Firstly why would you pay API prices when you can use the subscription plans for 20x less
Secondly that much API spend would require dozens of senior engineers using it full time, like you’d be doing the work of an entire, quite large engineering team not a single junior
They are changing the pricing plans to move away from the subscription model to a metered model. Beause operating at a loss is not a long term goal. People have no idea what July is going to be like, when MS changes Copilot to metered in June it’s going to be bad. I checked the usage for my companies plan yesterday and we are going to be paying more. At least 2x. Good luck to the companies that are burning tokens as part of their business plan. Either they get massive bills and go broke, or lose access to Ai after 5 days.
Yeah on the one hand I agree with you, for example Claude Enterprise plans are going to lose the subscription option next time they annually renew, which for us isn’t for a while yet. On the other hand, the rate that new models are coming out is crazy and prices aren’t going up, the result being that every month we’re paying less and less per unit of work done. Sonnet 4.6 is as good as Opus 4.5 was but 1/3 cheaper. More and more companies outside the big 3 are becoming realistic contenders. I think if Anthropic start making pay their obviously over inflated API prices they’ll just lose a ton of customers to cheaper inference providers. Currently I use Claude Code purely because it’s the only harness you’re allowed to use on the cheap subscription plan, as soon as that plan goes away I’d jump to a different company’s plan, and if they all go away then I’d at least use a better harness (e.g. Pi) and a cheaper inference provider (e.g. DeepSeek). Meanwhile open source models are getting better and better and running our own inference farm is quite viable too
Currently, yes. However, if you build your business on highly subsidised temporary prices, you are probably like the CEOs that can’t think further than their shareholders. If you believe there will be flat rates in the end I have a bridge to sell to you.
I currently use what would be around half my salary at the currently listed full API prices (which I doubt we’d ever have to pay but lets assume we did), and a decent portion of that is experimentation, learning, wastage etc. I could cut it down to a third of my salary if I was more conservative. And I’m building 3x more features than I was without it. That’s a good deal even at full price, it’s just even better now with the subscription which is why the smart thing for any engineer to do right now is to take advantage of those temporary heavily subsidised prices to get as good as they can at agent accelerated coding
Those aren’t full prices though. You are aware of that, aren’t you? Nor are the current “full API” prices necessarily truly enough to cover full costs. It is not unlikely that even those are far away from profitability. If they weren’t, why all the financial gymnastics?
The real costs will only be known after the bubble bursts and the venture capital billions are going to dry up and the whole circular financing schemes are falling apart that are massively distorting numbers.
If the current subsidised rates are a good deal for you, nothing wrong with that. Just don’t make decisions that are binding you to what is doomed to explode in prices in the foreseeable future. Also, if all that productive is going through the roof with AI, why is software generally getting worse and buggier. Are all those big tech companies getting suddenly more incompetent, just when they are all moving to processes that are heavily using LLMs?
Firstly why would you pay API prices when you can use the subscription plans for 20x less
Secondly that much API spend would require dozens of senior engineers using it full time, like you’d be doing the work of an entire, quite large engineering team not a single junior
They are changing the pricing plans to move away from the subscription model to a metered model. Beause operating at a loss is not a long term goal. People have no idea what July is going to be like, when MS changes Copilot to metered in June it’s going to be bad. I checked the usage for my companies plan yesterday and we are going to be paying more. At least 2x. Good luck to the companies that are burning tokens as part of their business plan. Either they get massive bills and go broke, or lose access to Ai after 5 days.
Yeah on the one hand I agree with you, for example Claude Enterprise plans are going to lose the subscription option next time they annually renew, which for us isn’t for a while yet. On the other hand, the rate that new models are coming out is crazy and prices aren’t going up, the result being that every month we’re paying less and less per unit of work done. Sonnet 4.6 is as good as Opus 4.5 was but 1/3 cheaper. More and more companies outside the big 3 are becoming realistic contenders. I think if Anthropic start making pay their obviously over inflated API prices they’ll just lose a ton of customers to cheaper inference providers. Currently I use Claude Code purely because it’s the only harness you’re allowed to use on the cheap subscription plan, as soon as that plan goes away I’d jump to a different company’s plan, and if they all go away then I’d at least use a better harness (e.g. Pi) and a cheaper inference provider (e.g. DeepSeek). Meanwhile open source models are getting better and better and running our own inference farm is quite viable too
Copilot premium license is switching to metered next month? Oh wait are you talking about GitHub copilot?
Aren’t some of the LLMs moving away from the unlimited token subscriptions since they are losing a ton of money?
I don’t really follow that, I would neverpay for an LLM.
Or it’s “Unlimited” (rate limited)
I wouldn’t care about the rate limit if it didn’t make so many mistakes. It’s in their best interest to make mistakes too so you use more tokens
There’s layers to the meme. It’s also about how junior engineers are often overworked and underpaid.
Currently, yes. However, if you build your business on highly subsidised temporary prices, you are probably like the CEOs that can’t think further than their shareholders. If you believe there will be flat rates in the end I have a bridge to sell to you.
I currently use what would be around half my salary at the currently listed full API prices (which I doubt we’d ever have to pay but lets assume we did), and a decent portion of that is experimentation, learning, wastage etc. I could cut it down to a third of my salary if I was more conservative. And I’m building 3x more features than I was without it. That’s a good deal even at full price, it’s just even better now with the subscription which is why the smart thing for any engineer to do right now is to take advantage of those temporary heavily subsidised prices to get as good as they can at agent accelerated coding
Those aren’t full prices though. You are aware of that, aren’t you? Nor are the current “full API” prices necessarily truly enough to cover full costs. It is not unlikely that even those are far away from profitability. If they weren’t, why all the financial gymnastics?
The real costs will only be known after the bubble bursts and the venture capital billions are going to dry up and the whole circular financing schemes are falling apart that are massively distorting numbers.
If the current subsidised rates are a good deal for you, nothing wrong with that. Just don’t make decisions that are binding you to what is doomed to explode in prices in the foreseeable future. Also, if all that productive is going through the roof with AI, why is software generally getting worse and buggier. Are all those big tech companies getting suddenly more incompetent, just when they are all moving to processes that are heavily using LLMs?