The API is far more expensive. For Opus 4 it's almost priced in a way that says "don't use this".

That’s not what the parent commenter asked though, they wanted a price for not being concerned about limits. The API pricing is that.

I doubts thats what they want. They want a static fixed price, $5k a month for example and never have to think about it.

	▲	qeternity 5 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Take the API and assume 24/7 usage (or whatever working hours are). That’s your fixed cost. It’s more likely that this sum is higher than they want. So really it’s not about predictability.
	▲	paxys 5 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Even if you used the API 24x7 for a single session (no parallel requests) I doubt you'd be able to hit $5k/mo in usage for Claude 4 Sonnet.
	▲	camgunz 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The way these work is they're net profitable given all users, so you have to recategorize users in one of two ways: - a user subsidizing other users - a user subsidized by other users I don't know what OP prefers, but given that people are saying "woof, API pricing too expensive", it sounds like the latter. The problem, of course, is the provider has to find a market where the one sustains the other. Are there enough users who would pay > $200/mo without getting their money's worth in order to subsidize users paying the same rate, but using more than the average? I think the non-existence of a higher-tier plan says there probably isn't, but I don't want to give too much credence to markets, economics, etc.