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If anyone from Anthropic is reading this, your billing for Claude Code is hostile to your users. Why doesn’t Claude Code usage count against the same plan that

If anyone from Anthropic is reading this, your billing for Claude Code is hostile to your users. Why doesn’t Claude Code usage count against the same plan that usage of Claude.ai and Claude Desktop are billed against? I upgraded to the $200/month plan because I really like Claude Code but then was so annoyed to find that this upgrade didn’t even apply to my usage of Claude Code. So now I’m not using Claude Code so much.

fcoury 1y ago
I totally agree with this, I would rather have some kind of prediction than using the Claude Code roulette. I would definitely upgrade my plan if I got Claude Code usage included.
- datavirtue 1y ago
  I don't what you guys are on about but I have been using the free GitHub Copilot in VS Code chats to absolutely crank out new UI features in Vue. All that stuff that makes you groan at the thought of it: more divs, bindings, form validation, a whole new widget...churned out in 30 seconds. Try it live. Works? Keep. I'm surprised at the complexity and correctness at which it infers from very simple, almost inadequate, prompts.
- zomglings 1y ago
  They did it!
cypherpunks01 1y ago
Claude Pro and other website/desktop subscription plans are subject to usage limits that would make it very difficult to use for Claude Code. Claude Code uses the API interface and API pricing, and writes and edits code directly on your machine, this is a level past simply interacting with a separate chat bot. It seems a little disingenuous to say it's "hostile" to users, when the reality is yeah, you do pay a bit more for more reliable usage tier, for a task that requires it. It also shows you exactly how much it's spent at any point.
- fcoury 1y ago
  > ... usage limits that would make it very difficult to use for Claude Code. Genuinely interested: how's so?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - cypherpunks01 1y ago
    Well, I think it'd be pretty irritating to see the message "3 messages remaining until 6PM" while you are in the middle of a complex coding task.
    - fcoury 1y ago
      No, that's the whole point: predictability. It's definitely a trade off, but if we could save the work as is we could have the option to continue the iteration elsewhere, or even better, from that point on offer the option to fallback to the current API model. A nice addition would be having something like /cost but to check where you are in regards to limits.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - unshavedyak 1y ago
      Conversely I have to manually do this and monitor the billing instead.
- zomglings 1y ago
  The writing of edits and code directly on my machine is something that happens on the client side. I don't see why that usage would be subject to anything but one-time billing or how it puts any strain on Anthropic's infrastructure.
ghuntley 1y ago
$200/month isn't that much. Folks, I'm hanging around with are spending $100 USD to $500 USD daily as the new norm as a cost of doing business and remaining competitive. That might seem expensive, but it's cheap... https://ghuntley.com/redlining https://ghuntley.com/redlining
- m00dy 1y ago
  Seriously? That’s wild. What kind of CS field could even handle that kind of daily spend for a bunch of people?
  - ghuntley 1y ago
    Consider L5 at Google: outgoings of $377,797 USD per year just on salary/stock, before fixed overheads such as insurance, leave, issues like ramp-up time and cost of their manager. In the hands of a Staff+ engineer, these tools enable replication of Staff+ engineers and don't sleep. My 2c: the funding for the new norm will come from either compressing the manager layer or engineering layer or both.
    - malfist 1y ago
      LLMs absolutely don't replicate staff+ engineers. If your staff engineers are mostly doing things AI can do, then you don't need staff. Probably don't even need senior
      - ghuntley 1y ago
        That's my point. - L3 SWE II - $193,712 USD (before overheads) - L4 SWE III - $297,124 USD (before overheads) - L5 Senior SWE - $377,797 USD (before overheads) These tools and foundational models get better every day, and right now, they enable Staff+ engineers and businesses to have less need for juniors. I suspect there will be [short-to-medium-term] compression. See extended thoughts at https://ghuntley.com/screwed https://ghuntley.com/screwed
        1y ago
replwoacause 1y ago
Their API billing in general is hostile to users. I switched completely to Gemini for this reason and haven’t looked back.
dist-epoch 1y ago
Claude.ai/Desktop is priced based on average user usage. If you have 1 power user sending 1000 requests per day, and 99 sending 5, many even none, you can afford having a single $10/month plan for everyone to keep things simple. But every Claude Code user is a 1000 requests per day user, so the economics don't work anymore.
- fcoury 1y ago
  Well, take that into consideration then. Just make it an option. Instead of getting 1000 requests per day with code, you get 100 on the $10/month plan, and then let users decide whether they want to migrate to a higher tier or continue using the API model. I am not saying Claude should stop making money, I'm just advocating for giving users the value of getting some Code coverage when you migrate from the basic plan to the pro or max. Does that make sense?
- zomglings 1y ago
  I would accept a higher-priced plan (which covered both my use of Claude.ai/Claude Desktop AND my use of Claude Code). Anthropic make it seem like Claude Code is a product categorized like Claude Desktop (usage of which gets billed against your Claude.ai plan). This is how it signs off all its commits: Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.ai/code) At the very least, this is misleading. It misled me. Once I had purchased the $200/month plan, I did some reading and quickly realized that I had been too quick to jump to conclusions. It still left me feeling like they had pulled a fast on one me.
  - dist-epoch 1y ago
    Maybe you can cancel your subscription or charge back? I think it's just oversight on their part. They have nothing to gain by making people believe they would get Claude Code access through their regular plans, only bad word of mouth.
    - zomglings 1y ago
      To be fair to them, they make it pretty easy to manage the subscription, downgrade it, etc. This is definitely not malicious on their part. Just bears pointing out.
twalkz 1y ago
I’ve been using codemcp (https://github.com/ezyang/codemcp https://github.com/ezyang/codemcp) to get “most” of the functionality of Claude code (I believe it uses prompts extracted from Claude Code), but using my existing pro plan. It’s less autonomous, since it’s based on the Claude chat interface, and you need to write “continue” every so often, but it’s nice to save the $$
- zomglings 1y ago
  Thanks, makes sense that an MCP server that edits files is a workaround to the problem.
- fcoury 1y ago
  Just tried it and it's indeed very good, thanks for mentioning it! :-)
jdance 1y ago
This would put anthropic in the business of minimizing the context to increase profits, same as Cursor and others who cheap out on context and try to RAG etc. Which would quickly make it worse, so I hope they stay on api pricing Some base usage included in the plan might be a good balance
- zomglings 1y ago
  You know, I wouldn't mind if they just applied the API pricing after Claude Code ran through the plan limits. It would definitely get me to use it more.
  - karbon0x 1y ago
    Claude Code and Claude.ai are separate products.
  - Wowfunhappy 1y ago
    But the Claude Pro plan is almost certainly priced under the assumption that some users will use it below the usage limit. If everyone used the plan to the limit, the plan would cost the same as the API with usage equal to the limit.
visarga 1y ago
Yeah, tried it for a couple of minutes, $0.31, quickly stopped and moved away.

fcoury 1y ago

I totally agree with this, I would rather have some kind of prediction than using the Claude Code roulette. I would definitely upgrade my plan if I got Claude Code usage included.

datavirtue 1y ago
I don't what you guys are on about but I have been using the free GitHub Copilot in VS Code chats to absolutely crank out new UI features in Vue. All that stuff that makes you groan at the thought of it: more divs, bindings, form validation, a whole new widget...churned out in 30 seconds. Try it live. Works? Keep. I'm surprised at the complexity and correctness at which it infers from very simple, almost inadequate, prompts.
zomglings 1y ago
They did it!

cypherpunks01 1y ago

Claude Pro and other website/desktop subscription plans are subject to usage limits that would make it very difficult to use for Claude Code. Claude Code uses the API interface and API pricing, and writes and edits code directly on your machine, this is a level past simply interacting with a separate chat bot. It seems a little disingenuous to say it's "hostile" to users, when the reality is yeah, you do pay a bit more for more reliable usage tier, for a task that requires it. It also shows you exactly how much it's spent at any point.

fcoury 1y ago
> ... usage limits that would make it very difficult to use for Claude Code. Genuinely interested: how's so?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- cypherpunks01 1y ago
  Well, I think it'd be pretty irritating to see the message "3 messages remaining until 6PM" while you are in the middle of a complex coding task.
  - fcoury 1y ago
    No, that's the whole point: predictability. It's definitely a trade off, but if we could save the work as is we could have the option to continue the iteration elsewhere, or even better, from that point on offer the option to fallback to the current API model. A nice addition would be having something like /cost but to check where you are in regards to limits.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - unshavedyak 1y ago
    Conversely I have to manually do this and monitor the billing instead.
zomglings 1y ago
The writing of edits and code directly on my machine is something that happens on the client side. I don't see why that usage would be subject to anything but one-time billing or how it puts any strain on Anthropic's infrastructure.

ghuntley 1y ago

$200/month isn't that much. Folks, I'm hanging around with are spending $100 USD to $500 USD daily as the new norm as a cost of doing business and remaining competitive. That might seem expensive, but it's cheap... https://ghuntley.com/redlining https://ghuntley.com/redlining

m00dy 1y ago
Seriously? That’s wild. What kind of CS field could even handle that kind of daily spend for a bunch of people?
- ghuntley 1y ago
  Consider L5 at Google: outgoings of $377,797 USD per year just on salary/stock, before fixed overheads such as insurance, leave, issues like ramp-up time and cost of their manager. In the hands of a Staff+ engineer, these tools enable replication of Staff+ engineers and don't sleep. My 2c: the funding for the new norm will come from either compressing the manager layer or engineering layer or both.
  - malfist 1y ago
    LLMs absolutely don't replicate staff+ engineers. If your staff engineers are mostly doing things AI can do, then you don't need staff. Probably don't even need senior
    - ghuntley 1y ago
      That's my point. - L3 SWE II - $193,712 USD (before overheads) - L4 SWE III - $297,124 USD (before overheads) - L5 Senior SWE - $377,797 USD (before overheads) These tools and foundational models get better every day, and right now, they enable Staff+ engineers and businesses to have less need for juniors. I suspect there will be [short-to-medium-term] compression. See extended thoughts at https://ghuntley.com/screwed https://ghuntley.com/screwed
      - 1y ago

replwoacause 1y ago

Their API billing in general is hostile to users. I switched completely to Gemini for this reason and haven’t looked back.

dist-epoch 1y ago

Claude.ai/Desktop is priced based on average user usage. If you have 1 power user sending 1000 requests per day, and 99 sending 5, many even none, you can afford having a single $10/month plan for everyone to keep things simple. But every Claude Code user is a 1000 requests per day user, so the economics don't work anymore.

fcoury 1y ago
Well, take that into consideration then. Just make it an option. Instead of getting 1000 requests per day with code, you get 100 on the $10/month plan, and then let users decide whether they want to migrate to a higher tier or continue using the API model. I am not saying Claude should stop making money, I'm just advocating for giving users the value of getting some Code coverage when you migrate from the basic plan to the pro or max. Does that make sense?
zomglings 1y ago
I would accept a higher-priced plan (which covered both my use of Claude.ai/Claude Desktop AND my use of Claude Code). Anthropic make it seem like Claude Code is a product categorized like Claude Desktop (usage of which gets billed against your Claude.ai plan). This is how it signs off all its commits: Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.ai/code) At the very least, this is misleading. It misled me. Once I had purchased the $200/month plan, I did some reading and quickly realized that I had been too quick to jump to conclusions. It still left me feeling like they had pulled a fast on one me.
- dist-epoch 1y ago
  Maybe you can cancel your subscription or charge back? I think it's just oversight on their part. They have nothing to gain by making people believe they would get Claude Code access through their regular plans, only bad word of mouth.
  - zomglings 1y ago
    To be fair to them, they make it pretty easy to manage the subscription, downgrade it, etc. This is definitely not malicious on their part. Just bears pointing out.

twalkz 1y ago

I’ve been using codemcp (https://github.com/ezyang/codemcp https://github.com/ezyang/codemcp) to get “most” of the functionality of Claude code (I believe it uses prompts extracted from Claude Code), but using my existing pro plan. It’s less autonomous, since it’s based on the Claude chat interface, and you need to write “continue” every so often, but it’s nice to save the $$

zomglings 1y ago
Thanks, makes sense that an MCP server that edits files is a workaround to the problem.
fcoury 1y ago
Just tried it and it's indeed very good, thanks for mentioning it! :-)

jdance 1y ago

This would put anthropic in the business of minimizing the context to increase profits, same as Cursor and others who cheap out on context and try to RAG etc. Which would quickly make it worse, so I hope they stay on api pricing Some base usage included in the plan might be a good balance

zomglings 1y ago
You know, I wouldn't mind if they just applied the API pricing after Claude Code ran through the plan limits. It would definitely get me to use it more.
- karbon0x 1y ago
  Claude Code and Claude.ai are separate products.
- Wowfunhappy 1y ago
  But the Claude Pro plan is almost certainly priced under the assumption that some users will use it below the usage limit. If everyone used the plan to the limit, the plan would cost the same as the API with usage equal to the limit.

visarga 1y ago

Yeah, tried it for a couple of minutes, $0.31, quickly stopped and moved away.