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Claude has the worst pricing – but people want it

1 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.

30 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.

amukbils
are you using it to write code? $20/mo was never enough and I'm not even full time on coding .. yeah different models are worth experimenting .. but I'm okay with paying higher for the best model .. just need predictability and stability of pricing, which Claude doesn't give, and yet we still use and pay for .. because it's such a good product.
pmontra
Yes, a Rails project with a Vue frontend.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
elevation
Yes, self contained python utilities.

Claude runs on an isolated machine with no access to production data, its role is to generate tools that we can use to analyze production data.

leros
The $20/mo plan was almost enough for me coding daily. Once I added Claude Design, I'd easily spend $20-50/day in extra usage. Upgrading to the $100 Max plan, I never come anywhere near the limits.
2001zhaozhao
Sonnet has crazy high usage limits on claude right now but it'll get 50% more expensive after July ends.
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.

_davide_
Yep, that's me. the only real blocker is that American companies don't trust Chinese providers, but i could just find a good American provider that hosts DeepSeek and/or GLM. I would at least be able to choose my own agent instead of a quite mediocre one that wastes time and output nonsense verbs in a pathetic attempt to gain sympathy. The only reason that stopped me from doing it is the absence of a subscription, and I did believe I couldn't get the same value with API pricing, but I'm starting to see that it's a blatant lie and true only for anthropic and openai...
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:)
nnurmanov
Fixed, now Fabric works with subscription plans as well. It took some time to figure it out, but the issue is resolved now. I shall push the updated release later to GitHub
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.
sudo_cowsay
I use Codex and it works like magic.
aclfe
Really? Somehow Codex worked horribly for me. I think the limits seem way worse than claude code, I tested it out for a month last week. Plus, somehow it doesn't feel even close to claude
sudo_cowsay
I agree that the limits are terrible. However, I think it's a little bit of a glass half full or half empty. I decided to view it as a necessary pause so that I don't get addicted to the dopamine rush haha :)
aclfe
lol that's fair, I tend to have higher requirements so I was even considering buying another account
sudo_cowsay
Yeah, I'm just a solo high schooler dev. Pros are much different :)
aclfe
Hey I'm in college too! You have a whole life ahead, use it to the fullest :)
PaiDxng
"This is indeed a highly counterintuitive lesson: when a product is so strong that users are willing to tolerate vague limitations and complex point systems, pricing is no longer just about designing a paywall; it’s about managing scarcity, costs, and user anxiety. The catch is that this privilege belongs only to a rare few truly irreplaceable products.
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.