> If you are a heavy user, you should use pay-as-you go pricing; TANSTAAFL.

This is very very wrong. Anthropic's Max plan is like 10% of the cost of paying for tokens directly if you are a heavy user. And if you still hit the rate-limits, Claude Code can roll-over into you paying for tokens through API credits. Although, I have never hit the rate limits since I upgraded to the $200/month plan.

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efitz 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

There are many people who quickly hit the limits of the $200/month plan. I hit the limits of the $20/month plan in less than a day. So I never tried the $200/month plan but I suspect you are wrong.

Also, if you sign up for Anthropic’s feedback program you get a 30% reduction on API usage.

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sothatsit a day ago | parent [-]

Especially if you hit the rate limits, you should be on the Max plan. It will save you at least $2000/month if you hit the rate-limits on the $200/month plan, and then you can go and spend however much more you want on the API after hitting the rate limits. There are many people showing how they use 3, 4, or even 5 thousand dollars of API credits a month using the Max plan. You're just going to pay those extra thousands of dollars for the sake of it?!

It is insanity to spend thousands of dollars a month when you could be spending hundreds for the exact same product.

It's an absolute no-brainer. And it's not even "either or". You can use both the plan and fallback to the API when you get rate-limited. A 30% discount on tokens cannot match the 90% discount on tokens you get using the plan. The math is so unbelievably in favour of the plan.

There are probably people who are not heavy users where the plan may not make sense. But for heavy users, you are burning piles of your own money by not using Anthropic's Max plan. You only need a week of moderate usage a month and already the plan will have paid for itself compared to paying for API credits directly.

	▲	sothatsit a day ago \| parent [-]
		Oh and btw, the rate-limits reset every 4 hours. So, I don't know what you are talking about with "hitting your rate-limits in the first day". That doesn't make much sense to say when your rate-limits reset multiple times within one day, nevermind between days. Maybe that's the key piece of information you're missing where you mistakenly thought the rate-limits applied to the whole month, when in fact they apply to a 4-hour window.

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yifanl 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The blogpost is transparently an advertisement, which is ironic considering the author's last blogpost was https://blog.efitz.net/blog/modern-advertising-is-litter/

	▲	theshrike79 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		In this case the lunch is being paid by VC money. I acknowledge that and get like $400 worth of tokens from my $20 Claude Code Pro subscription every month. I'm building tools I can use when the VC money runs out or a clear winner gets on top and the prices shoot up to realistic levels. At that point I've hopefully got enough local compute to run a local model though.
	▲	efitz 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		OP here. I was not solicited by anyone nor did I solicit or accept compensation from anyone for this or any other post. It’s not an advertisement; I apologize if I come off as a Claude Code fanboy. If you read part 1 of my post (linked in my OP) you will see that I disclosed exactly how much I paid for my usage, and also the reasons that I ended up choosing Claude Code over other agents.