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Tell HN: Anthropic expires paid credits after a year

272 points by maytc ↗ HN
> Your organization “xxx” has $xxx Anthropic API credits that will expire on September 03, 2025 UTC.

>

> To ensure uninterrupted service, we recommend enabling auto-reload for your organization. When enabled, we’ll automatically add credits when your balance reaches a specified minimum. You can enable auto-reload in the Anthropic Console.

39 comments

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mrbungie
Unfortunately that's what one gets for offloading intelligence into a XaaS (Intelligence as a Service?, we already got IaaS though).

The only hope is that "the market / invisible hand" forces actors to implement more forgiving billing mechanisms and rules via competition or eventual diminished demand. I wouldn't hold my breath though.

Anyways, a very good reason to not depend that much on these tools. Especially on a personal level (i.e. if your programming/moat/skill depends on these tools and you go broke for a time, you can get seriously fucked).

just-ok
So does OpenAI (last I checked) which I sadly learned the hard way.
reactordev
“Oops, we burned through your money, please give us more by this date” - are you serious?

Unfortunately they basically can do whatever they want with credits.

https://www.anthropic.com/legal/credit-terms

jacquesm
They can do whatever they want with their website, that doesn't make what they write there immediately legal.
backprop1989
Accounting rules. If the credits last indefinitely, any unused credits cannot be counted as revenue. Ran into this at my last company when we signed a big contract and gave them hundreds of thousands of dollars in non-expiring credits. Our accountant went nuts when we told him.
ManlyBread
How come this never happens to video game companies that give out various in-game currencies?
ethan_smith
This is specifically about revenue recognition under accrual accounting - unexpired credits are considered "deferred revenue" (a liability) until used or expired. Companies prefer definite expiration dates to avoid carrying growing liabilities on their balance sheets indefinitely.
ksec
What about Starbucks top up card or Apple iTunes Credit?

How would those work?

Waterluvian
I don't really get this logic. Why don't they count it as revenue the moment the credits are issued?

Or is this more just a "this is a convenient free win as a consequence of how we decide to manage our books."

anigbrowl
I'm not sure if this is legal in California. There's a law here specifically to prevent gift cards from expiring automatically.
sleepybrett
Not accounting rules. Shady accounting. Sell someone credits that expire or not expire.. if you sell someone something that expires you can get some free money.
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interestica
This was the (corp) argument in Canada for allowing companies to expire gift cards. They no longer expire.
KingOfCoders
Had the same problem with vouchers in one startup, gave out free vouchers as marketing, became a huge accounting headache when the company wanted to clean things up.

Also huge problems (Germany) with yearly payments and how to account for them to minimize liabilities.

lelanthran
> Accounting rules.

Correct.

> If the credits last indefinitely, any unused credits cannot be counted as revenue.

Maybe incorrect? Unless they are cooking the books, the unused credits should reflect as a liability on the books.

When someone pays you for a thing, until they take delivery of it (or use it up if it is a service), you owe them the value of that thing.

notepad0x90
Shouldn't they refund remaining credits using the original payment method, instead of you know..stealing?
killerstorm
Skype expires the credits. But then allows customer to restore them. I think it's the best to comply with laws: it's just a mild annoyance for the customer.
aflag
They can't because they aren't, right? That's the whole point of having them not expiring. Until you used them, you can still get your money back in some situations.
cedws
Can you just make them expire after 1000 years?
pzo
Happenned the same for me recently with anthropic and before with openai. It's yearly inflation is infinity which is crazy

I switched to openrouter but will find out if they do the same

blindriver
This doesn’t sound legal in California at least.

I know gift certificates are not allowed to expire in California and I would hazard a guess that prepaid credits probably wouldn’t be allowed to expire either.

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siffin
I guess there is a difference in the fact that gift certificates are always devaluing with monetary inflation, whereas prepaid credit can be used to purchase a service which is just as energy intensive (cost to provider) in 10 years, as it is if used in the next month. Yet in 10 years, the cost to the provider will be more to deliver the same energy (due again to monetary inflation).

There doesn't seem to be a neutral option here, because it's very hard to account for inflation without the holding party paying dividends at the exact rate to offset it.

copypaper
Genuine question: is this an issue with auto-reload? Why not just keep a smaller amount in there at a time and let it auto-reload?
sometimes_all
This is not unique to Anthropic: most LLM providers (including OpenAI and Perplexity) do this, and it is explicitly mentioned before you buy the credits that they will expire within a year.
ranguna
They sign post that everywhere when you buy said credits.

When I first ordered credits and saw that, I moved the amount from 25$ to 10$ and top up 10 whenever I need. Worst case, I lose 10$, which is still bad. But understandable.

vizzah
Same with OpenAI / ChatGPT. Thieves.
verdverm
Here's an idea, bill me for usage and let me set limits, instead of this pay upfront and if you don't use it we keep it model

Anthropic tried to charge my card a few weeks back, but fortunately it was declined by my card. I haven't used their service in 6+ months, but they still want to try and take my money

rgbrgb
That's the exact day my credits expire. Weird coincidence?
aldousd666
I got a notice like this about my credits. It was only $30, so it was a good reason to try out claude code for the first time. I probably would have kept putting it off if I hadn't run into the threat of expiring credits. I know that isn't why they do it, but it had that effect on me.
freedomben
To be fair, this is prominently displayed in the console, so they aren't trying to hide it. I personally hate the idea of expiring, but as other commenters have mentioned there are pretty good reasons for this (accounting, banking laws, etc).
peteforde
I suppose this is the same reason that they quietly expire Audible credits after a year. Drives me absolutely bonkers.
ChrisMarshallNY
I think this is common.

I use Shutterstock, and their credits do the same thing (but I have the cheapest plan).

archerx
I got the same email. This is theft and not only will this not make me buy more credits, it will make sure I will never buy credits on anthropic ever again. I was using haiku to run a small free webapp and the llm provider can be changed. There is nothing special about anthropic.
gloosx
Anthropic also doesn't provide any way to remove your credit card once you add it to your account, which tells it's a very greedy company.
lvl155
Guys, crypto solves this.

(sarcasm)

But it kinda does I think.