This confirms they're selling those subscriptions at a loss which is simply not sustainable.

They probably are but I don’t think that’s what this confirms. Most consumer flat rate priced services restrict usage outside of the first party apps, because 3rd party and scripted users can generate orders of magnitude more usage than a single user using the app can.

So it makes sense to offer simple flat pricing for first party apps, and usage priced apis for other usage. It’s like the difference between Google Drive and S3.

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zb3 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I get your point - they might count on the user not using their full quota they're officially allowed to use (and if that's the case, Anthropic is not losing money). But then still - IF the user used the whole quota, Anthropic loses.. so what's advertised is not actually honest.

For me, flat rates are simply unfair either ways - if I'm not using the product much, I'm overpaying (and they're ok with that), otherwise it magically turns out that it's no longer ok when I actually want to utilize what I paid for :)

	▲	Gigachad 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		At any rate, they offer the option to be billed exactly on your usage via the API. But if you tell the average person the service costs $x/million tokens they will have no idea how much that actually costs, they won't know what a token is or how much their employees are likely to use. While $30/user/month is something they can easily budget for and get approved.