6 ms·

I can't even get through my Claude Max quota, and that's only 200/mo. And I code every day and use it for various other pretty-intensive tasks.

dangus 8mo ago
only $200/mo…$200 a month is a used car payment. I guarantee you that price will double by 2027. Then it’ll be a new car payment! I’m really not saying this to be snarky, I’m saying this to point out that we’re really already in the enshittification phase before the rapid growth phase has even ended. You’re paying $200 and acting like that’s a cheap SaaS product for an individual. I pay less for Autocad products! This whole product release is about maximizing your bill, not maximizing your productivity. I don’t need agents to talk to each other. I need one agent to do the job right.
- meowface 8mo ago
  I could write an essay about how almost everything you wrote either is extremely incorrect or is extremely likely to be incorrect. I am too lazy to, though, so I will just have to wait for another commenter to do the equivalent.
  - dangus 8mo ago
    Why not make your AI tool do it for you?
    - meowface 8mo ago
      Because, while I have been a huge AI optimist for decades, I generally don't like their current writing output. And even if I did, it would feel like plagiarism unless I prepended it with "an AI responded with this:", which would make me seem lazy. (Though I did already just admit I am very lazy in my first post, so perhaps that is what I will do going forward once they become better writers.)
- nlh 8mo ago
  I pay $200/month, don’t come near the limits (yet), and if they raised the price to $1000/month for the exact same product I’d gladly pay it this afternoon (Don’t quote me on this Anthropic!) If you’re not able to get US$thousands out of these models right now either your expectations are too high or your usage is too low, but as a small business owner and part/most-time SWE, the pricing is a rounding error on value delivered.
  - imiric 8mo ago
    I'm curious: what concrete value have you extracted using these tools that is worth US$thousands?
  - geraneum 8mo ago
    We’re gonna see an economic boom any minute.
  - rune-dev 8mo ago
    As a business expense to make profit, I can understand being ok with this price point. But as an individual with no profit motive, no way. I use these products at work, but not as much personally because of the bill. And even if I decided I wanted to pursue a for profit side project I’d have to validate it’s viability before even considering a 200$ monthly subscription
    - yomismoaqui 8mo ago
      You can do it for $40 month. What I'm doing: - $20 for Claude Pro (Claude Code) - $20 for ChatGPT Plus (Codex) - Amp Free Plan (with ads and you get about $10 of daily value) So you get to use 3 of the top coding agents for $40 month.
    - __turbobrew__ 8mo ago
      Some tools are not meant for individuals. That 100k software defined radio isn’t meant for you either.
    - Wowfunhappy 8mo ago
      I'm paying $100 per month even though I don't write code professionally. It is purely personal use. I've used the subscription to have Claude create a bunch of custom apps that I use in my daily life. This did require some amount of effort on my part, to test and iterate and so on, but much less than if I needed to write all the code myself. And, because these programs are for personal use, I don't need to review all the code, I don't have security concerns and so on. $100 every month for a service that writes me custom applications... I don't know, maybe I'm being stupid with my money, but at the moment it feels well worth the price.
- kesslern 8mo ago
  Not saying $200/mo isn't a lot, but I think you're underestimating used car payments these days. The average US used car payment is above $500 now.
- buzzerbetrayed 8mo ago
  If you can’t get $200 of value out of Claude Code Max, then you need to really step up your game. That’s user error.
- yomismoaqui 8mo ago
  As company owner the math is simple: If I pay $3k/month to a developer and a $200/month tool makes them 10% more productive I will pay it without thinking.
- bryanlarsen 8mo ago
  That's one of 3 possible futures. 1. 1-3 LLM vendors are substantially higher quality than other vendors and none of those are open source. This is an oligarchy and the scenario you described will play out. 2. >3 LLM vendors are all high quality and suitable for the tasks. At least one of these is open source. This is the "commodity" scenario, and we'll end up paying roughly the cost of inference. This still might be hundreds per month, though. 3. Somewhere in between. We've got >3 vendors, but 1-3 of them are somewhat better than the others, so the leaders can charge more. But not as much more than they can in scenario #1.
  - CuriouslyC 7mo ago
    It's clear what's gonna play out. Chinese open source labs are slowly closing the gap, and as American frontier labs hit diminishing return on various tasks, the Chinese models are going to be good enough for the vast majority of use cases. This is going to strip American labs ability to do monopoly plays, and force them into open behavior. The only place frontier labs will be able to profit take is niche models for specific purposes where they can control who has access to traces tightly. Any general pupose LLM with highly available traces is gonna get distilled down instantly.
- __turbobrew__ 8mo ago
  $200/month is peanuts when you are a business paying your employees $200k/year. I think LLMs make me at least 10% more effective and therefore the cost to my employer is very worth it. Lots of trades have much more expensive tools (including cars).
  - dangus 8mo ago
    > I think LLMs make me at least 10% more effective I know this was last year but... https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/ https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o...
    - spiderfarmer 8mo ago
      I don’t need external research to validate or invalidate my own experience.
      - tehjoker 8mo ago
        I think it depends on the tasks you use it for. Bootstrapping or translating projects between languages is amazing. New feature development? Questionable.
        samtheprogram 8mo ago
        New feature development in web and mobile apps is absolutely 10% more productive with these tools, and anyone who says otherwise is coping. That's a large fraction of software development.
        spiderfarmer 7mo ago
        They're hoping they still have a moat.
        __turbobrew__ 8mo ago
        I don’t write frontend stuff, but sometimes need to fix a frontend bug. Yesterday I fed claude very surgical instructions on how the bug happens, and what I want to happen instead, and it oneshot the fix. I had a solution in about 5 minutes, whereas it would have taken me at least an hour, but most likely more time to get to that point. Literally an hour or two of my day was saved yesterday. I am salaried at around $250/hour, so in that one interaction AI saved my employer $250-500 in wages. AI allows me to be a T shaped developer, I have over a decade of deep experience in infrastructure, but know fuck all about front end stuff. But having access to AI allows me as an individual who generally knows how computers work to fix a simple problem which is not in my domain.
- Wowfunhappy 8mo ago
  > I’m saying this to point out that we’re really already in the enshittification phase before the rapid growth phase has even ended. You’re paying $200 and acting like that’s a cheap SaaS product for an individual. Traditional SaaS products don't write code for me. They also cost much less to run. I'm having a lot of trouble seeing this as enshittification. I'm not saying it won't happen some day, but I don't think we're there. $200 per month is a lot, but it depends on what you're getting. In this case, I'm getting a service that writes code for me on demand.
  - dangus 7mo ago
    Traditional SaaS products literally “write code” for you (they implement business logic). See: Zapier, Excel. The enshittification is that the costs are going up faster than inflation and companies like OpenAI are talking about adding advertisements. https://www.fintechweekly.com/magazine/articles/cursor-pricing-change-user-backlash-refund https://www.fintechweekly.com/magazine/articles/cursor-prici... https://hostbor.com/claude-ai-max-plan-explained/ https://hostbor.com/claude-ai-max-plan-explained/ We can see especially in the case of Claude AI Max that while it sounds like you’re getting better value than the cheaper plans, the company is now encouraging less efficient use of the tool (having multiple agents talking to each other, rather than improving models so that one agent is doing work correctly).
    - Wowfunhappy 7mo ago
      > Traditional SaaS products literally “write code” for you (they implement business logic). See: Zapier, Excel. Eh, I'd call those a sort of programming language. The user is still writing code, albeit in a "friendlier" manner. You can't just ask for what you want in English. > The enshittification is that the costs are going up faster than inflation and companies like OpenAI are talking about adding advertisements. In 1980, IT would have cost $0 at most companies. It's okay for costs to go up if you're getting a service you were not getting before.
      - dangus 7mo ago
        In 1980, the costs associated with what we today call IT were not $0, they were just spread around in administrative clerical duties performed by a lot of humans.

dangus 8mo ago

only $200/mo…$200 a month is a used car payment. I guarantee you that price will double by 2027. Then it’ll be a new car payment! I’m really not saying this to be snarky, I’m saying this to point out that we’re really already in the enshittification phase before the rapid growth phase has even ended. You’re paying $200 and acting like that’s a cheap SaaS product for an individual. I pay less for Autocad products! This whole product release is about maximizing your bill, not maximizing your productivity. I don’t need agents to talk to each other. I need one agent to do the job right.

meowface 8mo ago
I could write an essay about how almost everything you wrote either is extremely incorrect or is extremely likely to be incorrect. I am too lazy to, though, so I will just have to wait for another commenter to do the equivalent.
- dangus 8mo ago
  Why not make your AI tool do it for you?
  - meowface 8mo ago
    Because, while I have been a huge AI optimist for decades, I generally don't like their current writing output. And even if I did, it would feel like plagiarism unless I prepended it with "an AI responded with this:", which would make me seem lazy. (Though I did already just admit I am very lazy in my first post, so perhaps that is what I will do going forward once they become better writers.)
nlh 8mo ago
I pay $200/month, don’t come near the limits (yet), and if they raised the price to $1000/month for the exact same product I’d gladly pay it this afternoon (Don’t quote me on this Anthropic!) If you’re not able to get US$thousands out of these models right now either your expectations are too high or your usage is too low, but as a small business owner and part/most-time SWE, the pricing is a rounding error on value delivered.
- imiric 8mo ago
  I'm curious: what concrete value have you extracted using these tools that is worth US$thousands?
- geraneum 8mo ago
  We’re gonna see an economic boom any minute.
- rune-dev 8mo ago
  As a business expense to make profit, I can understand being ok with this price point. But as an individual with no profit motive, no way. I use these products at work, but not as much personally because of the bill. And even if I decided I wanted to pursue a for profit side project I’d have to validate it’s viability before even considering a 200$ monthly subscription
  - yomismoaqui 8mo ago
    You can do it for $40 month. What I'm doing: - $20 for Claude Pro (Claude Code) - $20 for ChatGPT Plus (Codex) - Amp Free Plan (with ads and you get about $10 of daily value) So you get to use 3 of the top coding agents for $40 month.
  - __turbobrew__ 8mo ago
    Some tools are not meant for individuals. That 100k software defined radio isn’t meant for you either.
  - Wowfunhappy 8mo ago
    I'm paying $100 per month even though I don't write code professionally. It is purely personal use. I've used the subscription to have Claude create a bunch of custom apps that I use in my daily life. This did require some amount of effort on my part, to test and iterate and so on, but much less than if I needed to write all the code myself. And, because these programs are for personal use, I don't need to review all the code, I don't have security concerns and so on. $100 every month for a service that writes me custom applications... I don't know, maybe I'm being stupid with my money, but at the moment it feels well worth the price.
kesslern 8mo ago
Not saying $200/mo isn't a lot, but I think you're underestimating used car payments these days. The average US used car payment is above $500 now.
buzzerbetrayed 8mo ago
If you can’t get $200 of value out of Claude Code Max, then you need to really step up your game. That’s user error.
yomismoaqui 8mo ago
As company owner the math is simple: If I pay $3k/month to a developer and a $200/month tool makes them 10% more productive I will pay it without thinking.
bryanlarsen 8mo ago
That's one of 3 possible futures. 1. 1-3 LLM vendors are substantially higher quality than other vendors and none of those are open source. This is an oligarchy and the scenario you described will play out. 2. >3 LLM vendors are all high quality and suitable for the tasks. At least one of these is open source. This is the "commodity" scenario, and we'll end up paying roughly the cost of inference. This still might be hundreds per month, though. 3. Somewhere in between. We've got >3 vendors, but 1-3 of them are somewhat better than the others, so the leaders can charge more. But not as much more than they can in scenario #1.
- CuriouslyC 7mo ago
  It's clear what's gonna play out. Chinese open source labs are slowly closing the gap, and as American frontier labs hit diminishing return on various tasks, the Chinese models are going to be good enough for the vast majority of use cases. This is going to strip American labs ability to do monopoly plays, and force them into open behavior. The only place frontier labs will be able to profit take is niche models for specific purposes where they can control who has access to traces tightly. Any general pupose LLM with highly available traces is gonna get distilled down instantly.
__turbobrew__ 8mo ago
$200/month is peanuts when you are a business paying your employees $200k/year. I think LLMs make me at least 10% more effective and therefore the cost to my employer is very worth it. Lots of trades have much more expensive tools (including cars).
- dangus 8mo ago
  > I think LLMs make me at least 10% more effective I know this was last year but... https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/ https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o...
  - spiderfarmer 8mo ago
    I don’t need external research to validate or invalidate my own experience.
    - tehjoker 8mo ago
      I think it depends on the tasks you use it for. Bootstrapping or translating projects between languages is amazing. New feature development? Questionable.
      - samtheprogram 8mo ago
        New feature development in web and mobile apps is absolutely 10% more productive with these tools, and anyone who says otherwise is coping. That's a large fraction of software development.
        spiderfarmer 7mo ago
        They're hoping they still have a moat.
      - __turbobrew__ 8mo ago
        I don’t write frontend stuff, but sometimes need to fix a frontend bug. Yesterday I fed claude very surgical instructions on how the bug happens, and what I want to happen instead, and it oneshot the fix. I had a solution in about 5 minutes, whereas it would have taken me at least an hour, but most likely more time to get to that point. Literally an hour or two of my day was saved yesterday. I am salaried at around $250/hour, so in that one interaction AI saved my employer $250-500 in wages. AI allows me to be a T shaped developer, I have over a decade of deep experience in infrastructure, but know fuck all about front end stuff. But having access to AI allows me as an individual who generally knows how computers work to fix a simple problem which is not in my domain.
Wowfunhappy 8mo ago
> I’m saying this to point out that we’re really already in the enshittification phase before the rapid growth phase has even ended. You’re paying $200 and acting like that’s a cheap SaaS product for an individual. Traditional SaaS products don't write code for me. They also cost much less to run. I'm having a lot of trouble seeing this as enshittification. I'm not saying it won't happen some day, but I don't think we're there. $200 per month is a lot, but it depends on what you're getting. In this case, I'm getting a service that writes code for me on demand.
- dangus 7mo ago
  Traditional SaaS products literally “write code” for you (they implement business logic). See: Zapier, Excel. The enshittification is that the costs are going up faster than inflation and companies like OpenAI are talking about adding advertisements. https://www.fintechweekly.com/magazine/articles/cursor-pricing-change-user-backlash-refund https://www.fintechweekly.com/magazine/articles/cursor-prici... https://hostbor.com/claude-ai-max-plan-explained/ https://hostbor.com/claude-ai-max-plan-explained/ We can see especially in the case of Claude AI Max that while it sounds like you’re getting better value than the cheaper plans, the company is now encouraging less efficient use of the tool (having multiple agents talking to each other, rather than improving models so that one agent is doing work correctly).
  - Wowfunhappy 7mo ago
    > Traditional SaaS products literally “write code” for you (they implement business logic). See: Zapier, Excel. Eh, I'd call those a sort of programming language. The user is still writing code, albeit in a "friendlier" manner. You can't just ask for what you want in English. > The enshittification is that the costs are going up faster than inflation and companies like OpenAI are talking about adding advertisements. In 1980, IT would have cost $0 at most companies. It's okay for costs to go up if you're getting a service you were not getting before.
    - dangus 7mo ago
      In 1980, the costs associated with what we today call IT were not $0, they were just spread around in administrative clerical duties performed by a lot of humans.