> It is well understood to be 'a loss leader'

You have zero proof for this claim. It's like people read somewhere that stuff and keep spitting it out again and again without understanding..

If it wasn't the case, the Claude API pricing would be the same, $200 for unlimited use. But it's metered.

We don't know if Claude Code bleeds money for every user that touches it. Probably not. But the different pricing is a strong enough clue that it's an appeal product with subsidized tokens consumption.

API is intended for a different audience - companies with a big pocket who aren't as price sensitive as private users. So the pricing will be different than for a private subscription.

That is not true at all. I, as an individual, can go and get access to Claude models via API today, for, I dont know, for a custom workflow I have.

What Anthropic is saying is - please dont use the API key from Claude Code for that.

> If it wasn't the case, the Claude API pricing would be the same, $200 for unlimited use.

How do you figure? That doesn't make any sense to me.

There is huge value in getting people to subscribe to recurring payments. Giving people a discount to do so makes sense and does not mean that the subscription service loses money.

It's not a loss leader - as in they're not making a loss on the subscription.

Because they control the harness(es) and the backend, they can optimise caching and thus the costs to them.

I'm giving up. Caching is optimized server-side on a product for which they can't control the client.

Loss leader doesnt mean $0. Loss leader means it is subsidized to attain another, larger goal.

Thank you, I understand all of this. My question was about the reference to "petty and bitter."