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Claude has the worst pricing – but people want it

11 points by amukbils ↗ HN
When you build something people REALLY want, you can pull of ridiculous stunts like Claude's pricing: - Vague limits - Weekly/monthly usage stats ?? - 50% of your usage on Fable 5 - $200/mo subscription that doesn't include Fable 5 - But you can use it with "usage credits"

I'm frustrated but am also hooked. Kinda of a lesson in startups in a way.

15 comments

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pmontra
Claude Pro with Sonnet 5 at $20 per month for a limit I never reach is OK. I'm using it 3 days per week full time.

I'm also experimenting with DeepSeek 4 and it seems on par. Its API price is much cheaper and it's top up, not a subscription. I still didn't consume the $2 I loaded on my account sometimes in June. However they about to charge double price in what seems to be China's morning and afternoon.

coldtea
>I'm frustrated but am also hooked. Kinda of a lesson in startups in a way.

It builds bad will, that will have users say "fuck them" on the first chance they get.

muzani
I'm convinced a lot of investors were rich minority kids bullied as a youth, looking to bully the rest of world in revenge.

You keep hearing things like, "The definition of a moat is being able to raise prices," and, "Your distribution must scale to 99-100% of the market and you should acquire the remaining ones."

$20 is expensive for me. Netflix and Spotify subscriptions are pretty bloody expensive. And they're saying raise the prices?

These people don't live in the real world, at least not in countries where 90% of people including the middle class don't have disposable income.

Like it or not, AI is going to be a requirement, like shoes, running water, a smartphone, a car, a degree, insulin.

nnurmanov
This is basically why I built HailMary Fabric.

Claude Code is good, but a lot of the cost is repo discovery: finding files, reading candidates, following imports, etc.

Fabric indexes the repo locally and gives Claude Code the relevant context up front. Nothing goes to HailMary.

Tiny early test on httpx: 58% lower API cost across 2 tasks, both passed tests.

Repo is here if anyone wants to try it or poke holes in it: https://github.com/hailmarylabs/fabric/

nnurmanov
To the comment below, I have no idea why CC subscription did not work, apparently they have some different way to connect? Thanks to the leaked source code, I am going to find it out:)
ENGNR
Switching to Codex if their subscription includes 5.6 and Anthropic’s doesn’t include even some small quota of Fable. I’d be using local LLM’s if I didn’t want any access to frontier
tibbydudeza
DeepSeek - way cheaper and performant- still waiting for the awesome apps Fable enabled.

I doubt it.

debdattabasu
Fable isn't needed except deep RE work. Opus 4.8 xhigh can code anything you throw at it and can code to public interfaces extremely well. I have rarely seen it make code level mistakes. In fact its the only model I feel that can actually code and I can actually trust to code. That's imo quite valuable.
rwhitman
I'm fairly certain it's just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, on an individual basis.
jeromie
You know, when the alternatives are to put money in the pockets of a sociopathic compulsive liar, ketamine fiend and nazi, put money in the pockets of a sociopathic compulsive liar, or give money to Dario, I'll pick Dario.
muzani
It makes sense though. Fable is meant for hours or days of work.

If you're not using it that way, just use Opus, it's smarter and half the price. If you are using it for long work, then you should probably be using the $200 plan.