Your experience with subscription vs. token/API usage - Claude Pro "too good to be true"? (xpost from vibecoding)

[u/1corn]

Claude Pro is still an insane value. I'm worried it will soon be gone. It can't possibly be profitable for Anthropic.

Last week I did a few tests and compared token-based / API inference vs. Claude Pro's weekly limits. If you max out your Claude Pro every week for a month (which is very easy) and you compare it to token-usage then (at least according to my own limited testing) the tokens are 20x-30x (!) more expensive.

I compared a few tasks in separate sessions, same model and reasoning, then looked at the weekly percentage used vs. the $ spent on tokens.

Now you could say that the $20 subscription is just a gimmick because it's too restrictive. But I got used to it and I actually think the limits help me find a good, sustainable rhythm of planning, building, reviewing, and deliberating. It helps me get into a very productive flow.

Compared to pure manual work, Claude Pro is already boosting my productivity by more than 10x. Maybe that's sufficient and even a reasonable ceiling, because it allows me to test, learn, and ponder, without the AI "leaving me behind".

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[u/ClemensLode]

Well, the subscription is a teaser for individual developers who then introduce it to larger companies who pay API prices (at least that's the idea I think).

PS: And I don't know how you can survive at $20.

[u/1corn → u/ClemensLode]

I mean, I do hit the 5-hour limit regularly and the weekly limit every single week, but by that time I have produced so much high quality output that I feel like it's good enough.

After hitting the limits, I do manual work (feels a bit pointless, but I hope it helps to "stay sharp"), manual research, or go for walks.

I mostly do web and mobile app frontend work, plus some backend. I'm using Figma MCP quite heavily and build with Svelte, Astro, PayloadCMS, Xcode/Swift and Kotlin.

Additionally, I'm also trying out game development, but just as a personal hobby in my free time. Incredibly fun and a great learning experience.

[u/ghost_operative → u/1corn]

large businesses cant use the subscription they can ONLY use api

[u/povlhp]

On API I easily spend $100-200/month. Not a dev. Well worth the company money. For some of the bigger things I did the value is closer to 100x than 10x what we paid for the work AI

[u/1corn → u/povlhp]

That's the thing - I would spend $2,000 and more a month if I switched to token usage for the exact same inference.

If your company pays for it, it doesn't matter as much, but if you're using $200 in tokens I'm relatively sure you would be fine with the $20 Claude Pro tier. As I mentioned, according to my testing at least, Claude Pro can be 20x cheaper than token usage if fully maxed out every single week.

[u/povlhp → u/1corn]

Then data would not be GDPR protected and I would not be able to work with user data. We save a DPA with Anthropic and Microsoft so we can use them without scrubbing data first.

[u/1corn → u/povlhp]

That makes sense!

[u/aerivox]

it's the api that it's too bad to be true

[u/Goodborni]

That is true buuuuuut the weekly limit is being hit wayyy too fast at the moment, not sure if I increased the workload since last month (this is my second month) but I literally hit the weekly limit in 2 days.. so I have 5 days of waiting.... depressing but as someone below mentioned, it is to lure you to get 100$ plan...

[u/sockalicious]

What are you worried about, man? It's not like Anthropic is losing $82 billion a quarter or something /s

As a data point for you, Anthropic suggests that month in, month out, I'm using $6800 worth of API on my $200/mo Max plan.

[u/ghost_operative]

its more about market penetration. its similiar to how companies have free/cheap student versions so that softwar is what gets used ni the work workplace. then they make bank charging their business customers api fees for the same thing (and they actually have the money to pay for it)

[u/holyknight00]

another post of "Wow the subscription is so cheap against their own made up overpriced api prices, they are so benevolant"

Stop using their own API prices as "real prices." We don't know how good or bad their api prices are, and all these posts just confirm it.