?
I pay them $100 a month and now for some reason I can't use OpenCode? Fuck that.
You aren't paying for usage, you are paying for the product that the subscription is offered to. If you are paying for usage, well, that's their billed by token-usage API plan, which they are quite happy for you to use with any client you want.
Even worse, if I'm paying a subscription for the product, and I don't want to use the product, what's it to them?
You are free to not use it. You are not free to use the API provided specifically for the product, which you are not explicitly paying for, for a different product.
You can of course use OpenCode or any other project with the API, which is also offered as a separate product. People just don't want to do that because it's not subsidized, ie. more expensive. But the entire reason it's subsidized is that Anthropic can use the data to improve their product.
2 replies →
Do you not understand that they run the regular subscription at a huge loss? In exchange they require you to stick with Claude Code.
You are free to use the API.
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> If I'm paying for usage
You are not paying for usage. You are paying for usage via their application.
If their business plan is based on how quickly a human can enter requests and react to the results, and Claude Code is optimized for that, why should you be allowed to use an alternative client that e.g. always tries to saturate the token limits?
Btw API is not for coding, it's designed for pipelines, automation, products. They just kill competition making better software like opencode.
Is that your belief to what their API should be used for?
But a) I'm not doing that and b) they can just ban that, like they have rate limits. Why ban OpenCode?
They have rate limits, but they also want to control the nozzle, and not all their users use all their allocation all the time.
In reality, heavy subscription users are subsidized by light subscription users. The rate limits aren't everything.
If agent harnesses other than Claude Code consume more tokens than average, or rather, if users of agent harnesses other than CC consume more tokens than average, well, Anthropic wouldn't be unhappy if those consumers had to pay more for their tokens.
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The speculative reasoning I've seen is that they have optimizations in their CC client that reduces their costs. If that's true, I think it's fair that they can limit subscription usage to their client. If you don't want those optimizations and prefer more freedom, use the API.
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Stop giving money to the company that doesn't give you what you want.
It is important that the company knows why they are losing customers, though.
I canceled my Claude subscription (other reasons) and they had an "exit interview" question of why you canceled. They know why.
Internal sales data is probably a lot more effective and attended to than HN posts.
You're touching on the eternal App Store debate. "It's my phone, I should be able to install whatever I want on it!" Which is true, but also hasn't been true since the mid-90s (early 2000s at the latest).
Not quite though. You can install Claude's apps wherever they're supported, and maybe even fiddle with the source code (I'm unsure). And you can use any other coding apps that you want. The only real restriction is how those apps are allowed to connect to the providers' services, which are running on their servers, etc. There's a movement from "my local domain" to "their remote domain", and they're allowed to have full control of theirs as you - would prefer, I think - full control of yours.
Read the ToS, you are paying to use their products. If you want to use other products that integrate with the Anthropic LLMs they offer a product which is the API. You can use Opencode by connecting your API and being charged per token.
Doesn't that make sense? If you use it more you get charged more, if you use it less you get charged less.
Sure, that's why I'm cancelling my max subscription because I'm tied to opencode :)
But you understand that they changed the ToS today, and that's what I'm complaining about, right? "Read the ToS" isn't an answer to "I don't like this ToS change".
I didn't see today's ToS change. But this was always against ToS. OpenClaw specifically is built against tech that breaks ToS.
Probably the ToS change was to make it more clear.
To be fair, the developer is the one breaking the ToS in the most significant way, breaking boilerplate reverse engineering clauses.
But the user also is very aware that they are doing something funny, in order to authenticate, the user is asked to authorize Claude Code, n ot Opencode or OpenClaw, it's clearly a hack and there is no authorization from Anthropic to OpenClaw, and you are not giving Anthropic authorization to give access to OC, the user asks Anthropic to give access to Claude Code, the only reason this works is because OC is pretending to be Claude Code.
The bottom line issue is that as a user you are paying for a subscription to a package that includes an expected usage. That package is not metered, but it is given on the condition that you will use it as it is expected to be used, by chatting manually with the chatbot, which results in a reasonable expected token usage. By using a program that programatically calls the chat interface, the token consumption increases beyond what was part of the original deal, and so the price should be different.
A similar scenario would be if you go to an all you can eat buffet, you pay for a single person, but then you actually unload an army of little clones that start eating the whole buffet. Technically it was an all you can eat buffet and you paid the price right? Well no, come on, don't play dumb.
Now just imagine the rug-pull if you ever get really dependent on the product.