> Then Anthropic started saying I’m not allowed to use my Claude Code subscription with my preferred tools

To be clear, since this confuses a lot of people in every thread: Anthropic will let you use their API with any coding tools you want. You just have to go through the public API and pay the same rate as everyone else. They have not "blocked" or "banned" any coding tools from using their API, even though a lot of the clickbait headlines have tried to insinuate as much.

Anthropic never sold subscription plans as being usable with anything other than their own tools. They were specifically offered as a way to use their own apps for a flat monthly fee.

They obviously set the limits and pricing according to typical use patterns of these tools, because the typical users aren't maxing out their credits in every usage window.

Some of the open source tools reverse engineered the protocol (which wasn't hard) and people started using the plans with other tools. This situation went on for a while without enforcement until it got too big to ignore, and they began protecting the private endpoints explicitly.

The subscription plans were never sold as a way to use the API with other programs, but I think they let it slide for a while because it was only a small number of people doing it. Once the tools started getting more popular they started closing loopholes to use the private API with other tools, which shouldn't really come as a surprise.

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falloutx an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Anthropic will let you use their API with any coding tools you want

No, in 2026, even with their API plan the create key is disabled for most orgs, you basically have to ask your admin to give you a key to use something other than Claude Code. You can imagine how that would be a problem.

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huevosabio 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, exactly. The discourse has been so far off the rails now.

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ericd 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The anticompetitive part is setting a much lower price for typical usage of Claude Code vs. typical usage of another CLI dev tool.

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gehsty 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Anticompetitive with themselves? It’s not like Claude / Anthropic have any kind of monopoly, and services companies are allowed to charge different rates for different kind of access to said service?

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rhgraysonii 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The anticompetitive move would be not running their software if ‘which codex’ evaluated to showing a binary and then not allow you to use it due to its presence. Companies are allowed to set pricing and not let you borrow the jet to fly to a not approved destination. This distortion is just wrong as a premise. They are being competitive by making a superior tool and their business model is “no one else sells Claude” and they are pretty right to do this IMO.

	▲	ericd 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Anticompetitive behavior has been normalized in our industry, doesn't make it not anticompetitive. It's a restriction that's meant to make it harder to compete with other parts of their offering. The non-anticompetitive approach would be to offer their subscription plans with a certain number of tokens every month, and then make Claude Code the most efficient with the tokens, to let it compete on its own merits.

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4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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8note 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

from what i remember, i couldnt actually use claude code with the subscription when i subscribed. i could only use it with third party tools.

eventually they added subscription support and that worked better than cline or kilo, but im still not clear what anthropic tools the subscription was actually useful for

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cedws 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The question I pose is this: if they're willing to start building walls this early in the game while they've still got plenty of viable competitors, and are at most 6 months ahead, how will they treat us if they achieve market dominance?

Some people think LLMs are the final frontier. If we just give in and let Anthropic dictate the terms to us we're going to experience unprecedented enshittification. The software freedom fight is more important than ever. My machine is sovereign; Anthropic provides the API, everything I do on my machine is my concern.

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Draiken 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't get why so much mental gymnastics is done to avoid the fact that locking their lower prices to effectively subsidize their shitty product is the anti competitive behavior.

They simply don't want to compete, they want to force the majority of people that can't spend a lot on tokens to use their inferior product.

Why build a better product if you control the cost?