Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscriptions to use OpenClaw

Re:Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscri... by arewethereyeta on Friday April 03, 2026 @08:00PM (#47633981)

Marketing geniuses. They had 2 options here:

1. Make a better product/alternative to Openclaw and start eating their userbase. They hold the advantage because the ones "using their servers too much" are already their clients so they could reach out and keep trying to convert. Openclaw literally brought them customers at the door.

2. Do everyone royally and get them off their platform - with a strong feeling of dislike or hatred towards Anthropic.

Let's see how 2 goes for them. This is not the space to be treating your clients this way.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscri... by mrbungie on Friday April 03, 2026 @08:02PM (#47633989)

From you can tell from they long-term strategy they are not marketing geniuses, but rather they try to signal are "moral geniuses". That's the game they are playing, I don't really know if it is going to work or not.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscri... by airstrike on Friday April 03, 2026 @08:19PM (#47634121)

marketing geniuses was never a real alternative if inference is heavily subsidized, because open models scale in performance just as well, albeit 12-18 months late

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscri... by nojito on Friday April 03, 2026 @08:24PM (#47634161)

>Make a better product/alternative to Openclaw and start eating their userbase.

There's a good chance they do not have the infrastructure to do that.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscri... by dboreham on Friday April 03, 2026 @08:52PM (#47634372)

I'm fine with it. I don't want my subscription subsidizing the claw people.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscri... by a10c on Friday April 03, 2026 @09:18PM (#47634557)

How about the people that don't use OpenClaw, but alternative agent harnesses that are vastly better than Claude Code?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscri... by bsder on Friday April 03, 2026 @09:41PM (#47634725)

> alternative agent harnesses that are vastly better than Claude Code?

Okay, that got my attention. What harnesses are those?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscri... by a10c on Friday April 03, 2026 @11:18PM (#47635329)

pi-coding-agent (https://shittycodingagent.ai/) is what I use and is particularly popular due to its simplicity and minimal system prompt.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscri... by arewethereyeta on Friday April 03, 2026 @10:07PM (#47634912)

Cursor - I'm sure I can find more.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscri... by arewethereyeta on Friday April 03, 2026 @10:04PM (#47634888)

I think you value yourself too much over other people. What does it even mean "claw people"?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscri... by subscribed on Friday April 03, 2026 @09:22PM (#47634585)

Well, I don't use openclaw and I don't think it would be fair if everyone had to pay more to subscribe them.

Why hatred btw? They're not even banning accounts left and right like Google?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscri... by infecto on Friday April 03, 2026 @09:29PM (#47634639)

Such a small minority of the customers they want use openclaw and in aggregate a lot of compute use is coming from the total group. Better to stop customers you don’t want. This has zero impact on top line revenue

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscri... by luxuryballs on Friday April 03, 2026 @11:00PM (#47635229)

but are they really doing that? I mean it says you can keep using OpenClaw you just have to allocate money to the extra usage or an api token, I have no plan on not using it because Opus makes the claw so smart, I’ll just put more money towards the extra usage rather than the beefier sub

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tell HN: Anthropic no longer allowing Claude Code subscri... by krater23 on Saturday April 04, 2026 @06:25AM (#47637753)

Not the software is the product, you know? The tokens are the product. Selling cheap subscriptions to power users costs them money. That are the customers you don't want, so why hesitate to get rid of them when they don't want to pay more?

[ Parent | on HN ]