Comment by nl
4 days ago
> I'm not convinced that the 200 dollar plans are unprofitable.
Especially considering not everyone is tokenmaxxing, and in most parts of the world people take leave and companies do not cut their subscriptions.
I suspect they are priced to have a lifetime average price/token amount that is roughly break-even, or maybe a slight loss leader.
> have seen Dario say in multiple interviews that they are profitable on inference, which maybe he was only meaning to refer to API usage, but that's not the impression I got.
I think he does mean API usage. Don't forget they can (and do) adjust the number of tokens you get on each plan at any time to adjust their margins on those.
That means he knows that is controllable, and it only the underlaying inference that defines the succes or otherwise of the company.
> Especially considering not everyone is tokenmaxxing
Exactly. I have the Claude $100/mo plan, and use it moderately for open source hobby stuff. I still haven't dipped my toes into the Fable pool, but I always use Opus 4.8 on xhigh, and I never hit my limits.
On the other hand, though, there have been times when I've looked at /usage for a long-running session (e.g., 7-10 days, after it's compacted a few times), and it showed I'd used ~$450 worth of tokens just for that session. So I'm clearly getting value for the money here when it comes to the subscription cost. But I still don't hit limits, so...