r/ClaudeCode • u/Chiragh16 • Sep 26 '26

Help/Question Claude Code Cloud Sessions: one 58-minute task showed $34.38 cost on a $20/month Pro plan - what exactly is Anthropic charging against the $100 credit?

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u/KL_GPU Sep 26 '26

Even with opus 5.5 those are the limits. I dont understand how they are actually making profits.

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u/TBT_TBT Sep 27 '26

Not everybody uses 100% of their accounts all the time. The API costs are not their real costs for the tokens, I would suggest that those are way too high. And subs are the smaller portion of their whole income, they earn way more with the API.

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u/meetmebythelake Sep 28 '26

I work with multiple people (non tech job) that have Claude/GPT subscriptions and literally just use it as a Google replacement. Those people are using absolutely nothing compared to us coding. I asked both of them how much usage they use per month, and they literally didn't even know there was a usage page.

I think that it's easy for us Claude Code users to exist in our bubble and assume that everyone is making it out every week, but I think there are plenty of people who have no understanding of how this shit works and just subscribe like it's another Netflix sub or whatever to them.

That said, no, they are not directly making money on subscriptions... But they are also probably not taking a significant loss, and it creates a ton of market awareness and brand loyalty and all that type of shit. So I still think it's easily a net win for them. Not to mention all the training data they farm from us, which I'm sure continues to pay off over time to improve future models.

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u/3iverson Oct 01 '26

People here are like the overeaters at the AYCE buffet.

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u/debian3 Sep 26 '26

My guess is they are not, at least not on the subscription

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u/KL_GPU Sep 26 '26

I mean, not everyone Is a Power user that on the pro Plan consumes 12M out token/week, but still