A flat pricing subscription for Claude Code
37 comments
·May 8, 2025tkzed49
ramoz
Doesn’t resonate with me because I’ve spent over $1,000 on Claude Code at this point and the return is worth it. The spend feels cheap compared to output.
In contrast - I’m not interested in using cheaper, less-than, services for my livelihood.
null
tkzed49
hey, I'm open to that possibility. Maybe I'll grab $5 in API credit and give it a shot (for 5 minutes or a week depending on who you ask)
jsheard
> However, as long as Microsoft is offering copilot at (presumably subsidized) $10/mo
Last we heard Copilot was haemorrhaging money, with each $10 subscription losing them $20 on average and heavy users losing them as much as $80, but that was a while ago. I wonder if things have got better or worse since then.
https://www.techradar.com/pro/microsoft-is-reportedly-losing...
tkzed49
I'll add on to this: I don't really use agent modes a lot. In an existing codebase, they waste a lot of my time for mixed results. Maybe Claude Code is so much better at this that it enables a different paradigm of AI editing—but I'd need easy, cheap access to try it.
warp
You don't need a max subscription to use Claude Code. By default it uses your API credits, and I guess I'm not a heavy AI user yet (for my hobby projects), but I haven't spent more than $5/month on Claude Code the past few months.
F7F7F7
I burned $30 in Claude Code in just under an hour. I was equally frustrated and impressed. So much so I ended up a $200 MAX subscriber.
koakuma-chan
The problem with it is that it uses a 30k~ token system prompt (albeit "cached"), and very quickly the usage goes up to a few million. I can easily spend over $10 a day.
EnPissant
I spent $5 in 10 minutes when I tried it.
koakuma-chan
> but I'd need easy, cheap access to try it.
You can try it for cheap with the normal pay-as-you-go way.
cye131
I'm curious whether anyone's actually using Claude code successfully. I tried it on release and found it negative value for tasks other than spinning up generic web projects. For existing codebases of even a moderate size, it burns through cash to write code that is always slightly wrong and requires more tuning than writing it myself.
ramoz
Yes. For small apps, as well distributed systems.
You have to puppeteer it and build a meta context/tasking management system. I spend a lot of time setting Claude code up for success. I usually start with Gemini for creating context, development plans, and project tasking outlines (I can feed large portions of codebase to Gemini and rely on its strategy). I’ve even put entire library docsites in my repos for Claude code to use - but today they announced web search.
They also have todos built in which make the above even more powerful.
The end result is insane productivity - I think the only metric I have is something like 15-20k lines of code for a recent distributed processing system from scratch over 5 days.
slrainka
Agent mode without rails is like a boat without a rudder.
What worked for me was coming up with an extremely opinionated way to develop an application and then generating instructions (mini milestones) by combining it with the requirements.
These instructions end up being very explicit in the sequence of things it should do (write the tests first), how the code should be written and where to place it etc. So the output ended up being very similar regardless of the coding agent being used.
F7F7F7
I've tried every variation of this very thing. Even managed to build a quick and dirty ticketing system that I could assign to the LLM of my choosing. WITH context. Talking Graph Codebase's diagrams, mappings, tree structure of every possibility, simple documentation, complex documentation, a bunch of OSS to do this very thing automatically etcetcetc.
In the codebase I've tried modularity via monorepo, or faux microservices with local apis, monoliths filled with hooks and all the other centralized tricks in the book. Down to the very very simple. Whatever I could do to bring down the context window needed.
Eventually.....your return diminish. And any time you saved is gone.
And by the time you've burned up a context window and you're ready to get out. Now you're expeciting it to output a concise artifact to carry you to the next chat so you don't have to spend more context getting that thread up to speed.
Inevitably the context window and the LLMs eagerness to touch shit that it's not supposed (the likelihood of which increases with context) always gets in the way.
Anything with any kind of complexity ends up in a game of too much bloat or the LLM removing pieces that kill other pieces that it wasn't aware about.
/VENT
abetaha
I wonder how successful this pricing model ($100-$200 a month with limits) is going to be. It is very hard to justify, when other tooling in the ~$20/month range offers unlimited usage, and comparable quality.
light_hue_1
This isn't flat pricing. It's exactly the same API credits but you prepay for the month and lose anything you don't use.
Whether it turns out to be cheaper depends on your usage.
I thought Claude Code was absurdly expensive and not at all more capable than something like chatgpt combined with copilot.
ghuntley
the new Claude code “max plan” would last me all of [1] 5mins… I don’t get why people are excited about this. High powered tools aren’t cheap and aren’t for the consumer…
[1] https://www.youtube.com/live/khr-cIc7zjc?si=oI9Fj33JBeDlQEYG
F7F7F7
Claude Max is less than a 1/2 percentage point of a Jr. Devs average salary. If you can't make that work then....
iLoveOncall
If that's the case you should stop using it, because there's no way you see any ROI when you spend that much to just do some coding stuff.
It would be cheaper to your company to literally pay your salary while you do nothing.
postalrat
I'd love to see your math.
pclmulqdq
It's pretty simple: that usage in 5 min is probably at least $10 worth of API credits in that time (maybe $100).
A year has 2000 working hours, which is 24000 5-minute intervals. That means the company spending at least $240,000 on the Claude API (conservatively). So they would be better off having $100-200k you do nothing and hiring someone competent for that $240k.
null
I_am_tiberius
Do you still need a phone number to register with claude?
justanotheratom
I am sure this is worth every dime, but my workflow is so used to Cursor now (cursor rules, model choice, tab complete, to be specific), that I can't be bothered to try this out.
s17n
If you're using Cursor with Claude it's gonna be pretty much the same thing. Personally I use Claude Code because I hate the Cursor interface but if you like it I don't think you're missing much.
justanotheratom
I don't enjoy the interface as such, rather the workflows that it enables.
null
jbellis
One of my problems developing Brokk (AI coding for large codebases, https://brokk.ai) is that everyone is used to Cursor-style pricing of $20ish a month, but Brokk is designed around long-form prompts, it's a lot closer to a leash for Claude Code than it is to a Cursor or a Copilot, and the bill is a lot closer to CC too. (But of course Brokk is vendor neutral; you can absolutely mix o3 with GP2.5 with S3.7.)
So maybe Anthropic setting this precedent will solve my problem!
owebmaster
> Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.
null
foobahhhhh
[flagged]
ghuntley
nah, there are low powered tools and there’s high powered tools. If people want $20/month happy meal toys in business that business will get left behind. Ignore the consumer market, make Bugatti’s instead - https://ghuntley.com/redlining
ps - catchup for social zoom beers?
jbellis
you're right about the context limits
i pinged what i think is the right ghuntley on linkedin, rizzler looks like the next feature i'm building for brokk :)
ghuntley
This is me - speak soon. https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffreyhuntley
The problem is that this is $100/mo with limits. At work I use Cursor, which is pretty good (especially tab completion), and at home I use Copilot in vscode insiders build, which is catching up to Cursor IMO.
However, as long as Microsoft is offering copilot at (presumably subsidized) $10/mo, I'm not interested in paying 10x as much and still having limits. It would have to be 10x as useful, and I doubt that.