Anthropic essentially bans OpenClaw from Claude by making subscribers pay extra
web.archive.org
Claude vs. Claw.

Using OpenClaw with Claude AI is about to get a lot more expensive, thanks to Anthropic’s new policy changes. Beginning April 4th at 3PM ET, users will “no longer be able to use your Claude subscription limits for third-party harnesses including OpenClaw,” according to an email sent to users on Friday evening. Instead, if users want to use OpenClaw with Claude, they’ll have to use a “pay-as-you-go option” that will be billed separate from their Claude subscription.

With OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger now employed by OpenAI, Anthropic may also be encouraging subscribers to use more of its own tools, like Claude Cowork, instead. Steinberger says that he and OpenClaw board member Dave Morin “tried to talk sense into Anthropic, best we managed was delaying this for a week.”

According to Anthropic Claude Code exec Boris Cherny:

Starting tomorrow at 12pm PT, Claude subscriptions will no longer cover usage on third-party tools like OpenClaw.

You can still use these tools with your Claude login via extra usage bundles (now available at a discount), or with a Claude API key.

We’ve been working hard to meet the increase in demand for Claude, and our subscriptions weren’t built for the usage patterns of these third-party tools. Capacity is a resource we manage thoughtfully and we are prioritizing our customers using our products and API.

Subscribers get a one-time credit equal to your monthly plan cost. If you need more, you can now buy discounted usage bundles. To request a full refund, look for a link in your email tomorrow.

We want to be intentional in managing our growth to continue to serve our customers sustainably long-term. This change is a step toward that.

Source: https://xcancel.com/bcherny/status/2040206440556826908

-–

I know it sucks. Fundamentally engineering is about tradeoffs, and one of the things we do to serve a lot of customers is optimize the way subscriptions work to serve as many people as possible with the best model.

Third party services are not optimized in this way, so it’s really hard for us to do sustainably.

I did put up a few PRs to improve prompt cache hit rate for OpenClaw in particular, which should help for folks using it with Claude via API/overages.

Source: https://xcancel.com/bcherny/status/2040212589951774808#m

  • GrindingGears@lemmy.ca
    2·
    2 days ago

    Here comes the rug pull.

    Won’t everyone think of the executives and their bonuses! All the costs this is going to add. Quelle Horror!!!

  • greygore@lemmy.world
    2·
    2 days ago

    Large tech companies have a history of providing an API, and then copying or cloning any integrations that are successful. I’m shocked people still continue to provide free product/market research for these massive companies. If you have a valuable idea, the company you built it on top of will steal it.

    At least the creator of OpenClaw got hired by Anthropic; Cursor is still struggling to justify its existence after Anthropic jacked up its rates and provided a direct competitor.

    Third party services are not optimized in this way, so it’s really hard for us to do sustainably.

    If these companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars by providing a service to third parties can’t make money providing that service to third parties… how is that not flashing red lights and screaming sirens on Wall Street? If you’re making a ton of money using their service, they’ll steal your idea to try and stay alive. If you’re not making money, they will cut you loose before you burn more of theirs. It really is that simple.

  • leadore@lemmy.world
    4·
    3 days ago

    “Meanwhile we will continue to effectively DDoS all your websites by constantly scraping them for more data to train our models on, without your consent or payment to you for providing it.”

    • Retail4068@lemmy.world
      0·
      3 days ago

      God forbid a company chage it’s price or terms ever. Like seriously once it’s set it should remain that way forever.

      It’s a new service with little lock in. Lots to bitch about, not this.

        • GrindingGears@lemmy.ca
          0·
          2 days ago

          I took a shit during the time I was invested in AI training.

          I have a whole day of it in a couple weeks. Speaking of that, does anyone have any good games to recommend on Steam, or PS5 or something? Any good shows to binge?