Get them addicted then cut them off. Oldest trick in the book.

More of a free trial to those authenticated and qualified with existing payment. Subscription billing is going away for sure though eventually based on the economics. Token “all you can eat” is a capital furnace otherwise.

(I’m highly confident open models will eventually achieve a similar performance benchmark with distillation over time)

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CuriouslyC 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Subs lose money on individuals to get those individuals to force their companies to pay for the corporate plan. The economics are bad, but so are the economics of grocery stores selling Milk and Bananas at a loss to drive traffic, which they basically ALL do.

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eptcyka an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I pay a lot but barely use it except for some intense days, where the lower plans would have throttled me in like 30 minutes. API billing is still more expensive. If you want to not pay much, go to openrouter and use chinese models. They are cost efficient.

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HDThoreaun 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I havent seen any evidence showing that subscriptions cost the labs money.

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toomuchtodo 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Companies don’t want to pay when the value realized does not exceed the cost.

AI Savings Misses 'Should Be Making Executives Uncomfortable,' Bain Says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48359010 - June 2026 (0 comments)

AI sticker shock hits corporate America- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48307098 - May 2026 (146 comments)

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CuriouslyC 2 hours ago | parent [-]

What's the realized value of not losing your engineers because you're letting them use their preferred tools?

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	▲	toomuchtodo 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Retain and hire the engineers who don’t require heavy use of AI to deliver value? The current SWE job market speaks for itself. Where will you go where they will let you burn up tokens in a high cost of capital macro? ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) is over, software engineers no longer call the shots now that there isn’t vast amounts of capital chasing yield, and that capital bidding up salaries and keeping the labor market for engineers tight. If you are x more productive with generative AI, very shortly you are going to have to prove it with a token budget (or, if you’re lucky, an org willing to spend for on prem hardware for capped token cost, fixed capex vs uncapped opex). The comparison is not SWE vs SWE with AI. It is SWE vs SWE with AI with a constrained token budget ($x/month) delivering the same value at the same or lower cost. If you cannot prove that you are wildly (vs marginally) more productive with the AI, why would they pay for it? Prove it.