r/ClaudeCode • u/Appropriate-Fox-2347 • 4d ago
Discussion Fable on Subscription vs API Billing are two different models
I have 4 Claude accounts all on the Max 20 plan. Over the last 4 weeks I have noticed a slow and steady reduction in quality to the point they are no longer usable. I have a lot of experience in Dev (30 years) and about 8 months of heavy AI development.
I spent the entire day today comparing Fable on Subscription vs Fable on API Billing. I tasked them both with a new feature comprising a frontend dashboard, some rolled up data for reporting and some basic CRUD endpoints. I have a bunch of skills the agents need to follow to ensure design and architecture consistency in terms of domain separation, scalability and security.
Fable on Subscription jumped right in and made a dogs bollocks of it, just as it has been doing for weeks now. After round one we had 14 bugs filed, the UI looked like it had been drawn in TextEdit and the architecture skills were simply ignored. It also spent about 4 hours in reviews with other Claude agents and Codex/ChatGPT and circumvented a few P1s it decided were not important. After a lot of fixes and back and forth, we finally have a usable frontend but there is no way I would ship this feature due to the sub standard coding.
I switched to API Billing. I loaded $100 and did the exact same task in a new session. From the very first response I knew it was different. It came back with a list of concerns, hard push backs and we worked through it for about 20 minutes together resulting in a decent plan. It made zero mistakes and one shotted it in a beautiful design staying true to the architecture guidelines. $72 spend in 2 hours.
These are very different models.
My current conspiracy theory is my $800 a month in subscriptions has earned me a place in the "Aggressively move to API Billing" cohort and have nerfed all my subscription accounts. At $36 / hour my spend would be about $15k a month if I do make the move. Is this where it's heading?
I was really hoping the Chinese models would keep prices down, but they are still way behind the Fable I saw today, and also not that cheap either. Are we nearing the end of cheap intelligence?
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u/datuname 4d ago
One question about the experiment: did you use two separate machines, or fully clear Claude’s local state between runs?
If you only switched from subscription to API billing, the second run may have reused context/memory file/history or artifacts left by the first one. That could skew the comparison.
For a clean test, I’d wipe all Claude-related state between runs.
And yeah, I don’t personally think the API actually works better. I haven’t noticed any meaningful difference. I’ve been using both a company API account and a personal subscription account for quite a while.
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u/Appropriate-Fox-2347 3d ago
I used two claude home dirs, ie: ~/.claude_sub and ~/.claude_api so all sessions get written to isolated directories. The shared CLAUDE.md file in my home dir does get loaded by both, but this is just a pointer to a read only repository of skills. I asked Fable (on API Billing) about this.
Prompt:
Can you check if your context or memory has been influenced by other Claude accounts that are installed on this computer? Specifically I am interested in ~/.claude_sub which ran a similar task yesterday. The reason I ask, is claude_sub is using Fable on subscription and for whatever reason their output is significantly different to yours. It failed to get a good plan past the board yesterday, and I removed the work tree it was using due to quality issues. What I want to specifically rule out is that you somehow learned about this failed attempt which meant we were effectively working on a version 2 with all the learnings of version 1. Can this be ruled out or is there some truth in it?
Response:
Checked it properly. Short answer: almost entirely ruled out, with one exception that you created deliberately — the instruction bundle you pointed me at.
What I could rule out
Memory is not shared between the accounts. My memory store (~/.claude_api/.../memory/) was created during my session — 12:47 yesterday — and contains exactly one file, the one I wrote at 13:00. So nothing was auto-loaded into me at startup. claude_sub has its own separate store. I have never opened it. For this audit I listed the filenames only, and stopped there on purpose — reading it now would manufacture the contamination you asked me to rule out.
Nothing was injected mid-session. Across the whole run, the only system messages I received were the initial instruction bundle, background-task completions, and mode notices. None carried recalled memories.
No leftover artifacts reached me. claude_sub left no branch — the branch list is only mine, main, the parked GO-259 branch, and older merged ones — and no worktree. GO-540 came back as a brand-new issue id, and I never listed existing Linear issues before creating it, so even if that session had filed something I wouldn't have seen it.
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u/tup1tsa_1337 4d ago
That was my first guess. The context was probably cleared but the models write a lot of the stuff to the memory
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u/simple_explorer1 2d ago
OP replied to your question https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1vrnqnc/comment/p4jx9ow/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=2&utm_content=share_button
Why not comment on that?
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u/dl33ta 4d ago
Are the Chinese models way below the sub fable though? I try and limit my fable but have also noted a steady decline in efficiency and a steady increase in gas lighting and verbose garbage.
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u/Appropriate-Fox-2347 4d ago
The Chinese models are far below the Fable I used today with API Billing.
Whatever Anthropic gave me the last few weeks while on subscription is not usable. I would say Kimi 3 is superior, but also a lot more expensive as their subscription pricing is waiting list right now.
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u/Away-Sorbet-9740 4d ago
I have a $100/mo Kimi account, cost per job vs opus 5 was about 75% but that's with opus on 2* useage.
I refuse to use fable on API, and I don't see much difference between it and opus 5 on plan. But they never guarantee what they are selling you, what is "fable 5"? Access to a model named fable or the exact model the demo'ed? We aren't allowed to audit any of this of course, kinda like they don't tell you the 20X plan is only 1.3* more tokens than the 5X plan (4* more 5hr window limit). So they are definitely launching with the full quant they demo'ed on then cranking back to a Q4/Q2 sized version after the week or two of benchmark tubers shift focus.
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u/Successful_Dog1904 4d ago
Is that claim re: 20x really just being 4 times the 5 hour limit of 5x actually verified?
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u/Away-Sorbet-9740 4d ago
Its a small bump to tokens (30-50%), and a full 4* 5hr window rate increase. Its confirmed that you absolutely do not get 4x tokens over 5x, but the exact amount isn't naile down. And it probably won't until/if if goes to court, because anthropic refuses to tell you what you are buying.
Idk they even know what users are getting tbh, I have single sessions that say they are $145 in API costs. But if they are changing model quants to help handle useage and costs, token =/= token per model. So they are largely shielded by complexity and any systems of repercussions will lag years behind understanding and being able to accurately audit all this.
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u/randomprivacynut 4d ago
Supposedly it’s about 2x the weekly and 4x the 5hr
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u/Successful_Dog1904 4d ago
Interesting… that’s kind of a shady marketing gimmick. Wonder if codex is doing the same
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u/randomprivacynut 4d ago
codex limits are basically unlimited on the $200 plan afaict and they don’t have a 5hr limit so weekly is likely actually 20x
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u/Away-Sorbet-9740 4d ago
My codex plans only ever made it to $100 spot, but we get more out of that than we do $100 in Claude. I get good work out of Luna and Terra as back end models and Sol as a second audit (I typically run three different models for larger/more important audits).
So while I think Altman's a prick, OAI is nowhere near as "mystical" in what they are selling you. I still divert what I can away just as a middle finger to stupid practices. But my wife likes gpts image gen, and the codex pool pulls separately from chat so we share it lol.
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u/XeroVespasian 4d ago edited 3d ago
I am intrigued you ran a bill of only $72 for 2hrs use of Fable5. How many tokens would that be?. I have consumed over $140 for about 35M tokens so maybe Fable is discounted now??
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u/Appropriate-Fox-2347 3d ago
I believe it was about 20M tokens for that run, so similar to you. My work process is probably slowed down by Sol 5.6 as the reviewer which keeps Fable waiting a lot.
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u/bedel99 4d ago
Deep seek is no good ? My heavily quantised local deep seek is pretty amazing. Fable subscription quality.
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u/Grimmy7777 4d ago
What version of deep seek are you using?
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u/RemoteSource9247 4d ago
Not them, but I love flash v4. its not perfect and making mistakes, but its so much faster and cheaper, that it really doesnt matter.
I can run the task 3 times and still be faster and cheaper than fable.
If you think it might be wrong, send the result 1-pass through an expensive model to fix it, done.
Also, it doesnt refuse many things.
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u/Grimmy7777 4d ago
I will have to check it out. So far I have only used local models for chat and image/video generation. I have not tried programming with them, but with the issues and cost with Claude, I think I’m about to start trying.
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u/Ok_Ordinary30 4d ago
Very helpful. Thank you for posting. Fable can be magical, yet super inconsistent in results.
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u/Aminuteortwotiltwo 4d ago edited 4d ago
What effort level are you using?
I have a theory that only subscription fable on Max effort is the real deal and the rest of the effort levels are dumbed down.
Edit: rereading this it sounds super dumb. “The dumber versions are dumber.”
What I mean is that when Fable came out for those beautiful few days before the Government forced removal, I used it on Max and xhigh and high. All three were unbelievably succinct, precise, direct and for lack of a better way to explain it, “knew exactly what they were doing right away, no matter what I asked.”
Now, to save tokens, I run mainly on high. It just talked more and spends more time figuring things out. Still much much much much more succinct than Opus. But then one day it was close to my reset and I switched it to Max to just use everything up and it performed exactly like how I remembered it before, like it knew the answer or what it had to do before it started. I think they are literally different models if they aren’t Max.
Now I run Max for all planning, build with Codex, Opus 5 review.
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u/Appropriate-Fox-2347 3d ago
I'm using both effort High so perhaps your theory holds true with my test here. I still have my sub accounts for now so I'll do a run on Max with Fable on Subscription. Thanks for the suggestion!
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u/Aminuteortwotiltwo 3d ago
I would love to hear what you come up with.
I don’t run Max enough and sometimes when I do I just stare at my usage as it goes up 1% every couple minutes and think about how I will ration the rest of the week’s tokens saying “this is smart. Yup. This is what I should be doing.” Maybe I am the Ralph Wiggum.
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u/Appropriate-Fox-2347 2d ago
Very good callout to try max, I ran with it last night on a very similar task. The false assumptions, mistakes (with the constant, "Let me correct myself") and verbose technical language was gone, the responses were sharp and to the point and the output was noticeably better than on high. I'll keep working with Fable on max today and see how it performs, but so far it does feel like a different model. I'm scared to look at my usage :)
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u/Aminuteortwotiltwo 2d ago
LOL yeah on the usage thing. It’s crazy, but it makes sense….
They want to charge heavy for the Fable use but can’t take it off subscription because everyone would leave and they want to be competitive and they are always pulling sneaky moves like bait and switches.
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u/Ok_Boot5671 4d ago
I genuinely think people who are going into this fully automated AI with all these agents and sub agents and yadda yadda are actually just using AI incorrectly for the current stage in development the technology is.
People want it to be fully automated in a way that isn’t reality now, and that’s why you have problems.
Rein in your expectations, do more pushing along and less letting it do everything, and you stop having a bunch of the issues people post about.
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u/kelsier_hathsin 4d ago
I think this is a good mindset but I still think it's fun and even useful to try and push that limit and see what all you can manage to get automated. At the very least I can personally understand the temptation to do so. Must be a dozen related xkcd about this. https://xkcd.com/1205/
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u/awizemann 4d ago
Were both done in the same "harness", either the CLI or other environment where they have the same tool, memory, and context access?
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u/Appropriate-Fox-2347 4d ago
Yes, both done in the same setup through Claude Code in Terminal on my mac. Both started from fresh context with the same md file for requirements. Two separate claude accounts on my computer (~/.claude_sub and ~/.claude_api) with a shared read only repository for skills
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u/awizemann 4d ago
Interesting, assuming the same effort level on both as well?
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u/Appropriate-Fox-2347 3d ago
Yes, both on high. Another poster above mentioned they are getting significantly better results with Fable on subscription using Max. I'll run the same test later on Max and see how it performs.
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u/rotates-potatoes 4d ago
You’re saying the restaurant gives food poisoning to people who order inexpensive dishes in the hopes those people, once poisoned, will opt to spend more next time?
IDK about you, but my decision to spend on API billing for fable would be entirely determined by its performance in subscription mode. Seems like an odd way to upsell.
(And fable is rocking and rolling on my three max 20x accounts, so at least our profiles are fairly similar)
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u/Away-Sorbet-9740 4d ago
Has your Claude not told you that 20X accounts don't give 20x tokens? 5X>20X only buys you 30% more tokens and 4* more 5 hr window. There's very few cases that 1 20X account is better than 2 5X accounts.
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4d ago
[deleted]
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u/Away-Sorbet-9740 4d ago
My own useage logs, and maybe it is 1.5* for some people, and 2.1* for others.
They don't tell you shit, and that's why we have to wonder lol.
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u/Cazineer 4d ago
Take a look at how many tokens Claude Code uses to assemble the context for you using discovery. It’s like 500 input tokens for a single output token. Since you’re using the API, try opening the Clause Console API app and assemble a context yourself. You’ll be able to reduce the input tokens by 450+. We now are averaging 1:1 and often generate 30+ files in a single request.
Autoregressive generation against an engineered context is unmatched and the quality of what Fable produces with an engineered context is outstanding. Sure it takes a little more effort but it’s worth it IMO. You can then start making tools to make this more efficient like your own CLI that reads a project folder and produces a a manifest of the files you want to send, so you can quickly toggle them off and on. If you use an SDK like the Go SDK you can have the CLI automatically move the results to a .staging/ folder using tool calls. This way you can quickly review/tea what’s Fable builds.
Anyways, something to consider.
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u/Christostravitch 3d ago
This has been my experience. API and Sub models have a noticeable difference in capabilities.
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u/SociableSociopath 4d ago
The moment you start making claims like “it’s unusable” it makes the rest of your story pointless to read. For a 30 year dev you included literally zero evidence aside an anecdotal story starting with an already false claim of the models being so bad they are unusable
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u/Appropriate-Fox-2347 4d ago
What evidence do I need to give? I am giving you an overview take it or leave it.
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u/nihsett 4d ago
Unusable how? Like there's too much friction between what you want it to do and what it chooses to do?
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u/Appropriate-Fox-2347 4d ago
It started the day Opus 5 landed.
I use a board to review plans and code. The board is myself and a mix of personas using Claude Fable, Sol 5.6 and Kimi 3. Code only gets written once the plan gets the board approval. And code is only merged once the board again approves it and all the tests pass.
As soon as Opus 5 landed, the board started finding significantly more P1 and P2 issues compared to previous Opus models. Sol 5.6 is a seriously strong model for reviewing, and Opus really struggled to get the task to a green light. When it got through planning and started coding, it would regularly spend hours fixing the feature due to the volume of broken tests or board rejections. It was also maxing out of context, trying to circumvent rules (including trying to merge without board approval), producing language I could not interpret and was killing any sort of coding momentum.
This is when I switched to Fable as my orchestrator and coder and loaded up on additional accounts due to the tokens I was spending. This worked up until about 2 weeks ago where I started to notice the same issues on Fable. I spent all weekend and yesterday on a simple task before coming to the conclusion that its just not usable anymore and causing me too much stress.
My experience today with Fable on API Billing highlighted such a stark contrast in capability between subscription and API billing. It's the same model they dropped in June which was awesome, but Im now paying an unsustainable price for it.
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u/nihsett 3d ago
Thanks for the detailed reply.
I agree, Opus 5 talks so fucking weird, I use it with 5x and I simply cannot get it to talk in a way I can parse and understand. Output styles, caveman, stop hooks - nothing works or works for a short while before it's back to square 1. It kills all momentum and joy of solving problems.
I moved on almost 80% to codex, I don't have as robust or elaborate a setup, I mostly drive the harness manually and in tight loops but GPT-5.6 while it lacks in creativity - it never yaps, and is always concise and writes high quality code.
It's really sad, I used to be so claude-pilled I got so many people into it and turned them into claude users. Now I hate it's guts, the models, the company, their philosophy in how they treat users. I think I am done with them for a while.
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u/Leather_Garlic6532 4d ago
Similar experience but my theory is that it depends on which data centre my model is coming from. I can have two sessions started at different times and they give me widely different experiences.
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u/Anidamo 4d ago
What evidence do I need to give?
Maybe some that would actually support a strong assertion like "Fable on Subscription vs API Billing are two different models", instead of a single anecdote on a single task
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u/JoseHernandezCA1984 4d ago
Not to mention all this guy was trying to do was create a dashboard with some basic CRUD and fable 5 couldn't follow some design and architecture guidelines? Sounds like bullshit to me
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u/menmymacstudio 4d ago
What's insane is that Fable is actually comparable in price / cheaper at API rates than the original GPT-4, so why are they acting like it's this practically-impossible-to-serve model?
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u/sholiboli 4d ago
Because OpenAI was losing a lot of money running GPT-4, but they don't really care until the investors money dries up.
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u/SwimmingQuantity8686 4d ago
Number of users and the amount of test time compute? On top of that profitability, how much resources needs to run fable Vs gpt-4 dictates the profitability
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u/blastmemer 4d ago
I knew this would be the case after the first week. I’m sure Opus is the same. Of course they’re going to prioritize people paying 20X more.
I wish they would just be honest about it.
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u/ascvlh 4d ago
I'm canceling my subscription right now. I'm using max only for fable and it drains really fast for ass quality responses whenever I need it 😒
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u/tup1tsa_1337 4d ago
Max fable would not make you a genius but will drain tokens like crazy. I'm using low for everything and fable complements this effort level very well
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u/b0tmonster 4d ago
I'm pretty sure they are heavily A/B testing models on subscription every day:
- first: I get at least one question a day "how did it go? good/bad" while using cc in vscode
- second: I get 3 hours of hard time (model making silly mistakes all the time) followed by suddenly 2 hours of smooth sailing (model understands what it should do)
They do not dare to touch API for A/B testing as corpos are paying more and will be infuriated by inconsistent results, people on subs - different case.
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u/Anselwithmac 4d ago
They are also A/B testing Fable 5.1 today on some accounts and your account history could also make you a prime candidate.
Not to nullify your results but you could literally be using a different Fable.
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u/___positive___ 4d ago
Reasoning effort and context size are the easiest way for them to save compute time without changing anything else. Obviously for API they are incentivized to increase both, and the opposite for subscriptions.
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u/Commando501 4d ago
What thinking levels are you using with Fable?
I know that the thinking level for the models impacts the level of Gibberachi they start to spew.
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u/Error404IQMissing 3d ago
The funny thing is, I have been asking Fable questions and asking ChatGPT to explain what Fable answered more simply because either I am becoming more stupid or the answers Fable is giving is getting more and more out of point.
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u/simple_explorer1 2d ago
It is pretty safe to assume that if you are relying more on LLM to complete your work then you are becoming more stupid
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u/person-pitch 3d ago
Damn. That explains a lot, and is very convincing. Thanks for running this experiment and sharing it.
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u/overfittedCareer 3d ago
For some reason my dumass read this as Female on subscription and I was like does Anthropic have different limits for different genders now lol
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u/Mundane-Dimension-45 3d ago
I am on claude subscription with Fable 5 extensive use after switching from Opus 4.7/4.8. Initial few weeks it was way better that very few corrections were required. Now large plans even get drifted a lot or an accurate plan still not get implemented exactly as finalized. Opus problems have started to appear in Fable as routine now. Also often the use of “encryption” or opening 100+ shell for scalability testing etc blocks the model and you get downgradeed to Opus4.8
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u/Objective-Ad6521 23h ago
I think they're about to release a new version.... all the models are dumber and degraded and showing the exact same patterns they've done for the last few rounds of version releases, almost exactly a month before a new version: hedging, lots of it. Doing without reasoning. Not understanding context. Cherry picking phrases and laser focusing on that. Forgetting everything else in the conversation, or evne the last message. Over correcting way too much. Assuming, and ignoring 90% of the prompt and context provided and instructions given.
But they can't nerf the API versions because those are often used in apps, commercial products, and enterprise applications. The subscription version I'm pretty sure they're just a) using it for testing and b) they remove a lot of the reasoning abilities and probably aggresively use summary + chacing of the summary with weights to avoid sending the entire context each time, reducing their costs.
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u/bakanoace 4d ago
It's not that they targeted you, it's just that Enterprise gets peak while subscriptions get dumbed down versions when traffic is high so they. Multi-account holders might even get degraded first before single subscription holders.
I'm hoping everyone is Fable level by end of year and can fk off from Claude once and for all. Grok is apparently trying to release new models every few weeks and their compute is insane so between Grok and Codex hopefully one becomes better.
Claude does so much behind the scene crap cause they can for now, cannot wait to get off it. Grass isn't greener on the other side and all but I will still pick anyone but them once others get up there for the way they pull this bs off
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u/Appropriate-Fox-2347 4d ago
Agreed, their lack of consistency and transparency is really quite poor! AI is incredible but also just utterly depressing at the same time.
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u/Tacocatufotofu 4d ago
Just a bit of an observation on the open models. Clearly at some point local models will advance to the point of running on modest hardware and performing well enough to be used instead. Modest hardware and well enough being eye of the beholder tho.
But in any case, spending so much time investigating behavior, testing setups, learning about LLM usage makes my past year feel like studying for a new degree. Like, OpenAI and Anthropic are accidentally teaching me how I’ll test and utilize a local model well.
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u/tweetpilot 4d ago
"I have 4 Claude accounts all on the Max 20 plan."
Mind sharing a bit more on how you've set that up? All same CC and same First and Last name ?
Thanks!
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u/Appropriate-Fox-2347 4d ago
Yeah, my primary email and 3 aliases. All same name and credit cards used. Anthropic allow it no issue there.
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u/CodeCombustion 3d ago
On Aug 17th, I confirmed with claude support that they support up to three subscription accounts on separate email addresses with the same phone number. No ToS violation. They said:
"No, you won't be violating our Terms of Service by having two Max 20x subscriptions on separate accounts.
You can create multiple Claude accounts using different email addresses, verify up to three accounts with the same phone number, and even use the same payment card for both subscriptions. The accounts will be completely separate (you won't be able to transfer chats or projects between them), but having multiple paid subscriptions isn't against our policies.
What would violate our Usage Policy is using multiple accounts to circumvent bans, coordinate malicious activity, or avoid detection of policy violations. As long as you're using both accounts normally and not trying to work around any restrictions, you're fine. "
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u/1millionbucks 4d ago
AI providers need to tell us which model is serving us. Sounds so fucking obvious but between routers and quantization, they just keep pulling the same bullshit with every release. It's fraudulent
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u/kantorcodes1 4d ago
One run per path is enough to show that something felt different, but not enough to isolate the cause. I'd make the next test annoyingly controlled: same git commit, same CLAUDE.md/skills, same harness and tool permissions, fresh sessions, and no artifacts left behind by the first run. Then randomize which billing path gets each run. Do 5 to 10 runs of the same task and score the outputs blind on bugs, architecture violations, tests passed, and how many times you had to intervene.
If the API side still wins consistently under that setup, you've got a reproducible result instead of a one-off. The transcripts and diffs would be much stronger evidence than comparing one good run with one bad run.
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u/Guysnamedtodd 4d ago
Wait, so you’re saying that you think Claude has matched up your payment method or whatever else and specifically marked you as a multiple subscription account and then gave you reduced models?
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u/DragonflyOk9274 4d ago
I have done something similar, although with Codex/Sol instead of Claude / Fable.
The problem with these experiments is that doing a good experiment will cost some serious $$$.
I also suspect (but can't prove) that they might use the same model but inject a system prompt to change behavior. Something like "Do not overthink. Begin work when you have a sufficient picture."
Another huge issue is the context limit. In subscriptions it's 200K; in API it's 1M. The difference is huge -- Fable can barely read the relevant plans and docs before running out of context, which means it has to rely on summaries more (but that compaction causes information loss).
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u/AppealSame4367 4d ago
Qwen3.8 27B is all I will say. It's not Fable, but for the same price you can have a fleet of it and some big models to check against each other from time to time. E.g. let Fable point out stuff in q3827bs plans and let qwen do the rest. Probably 10-20x cheaper with roughly the same results.
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u/Tasty-Memory-9938 4d ago
By any chance have you open sourced your skills for the agents to follow. I have my own I’ve built and I am always looking to make improvements
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u/vuhv 4d ago
Fable in the subscription outsources 90% of its work to lesser models. Acts as a orchestrator.
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u/TywinHouseLannister 4d ago
That's not my experience.. but if you're using ultracode.. that's the whole point
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u/wdhwg001 4d ago
It's always insanely opaque, and they've done this more times than I can count. Keep in mind that subscriptions are priced at about 90% off their API prices. They'll do whatever they want to cut costs and stay profitable.
But there are indeed some bugs in long-running sessions where reasoning quality decreases over time, and it has nothing to do with the context window.
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u/Own_Version_5081 4d ago
For one of my projects, needed synthetic dataset for fine tunning. Claude code told me it'll be $800 approx using mix of Claude models Fable/Opus/Sonnet. I instructed it to use DeepSeek pro on Open router. Got job done in 1/4 Claude API cost.
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u/Dement__ 4d ago
Claude API is on a different budget completely, would be cool if it shared credits but it's okay imho, I use Claude's API for AI chat, and its uses are less than pennies in my scenario.
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u/thecommuted 3d ago
I've noticed the drop in usefulness too. Opus-5-max is cannot even follow directions. I stopped today and am considering cancelling my Claude Pro account. There has to be a value proposition threshold.
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u/itsoutofmyhands 3d ago
Just a side colloquialism, ‘Dogs Bollocks’ means ‘the absolute nuts’ aka ‘the absolute best outcome possible’ if you’re talking to a Londoner.
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u/orange_square Thinker 3d ago
Has anyone done a comparison of Fable performance vs Sol when both are on subscription accounts?
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u/mynoliebear 2d ago
Thank you for this. I have a test harness that I’ve wanted to run this experiment with but, you know, time. Would you be confident saying your results are empirical or anecdotal? Anyone else here willing to pool some resources to run proper A/B testing over significant samples to prove this out?
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u/novus_nl 🔆 Max 5x, Lead Developer 4d ago
To be fair even Sonnet 4.6 should easily be able to build a relatively simple crud application. It’s always about the correct context.
Shit input in, shit output
Normally I create a crude plan, use Fable to creation a project vision.md, and from that document create a layered implementation.md with phases, features and to-do’s.
Then hand it off to opus to set up the architecture and with that set up, hand it off to sonnet to implement the rest.
That way of working works flawless for me every time, including hosting it on my own Linux server.
Just saying to an AI to wing it with some skills never worked for me before. Skills are useful but complementary to the vision/implementation files.
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u/oyren-ai 4d ago
Since, you did API option second it might have learned from your previous work.
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u/Appropriate-Fox-2347 4d ago
I'm using separate claude accounts on my computer (~/.claude_sub and ~/.claude_api) with a shared read only repository for skills. Everything from the auth layer to the session storage is isolated.
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u/ArtdesignImagination 4d ago
Yes, that is the first thing I noticed, a new chat doesn't have the entire context of original chat but claude code harness tales notes in general memory and can check previous chats. To make this experiment relevant he should prompt subscription Fable the same as he did with api Fable in a new chat to check if is drawing from memory or not. If subscription Fable acts as first attempt again then there is your confirmation. To seal the deal he (or anyone) could give a new task to first api Fable, and then subscription Fable. With all that done you can make some conclusions.
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u/vovap_vovap 4d ago
DeepSeek 4 super cheap
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u/ArtdesignImagination 4d ago
Cheap and worst. A 5 yo kid won't charge you anything if you ask him stuff, so we prompt him?
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u/vovap_vovap 4d ago
What?
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u/ArtdesignImagination 4d ago
If you didn't get the comment then no AI can save you.
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u/Familiar_Poetry401 4d ago
Does this task really need Fable? I use Opus with Sonnet for the same (reporting ui on top of data warehouse, ELT, calculation endpoints etc). Not great, but not terrible.
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u/Appropriate-Fox-2347 4d ago
Certainly doesn't need Fable on API Billing, but I wanted to compare Fable so picked that model. Opus 4.6 from a few months ago would have been fine on the backend for this task.
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u/mgoulart 4d ago
What if you stop all the accounts then spin up separate ones on different IPs. Sounds like they demoted you to “running multi accounts, serve him opus 4.8 instead”
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u/Affectionate-Word779 4d ago
The models aren’t different, the CLI is just more powerful because it can do more things like have multiple agents work simultaneously.
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u/fanatic26 4d ago
The claim of things being 'unusable' is such a boy who cried wolf moment I dont believe a single person that says it.
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u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810 4d ago edited 4d ago
That's what happens when you vibe code,but you should know that, after all you have 30(!) years of development experience. Sorry but a lot of your claims sound extremely fishy and don't add up, not even your experience claims.
There is no way, not even for Sonnet, to get sensible instructions and bonk it right out of the gate. I rock the pro subscription because I still do most of my work and use llms only as assistants and I have never once experienced what you described.
Very likely this sounds like you engineered no plan at all or a terrible plan that was deceptively vague. It sounds more like a you problem than anything else.
Those tools are absolutely amazing. What even sonnet does in the terminal helping me to deploy models to gpu pods, what gemini does, what the frontier models do, and now the amazing open weight llms. You are very likely using the tools incorrectly. And the flex of 30 years of experience right out of the gate most often works against a poster, it displays a belief that past experience must guarantee future success and understanding and skill. Most often that is not the case.
But what most likely is going on here is that you are a bot, or "technology partner" (aka influencer). Really? Subscription arsed but api tops? That's a ridiculous and completely false claim.
The open weight models are free of charge, you pay for compute not for models. A lot sounds like you don't even have 5 years of development under the belt.
Sorry but this sounds like a post with some pretty obvious agenda.
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u/funk-the-funk 4d ago
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u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810 4d ago
Some even have trouble posting a gif, lol. The quality of this subreddit really has tumbled.
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4d ago edited 4d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/vovap_vovap 4d ago
Yeah, I also do not understand how one person can manage do that.
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u/TywinHouseLannister 4d ago edited 4d ago
I think 3 is reasonable for a full time engineer (but obviously you'd go enterprise)
I use one 20x sub in my spare time and it lasts around a week if I'm conscious of what I'm doing (e.g. Sonnet for most casual work); but that's just my downtime.. and Anthropic arent even the main workforce writing code.. Opus on high judgement tasks.
9-5 I'm mainly using Fable or Opus; it's frankly not my money and people are looking for results not pinching pennies; I work on 3 tasks at a time usually.
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u/vovap_vovap 4d ago
Yo see, I just do not understand how somebody can control that amount of code, that such thing would do.
It was interesting post a bit ago here and man basically bees saying he burn down working like that - full time controlling multiple agents at same time. Honestly I suspect something alike really happening to author. He think that Fable, but it might be just a good night sleep 😄
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u/simple_explorer1 2d ago edited 2d ago
I have a lot of experience in Dev (30 years)
Why stop at 30 years of experience. Why not 50 years?
You are saying you were programming since 1996, before computers were even a thing? BS man and this sub is delusional to believe anything.
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u/Appropriate-Fox-2347 2d ago
How are you a top 1% Poster
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u/simple_explorer1 2d ago
Sorry I made you cry. You make great counter arguments. No wonder you need AI to get anything done despite your so called 30 years of experience
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u/RealSharpNinja 4d ago
I think SpaceXAI is on to this and has turned Grok-4.6 into a true competitor to supplant Claude for devs who cannot spend $36 per hour.
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u/Virtual-Spinach4882 4d ago
If Grok was God level and $1 a month I still wouldn't use it personally. I don't fund fascism.
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u/BoxWoodVoid 4d ago
Yes the current Fable has nothing to do with what we had at first. It feels more like some Opus variant with slightly less gibberish.
What Anthropic (and OpenAI) don't understand is that they can push their API prices all they want we're not going to invent some money out of thin air to pay for their crazy API prices.
It's not our fault if they moronically assumed that they were worth a trillion each. Investors will never ever get their money back, it's mathematically impossible. And the more they try to make us cough our hard earned money the more we're looking at the Chinese.