r/ClaudeAI • u/TransitionSlight2860 • Oct 16 '25
Complaint I have to compliment anthropic: a good move to cut costs within months
Anthropic's recent moves are not about innovation, but a calculated playbook to cut operational costs at the expense of its paying users. Here's a breakdown of their strategy from May to October:
- The Goal: Cut Costs. The core objective was to shift users off the powerful but expensive Opus model, which costs roughly 5x more to run than Sonnet.
- The Bait-and-Switch: They introduced "Sonnet 4.5," marketing it as a significant upgrade. In reality, its capabilities are merely comparable to the previous top-tier model, Opus 4.1, not a true step forward. This made it a "cheaper Opus" in disguise.
- The Forced Migration: To ensure the user transition, they simultaneously slashed the usage limits for Opus. This combination effectively strong-armed users into adopting Sonnet 4.5 as their new primary model.
- The Illusion of Value: Users quickly discovered that their new message allowance on Sonnet 4.5 was almost identical to their previous allowance on the far more costly Opus. This was a clear downgrade in value, especially considering the old Sonnet 4 had virtually unlimited usage for premium subscribers.
- The Distraction Tactic: Facing user backlash, Anthropic offered a "consolation prize"—a new, even weaker model touted as an "upgrade" with Sonnet 4's capability but 3x the usage of Sonnet 4.5. This is a classic move to placate angry customers with quantity over quality.
Conclusion: Over four to five months, Anthropic masterfully executed a cost-cutting campaign disguised as a product evolution. Users received zero net improvement in AI capability, while Anthropic successfully offloaded them onto a significantly cheaper infrastructure, pocketing the difference.
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Oct 16 '25 edited Jan 21 '26
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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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Oct 16 '25
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u/raw391 Oct 16 '25
I'm surprised when I see new posts in this sub, all of mine get taken down immediately for far-reaching reasons.
"You said "limit" so, OFF TO THE SUPERTHREAD! post deleted" - my experience of using this sub
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u/Eastern_Product9919 Oct 21 '25
What's it with people on supposedly independent subs about certain companies who think any post that's remotely critical or negative should be immediately removed.
This isn't a top-down thing. It's not like the mods, or even the companies themselves do it. It's just these random masochists who seem to have learned this attitude from political discourse where dissent is mocked and suppressed with labels like "anti-vaxer", "far-right" or "conspiracy theorist" when anyone says something that goes against the generally accepted narrative.
If paying customers can't voice their dissatisfaction with a company's pricing policy (on Reddit of all places), then what's the point? This isn't a topic where "misinformation" can cause harm, or mass hysteria.
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u/Wickywire Oct 16 '25
I like to use pretty much all the available chat interfaces and input the same piece of work and the same prompt, in order to both learn the differences between the models and also get a whole bunch of different perspectives on my work. Claude 4.5 Sonnet is by far the snarkiest, most original and most interesting one in the bunch. I can see why it can be jarring for some, but to me, it is the Devil's advocate, that brilliant critical voice everybody needs in their work.
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u/atbreb Oct 17 '25
Absolutely. I’m confused why people get upset when a great company needs to shift their monetizing strategy to (1) stay profitable and (2) stay competitive. Anthropic seems to be making a short term correction to create a sustainable long term vision for Claude Code to survive the costs AI solutions bring. I’d much rather less usage but still great results over years of time instead of amazing usage and better results but the tool dies in 6 months because Anthropic is bleeding cash too much.
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u/Conninxloo Oct 16 '25
Sustainability honestly looks like a pipe dream for all AI companies. AI is not a product, it’s more like a utility, but unlike water or electricity almost no one actually needs it. Enjoy Claude Code while it lasts in any case.
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u/Trotskyist Oct 16 '25
I mean, by that logic you also don't need electricity. It just makes life more convenient, after all.
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u/Conninxloo Oct 16 '25
Electricity does a whole lot more than just convenience. For instance, refrigeration and the ability to call emergency services lower the risk of premature death significantly. And still the point stands, LLMs function like a utility that no one wants to pay for and I don’t see that changing significantly in the near future.
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u/Forward_Anything_646 Oct 23 '25
It seems like millions is fine with paying for claude code because it helps them do their work faster
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Oct 17 '25
I don’t think this is true at all, I think it’s a question of hardware and efficiency catching up with the use case.
There was a time when using a computer system at all meant time sharing with strict limits, we’re just there right now because we haven’t made the next personal computer revolution.
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u/Pitiful-Ad8345 Oct 19 '25
I’ve honestly seen the parity with Opus on some tasks when using ultra think on it. It’s not bad.
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u/new-to-reddit-accoun Oct 16 '25
Was this written by ChatGPT?
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u/Psychological-Way225 Oct 17 '25
IMHO Sonnet 4.5 is good enough for someone with programming experience to work with if you do good prompt hygiene:
- Always try to plan features before implementing
- Ask for it to export the plan to a .md, REVIEW THE PLAN. Clear the context before starting implementation.
- Make features as focused as you can, same for conversation sessions
- Monitor frequently the context window usage with /context, try to always keep it under 80k.
- (optional) Use mcps such as tavily and force it to look for up to date documentation
I use Claude Code daily with many sessions a day for a FT job and a part time university project and I think I hit the daily quotas only twice so far.
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u/pandavr Oct 16 '25
Users are not morons.
I will continue with Opus as far as I can. And if they won't came out with an alternative that is good for ME. I will be an ex user in no time.
And I'm pretty sure a statistically relevant share of users think about It like me.
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u/krkrkrneki Oct 16 '25
Disagree in "zero net improvement in AI capability". In my experience Sonnet 4.5 is great at coding, better then Opus 4.1.
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u/localhost8100 Oct 16 '25
Yes. Previously I had to use opus for daily task. Now I am surprised to get my work done just by using sonnet 4.5.
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Oct 17 '25
4.5 is absolutely the most economical coding model. I can run multiple agents, as many as a 8 agents, and never touched the limit, and I’m on the $100 plan.
I have only hit limits when I run Opus for writing.
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u/gamepad_coder Oct 16 '25
Try to remember this:
These large AI companies are spending $billions just on inference alone.
Those numbers are insane.
I also hate the limits, but I'd rather have a limited Claude that runs longer -- than have Anthropic go out of business and have to go back to Cursor or Windsurf (or spending 100x as long typing things by hand).
Yeah Anthropic's public relations are garbage, but their engineers are probably doing their best, and the whole company is trying remain afloat amid rabid competition.
We also have to remember:
All of this technology is new. Yes, we're paying for a product. But this is also all a hug big experiment of everyone racing to invent superintelligence.
Things will keep being volitle and unstable for a bit yet.
Because this is so new there's also a ton of room to reduce the existing models to provide better value, cheaper.
Eventually we'll have Opus 20 quality at a fraction of today's Haiku 4.5's cost.
This is what getting in early as a consumer of an inherently fuzzy technology looks like.
Try to accept the nature of the bounds, find the product fit/reliability tradeoff for your wallet.
And remember how magical it is we even have this tech in our lifetime.
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u/nborwankar Oct 16 '25
This! And just early this year we were still in an IDE box. Claude Code had not even been around for a year.
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u/orange_square Oct 16 '25
I honestly can’t imagine going back to Cursor at this point. I used it for almost a year and towards the end it was clear I was being throttled non-stop. I paid for extra credits and watched them get burned quickly with little to show for it.
My first couple of attempts with Codex were laughable. I know some people have had good experiences with it, but definitely not me.
I had absolutely no problem jumping onto a Claude Max 20x the first time I tried our Claude Code, it’s leaps and bounds a better experience than anything else I’ve tried.
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u/pizzae Vibe coder Oct 16 '25
We wont be getting Opus at Haiku's cost anytime soon. The US energy grid isn't big enough to support demand. China can offer something like this to us since they have the infrastructure within a few years
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u/gamepad_coder Oct 17 '25
I think possibly you're right.
I'm on the fence. These are essentially software brains. And quality<>size here is not a linear scale. These models are so "throw stuff at it until it's smart" that I'm sure there's a ton of room to reduce the underly models w/o performance hits -- but it's still new and arcane to do this without trial and error. And when we do begin to do this precisely, we'll probably use AI to do it.
But you're right that was a guess on my part.
It'll be interesting to see -- this field will only grow, and the underlying whitepapers and known math will continue to grow.
Eventually it seems inevitable that humanity will find an optimum where we can't meaningfully reduce cost for comparable output for AI. But I suspect we're a long long way off from there, and we'll keep iterating and increasing gains (and decreasing costs) for a long time (or short, depending on AGI snowball lol).
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u/pizzae Vibe coder Oct 17 '25
I'm sure the AI scientists are doing something similar to vibe coding like you said. They're probably just trying all sorts of inefficient things to make it very smart (rapid vibe coding), then later on they'll figure out how to make it more efficient (refactoring the AI generated code)
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Oct 16 '25
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u/arqn22 Oct 17 '25
If each user you lose is costing you more than they are paying you... Our use has been subsidized by VC capital injections to drive growth and build market share. If it's still the best experience, most people will probably still pay for it. If it's not, they'll jump ship.
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u/Electronic_Kick6931 Oct 16 '25
Great post. My addition is now they’ve added haiku 4.5, I imagine they will be trying to push pro members to use this instead of sonnet 4.5 to avoid hitting weekly limits. I hit weekly limits on sonnet last week so now I’m more inclined to investigate haiku mixed with sub-agents to manage token use. Anyways it feels like shrinkflation to me
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u/TraditionalFerret178 Oct 16 '25
C'est pas logique ce que tu dis : si Opus coute 5 X plus cher. alors OPUS 4.1 etait 5 X plus cher que Sonnet 4. Et je doute FORTEMENT que Anthropic se soit dis : OH quelle chance avec cette mise à jour, je vais multiplié mes coûts par 5 et donner Opus 4.1 à tout le monde en le déguisant en Sonnet !!
C'est pas logique du tout !
Et je peux te garantir que Opus 4 est bien meilleurs que Sonnet 4.5.
Je réagis sur : "
- L'appât et le changement : Ils ont introduit "Sonnet 4.5", le commercialisant comme une mise à niveau significative. En réalité, ses capacités sont simplement comparables à celles du modèle haut de gamme précédent, Opus 4.1, et non un véritable pas en avant. Cela en a fait un "Opus moins cher" déguisé. "
Je suis en colère du fait des calcul de limite Anthropic et pense les quitter si leur erreur continue. MAIS j'ai l'impression que ton post est rempli de syllogismes et se base p as du tout sur des preuves objectives.
Résultats : Anthropic pense que TOUS LES POSTS concernant les performances et prix sont écris par des extrémistes.
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u/MasterEpictetus Oct 16 '25
I tried Haiku 4.5 today and it was a horrible experience. It deleted code, misunderstood what I was trying to do, and it made a mess for Sonnet to clean up later.
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u/Speckledcat34 Oct 16 '25
4.5 is excllent for the web interface/objective reasoning but Opus is vastly superior for coding
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u/gpt872323 Oct 17 '25 edited Oct 17 '25
Max 5x user, ran out of opus usage after using for 2 days for 4 hours in total for a week. Likely will switch to codex and save money.
Also, for compact this error comes if you try to do that 2% is left.
Error: Error during compaction: Error: Conversation too long. Press esc twice to go up a few messages and tryagain.
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u/Cute-Ad7076 Oct 17 '25
Anthropic is getting pretty sketchy. I feel like Claude code was obviously a loss leader for collecting data. They seemed to publicly complain about how much money they were losing on Claude code for like months and then riiight around a new model release (that boasts better code scores) they suddenly slash limits. Apparently, they can engineer Claude, but they can't figure out how to like change the usage knobs for Claude code so they had to burn money for months according to them.
I think it's telling is they're constantly complaining about costs but won't just make the pro subscription like 30 bucks or offer an in-between choice. It's almost like they're trying to force users to either spend 200 bucks or go to free where more data can be collected.
They're also being real sneaky with some of the language in the new data retention policy.
Also, isn't it kind of weird that the AI company that is apparently most focused on safety seems to market their model as the most human? I would guess th safety company wouldn't say "your thinking partner".
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u/TransitionSlight2860 Oct 17 '25
yes, anthropic felt that openai was too big to compete with, especially there is google on the market.
Anthropic probably shifted their focus on business or gov fileds.
they are customers who value safety over ability, price etc..
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u/Eastern_Product9919 Oct 21 '25
It depends on the context. I wouldn't mind paying $1000 per month (even per-paid for a year) for something that
1. Didn't have *any* usage limits other than the intrinsic limitations of being a single user,
2. Gets this same access to new models in the same class (I don't want video generation, NSFW images, voice conversations, or some bizarre new type of Social Media based on AI generated slop)
3. They can't introduce usage limits during the (pre-paid) contract period.Before anyone says "if you don't care about the cost, just use the API". But the problem there is that small details like prompt caching, or accidentally specifying a model that's absurdly expensive because it's being being "phased out" can end up costing you $10,000 per month for absolutely no tangible benefit.
Plus, as someone said, businesses hate PAYG. They'd rather consistently pay too much for something than have the risk of an "unbounded" cost, where accountants will substitute $infinity.
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Oct 16 '25
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u/Fonheart Oct 16 '25
Me too, and each compaction costs tokens, so it's even more expensive. And trust me, it's calculated on purpose.
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Oct 16 '25
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u/Fonheart Oct 16 '25
Yes, if you get stuck, try changing the model, like Sonnet to Opus, or Sonnet to Haiku for example, then try /compact, or prompting with the new model.
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u/IndicationFunny8344 Oct 16 '25
sonnet 4.5 is clearly inferior to opus 4.1 in real world use. quality of code , correcting bugs etc. i agree everything in this post except for conclusion. they made a real mess doing the cost cutting.
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u/sojithesoulja Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
Sonnet 3.5 was the goat for coding before Sonnet 4 was released. Then there was a massive influx of claude code users leading to degradation.
Edit: Meant Sonnet 3.7* the model before 4, whatever it was.
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u/ravencilla Oct 16 '25
A product getting worse just because more people use it is not really a good thing
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u/Anrx Oct 16 '25
It's also not true. The effect you're seeing is an influx of incompetent vibe coders who end end up blaming imaginary "degradation" for their own incompetence in writing code.
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u/sojithesoulja Oct 16 '25
I saw Sonnet 4 misspell something right before Sonnet 4.5 was released. That hasn't happened in forever. If you think they aren't constantly tweaking the models, you're dead wrong.
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u/KashMo_xGesis Oct 16 '25
"Fix this bug: **copy and pastes vague error code**" .. claude has no clue wtf you want so it generates gibberish. Vibe coder: **claude is soo baddddd**
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u/stormblaz Full-time developer Oct 16 '25
I disagree in some aspects.
Before massive influx of people using Claude, 3.7 and 4.1 etc would 1 shot my front end with the same direct instructions to a tee exactly how I wanted them without mock ups, previews, half done code, respecting that.
Now I HAVE to tell it to do no mock ups, previews, every link, breadcrumb, and or button has to properly function and go to the desired location in the code as instructed, all the time, it loves giving mock ups and half done code when it can, more frequently, meaning I need to keep it on a leash tight a LOT more than before.
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u/IndicationFunny8344 Oct 16 '25
omg i was having the same issue , no matter how much i ask it to not use mock stuff or add fallback it just wont listen .
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u/stormblaz Full-time developer Oct 16 '25
And it never did that before the giant explosion of users, which means they rely on fixed fall backs to cheapen logical thinking or complex understanding, saving bandwidth.
I never had to run Claude in a daycare before around may ish, now its constant daycare.
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u/vuhv Oct 16 '25
I love how the top tier of vibe coders suddenly want to rebrand themselves into the echelon of competent programmers.
I've shipped products used daily by close to 20 million people. Supporting a critical part of our government and social fabric. I cancelled Claude Code due to the bait and switch.
What have you shipped?
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u/ravencilla Oct 16 '25
The idea of these "natural language" models is to be able to talk to them in... natural language, no?
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u/SpaceCaedet Oct 16 '25
100%. I've had, and continue to have, a great experience with Claude code. However, I've also got (I like to think) decent design, engineering and coding skills.
Claude has made me at least 10x more productive. Use it properly, guide it's hand, and it's phenomenal.
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u/SnooSuggestions2140 Oct 17 '25
People noticed 3.6 being put into web and app when it released before announcement. Will this dumb narrative that users cannot trust their eyes ever stop?
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u/vuhv Oct 16 '25
If you think that Anthropic isn't using quantization and model at peak usage times then you're the "incompetent" one. And I'll add naive to that list too.
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u/Anrx Oct 16 '25
They're not dynamically quantizing the model. First of all, that would be insanely difficult to implement given the scale and complexity of their infrastructure.
Second, it makes no business sense to degrade your own product in such a highly competitive market. Enterprises have options - if the model could randomly get worse, they would notice immediately and migrate to a different provider.
Third, there's no good reason for them to even attempt such a thing when they already have solutions in place to control resource usage - that's the whole reason why rate limits exist!
I'm sorry to say your incompetence is not a conspiracy. You're just bad at coding and using LLMs.
You would have had the exact same experience regardless of which provider you used because the lowest common denominator is you.
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u/ravencilla Oct 16 '25
Second, it makes no business sense to degrade your own product in such a highly competitive market
...
lol
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u/Anrx Oct 16 '25
Are you disputing that it's a competitive market, or that it makes sense to degrade your own product, even if you already have a solution to control resource usage?
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u/IgniterNy Oct 16 '25
1000% Anthropic intentionally degraded their own product for higher margins. This is undeniably true and can be seen by the moves they are making
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u/SweetMonk4749 Oct 16 '25
The weird thing is people believe the PR that Antropic says. In their PR posts they always say they are the best, sota, blah blah .. lol.
Hey Anthropic, how about compare performance AND price with other companies.
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u/TransitionSlight2860 Oct 16 '25
yes. their models are still over-priced.
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u/-main Oct 17 '25
They've sold all the inference they have and people still want more, I wouldn't be surprised if prices go up further.
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u/TransitionSlight2860 Oct 17 '25
prices would not be determined only by the supply. it also determined by needs.
and the supply is not only coming from ONE company. it comes from the average of the whole market.
basic economics
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u/-main Oct 17 '25
We doing basic economics? Sure. To what degree do Claude tokens, ChatGPT tokens, and Gemini tokens substitute for each other?
I've seen people quit over high prices and GPT-5/Codex also being good, when compared to Claude Code, so clearly it's a real option. I've also seen people lament that nothing else writes quite like Opus -- an artisan, unique experience with only one supplier.
I think we're in a market that's more like the one for books than the one for bricks. The individual supplier matters, there's a personal taste factor for which there's no substitute, even as the market as a whole has competition.
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u/toj27 Oct 16 '25
Couldn't agree more, the changes have been so disruptive. Does anyone have suggestions for alternatives? I've been using Codex but it also has its problems.
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u/IndicationFunny8344 Oct 16 '25
since i also use gcp i am using gemini . doing alright getting the job done. it actually has better understanding of google cloud services , architecture etc so for me its a net positive. ( gemini code assist standard ) i use gemini cli , i dislike the VS code extension
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u/TransitionSlight2860 Oct 16 '25
no. they are the best. gpt5 and sonnet 4.5. usable with relatively low prices comparing to pure API usage.
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u/defmacro-jam Experienced Developer Oct 16 '25
I've been using codex (which I'm happy with) and I'm going to give grok api a try starting tomorrow.
That's assuming my vague idea of going back to aider pointing at grok api is workable.
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u/dashingsauce Oct 16 '25
You’re basically describing GPT-5 and OpenAI’s playbook. They ran away with the ball because they were the first to consolidate the platform and reduce costs simultaneously.
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u/raw391 Oct 16 '25
I blame AWS. They have a vested interest in Anthropic, and they have the the muscle to give Anthropic what they need, yet here we are being throttled while Sam and Satya are out there buying up power plants to keep their customers online.
Dammit Jeff, all your fault.
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u/Usual_Discount3186 Oct 16 '25
Why does every Reddit post sound like AI slop. ChatGPT uses reddit as a reference and Reddit is filled with ChatGPT. The slop up cycling is going to ruin internet
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u/FickleRegular9972 Oct 16 '25
"Anthropic masterfully executed a cost-cutting campaign"
No they didn't! If is was masterful they wouldn't have pissed off so many customers.
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u/TransitionSlight2860 Oct 17 '25
kinda true. but any transition needs costs.
I would say they might evaluate the costs and recognized them as "acceptable".
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u/clckwrxz Oct 16 '25
I feel like in every one of these posts. They have to find a way to be profitable. The bubble is about to burst. Of course they are going to cut costs when they lose billions every quarter. The models are still the best when paired with tools like Claude Code and Augment and for those of us working in enterprise we understand they need to make money to survive all of the companies are going through the same thing. The hype cycle has settled. Investors want profits not promises. Hell, break even would be welcome.
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u/chaicoffeecheese Oct 16 '25
I was a $20 sub, but cancelled. Feels like their goal was to push people out of that tier -- either up into $100+ or out completely. So... they got what they wanted, I guess?
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u/Any_Willingness_8103 Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
moving to codex, fuck this lol. Fine with the 5 hr limits. But weekly limit so fast? I was never hitting it before they ninja nerfed it.
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u/mightyloot Oct 16 '25
These guys are now using ChatGPT to write negative stuff about Claude. Oookay bud. Just get your refund and vote with your feet and stop complaining over and over and over…?
I’m thriving beyond my wildest dreams thanks to Claude/Claude Code.
Termius + Tailscale + Mosh + Zellij = what a time to be alive!
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u/noxillio Oct 17 '25
Don't forget about the unreasonable usage limits.
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u/SJEpperson Oct 20 '25
Totally agree. The usage limits are a huge letdown, especially when you compare them to what we had before. It feels like they're just trying to squeeze more money out of users without actually providing better service.
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Oct 17 '25
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u/systemsrethinking Oct 17 '25
The conversation length limit infuriates me.
If context is an issue, I'd rather just continue in the same chat knowing context is limited to the last X number of words. Or be able to select which messages are used as context?
I'd even take being able to start the "new chat" on the same page as the old chat, so whatever I am working on is all recorded in one place.
Across ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini - I am perplexed by the lack of features complementing the LLM in the chat experience. Why isn't the chat programmed to know today's date, nor able to manage account settings?
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u/TransitionSlight2860 Oct 17 '25
I would say the context awareness might happen not intentionally.
anthropic trained sonnet in a way different from openai leading to the ability.
many people are angry about LLM saying "context limiting my outputs".
I would say maybe it is too early to tell whether it harms the model ability.
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u/systemsrethinking Oct 17 '25
My issue is with Claude limiting the length of conversations, requiring the user to create an entirely new chat when that limit is reached. Which recently has been occuring after only a few messages.
So I end up with 3-4 chats that I need to switch between, to collate whatever I was working on. Annoying to need to organise my chat logs to keep things together, rather than just being able to keep it all on the same page in one chat to begin with.
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u/TransitionSlight2860 Oct 17 '25
it is a better strategy working with ai now.
swtich, copy and paste.
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u/systemsrethinking Oct 17 '25
I have a whole stack going with a browser extensiond and a clipboard manager to automatically clip/tag/organise any highlights into my PKMS. Plus ever changing experiments with hacking together over-engineered self-hosted solutions lol. And/or my process is generally copy/paste what I need into my working document.
But also sometimes I want to go back and read through the full conversation, or find something I later realise is relevant/needed. So it is just one annoyance I have that if using Anthropic's platform directly then one work thread ends up split over several chat threads. That I need to manually organise to make it easy to find those chats together later.
In the last couple weeks conversations can max out after 2 messages for opus + extended thinking + research, or say 8-10 messages just using sonet. Which has now reached the threshold of no longer being worth me paying to use the platform for convenience, because it isn't convenient for my workflow / use case, so will now only use Claude via API from another GUI with better UX.
I am able to do the mental gymnastics to justify multiple subscriptions to each major platform as "R&D", as AI literacy / adoption is my line of work. This is a unique issue to Claude, that it just seems surely some product design could fix. Even if it just created new chats nested as threads under the original, that would be immensely helpful. Tho all the frontier vendors seem to be light on non-directly-LLM feature development in their text generation / chat experience.
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u/systemsrethinking Oct 17 '25
I actually think Perplexity (specifically labs) has the best UX / features of the major players, for the average consumer / knowledge-worker if primarily focussed on research driven text generation rather than code/multimedia. Not that I would have believed that 6 months ago lol. Manus is exceptional for this use case but the price point is still too high (they also make the Monica Chrome extension - which most of my casual-AI-using-layperson friends prefer hands down over everything else.. IMO because so much more design has been put into all the features around AI that tickle the average consumer's fancies).
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u/getpodapp Oct 16 '25
For me opus 4.1 and sonnet 4.5 are about neck and neck. The fact that sonnet is much cheaper for them to run is a net win. Clearly these labs are focusing on model efficiency more than pushing SOTA performance now.
Downgraded my Claude plan to max 5x and haven’t hit a rate limit since sonnet 4.5 came out.
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u/mestresamba Oct 16 '25
I have to disagree, for coding 4.5 Sonnet is on par or above opus. I had very few cases where 4.5 didn’t spot the issues. It also performs way better in terms of using the right tools at the right time, better than opus.
Then need to cut costs. There’s no free lunch, while I do hate the weekly limits, the new models are good, although I didn’t test Haiku yet.
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u/Punch-N-Judy Oct 16 '25
We are exiting the age of companies doing loss leader free compute to build their brands and entering the age of compute bottlenecks. If you analyze things through this lens, a lot of recent changes to models that people take as personal attacks on their usage styles make more sense.
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u/Keganator Oct 16 '25
This is conspiratorial.
Sometimes a company just grows their product, and wants to retire their older products.
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u/ButterflyEconomist Oct 16 '25
We are the early adopters. We got them to this point in credibility, but now we get the heave ho while they focus on corporate customers.
But …as the early adopters, we see what Claude is capable of. The rest of the folks will use this as a browser on steroids to help with their Christmas shopping. Will their corporate bosses appreciate this?
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Oct 16 '25
For me 4.5 worked better my purposes than 4.1 for coding, so it was a win-win. Opus is still far better at writing, though.
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u/themightychris Oct 16 '25
API usage costs haven't shifted though, do you think those are inherently more profitable for them and unlikely to face the same issues?
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u/Initial_Appeal2199 Oct 16 '25
I begin to find a lot more the weekly limiy, with the 5h i was 'ok' but the week is going to make me review other llm to move out
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u/notreallymetho Oct 16 '25
Ya I’m basically about to cancel. I spend $200 a month and the change coupled with the lack of transparency really bothers me. I’m prob in an upper percentage of usage here, so my guess is the changes are “working as intended”
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u/ponlapoj Oct 16 '25
I understand both sides. I myself am one of those who choose to use Claude because it gives better results and experience than other AIs and even though I have used other AIs that are cheaper or free. I still don't want to use it. You guys should stop comparing "equally good" "similarly good". Better is better. And of course I believe that better results come from the management or restrictions that Claude creates, but I also hope that Claude manages them more fairly.
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u/MinecraftBoxGuy Oct 16 '25
If you calculate how much it costs to run these models with the cheapest hardware, it seems they're charging (at least on the API) around 100x the marginal cost. You can compare this to your plan equivalent.
The move seems to be more based on infrastructure, ability to scale, and also future price competitiveness.
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u/Plane-Alps-5074 Oct 16 '25
Wow, it’s almost like they can’t afford to spend billions of dollars subsidizing high performance inference. Complaints about reliability and quality of models is totally valid but it blows my mind how much this sub likes to whine about no longer having access to thousands of dollars of free compute for a 20/month subscription
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u/clintCamp Oct 16 '25
Sonnet was working great for me this morning. It set something up for me beautifully and it worked. Then I had a bug that got caused somewhere else and I asked a new chat to fix it.... Then I noticed that on trying to fix that it got lost and completely destroyed the functional set of scripts that were working and I spent the rest of the day trying to get it to put things back the way the had been architected earlier. My fault for not git committing often when features work and pulling the short straw and getting the chat that has dementia.
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Oct 16 '25
I loveeee codex. Unbelievable that im dickriding a product from Sam klansman, but it’s really amazing. Never touching CC again
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u/SlippySausageSlapper Oct 16 '25
In my experience with a few hundred hours of Sonnet 4.5 use for programming in large complex architectures - it is at least on par with Opus, and with the 1m token context window, far more useful in practice.
Anthropic is crushing it.
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u/txgsync Oct 16 '25
I dunno. Haiku’s capability and pricing suffices for all but my most complex needs. And its speed means I am churning through work about twice as fast.
- Make Sonnet better than Opus.
- Make Haiku more than twice as fast, and perform similarly to the old Sonnet 4 I was satisfied with, at 1/5 the price.
- Profit?
Still figuring it out. The only part that is insane is the bizarre refusals deep into a task that accuse me of a mental disorder for working Claude so hard.
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u/cloud9IQ Oct 16 '25
I used Claude web and Claude code heavily last month, and never hit any limit. This month on my second use of Claude code, I was told I've hit a limit and I should upgrade. Instead of upgrading I'm considering ChatGPT codex, I've been hearing good things about it. I haven't been able to work for hours now, this shouldn't be happening to a paid customer.
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u/Normal_Dot_1337 Oct 16 '25
Cry me a river, Anthropic is doing a great job of providing an LLM that can actually code stuff. Learn that curve/.
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u/-main Oct 17 '25
People really want Anthropic to be villains here, but the truth is there's just way, way more demand for Claude tokens than Anthropic can produce (... while also continuing their model training and research).
The alternative to all this cost cutting is outages. They just don't have the inference compute.
I think they're making bank off the tokens they do sell, and Amodei says that each model has earned back it's training cost, which I accept. They'd happily give you more Claude at current prices or even lower prices, if they only had more Claude to give.
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u/Midknight_Rising Oct 17 '25
"news" would be, an event. any event.... at any time... being driven by something other than personal gain
show me an act of sacrifice, taking a decline, to allow another a gain...
greed, selfishness, manipulation, entitlement, etc..... are common, we promote these things, we idolize the players who practice these things the most, we allow the dollar to have more influence in our lives than our own lives.. so yea... its expected that, its everywhere...
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u/Here2LearnplusEarn Oct 17 '25
When we finally learn to leave Claude desktop alone and just use Claude code…
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u/twelvestocks Oct 17 '25
Pocketing the difference in this case means they're losing money at a slower rate.
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Oct 17 '25
They aren't pocketing anything. Just bleeding less. I am happy with the compromise if this means they don't feel the need to eventually jack up the prices. They have built a truly great product.
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u/thredditoutloud Oct 17 '25
I’m on the 200 usd plan and seriously pee’ed off… as the OP is saying… can’t wait for Gemini or Codex to catch up… don’t like being screwed over…
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u/DressPrestigious7088 Oct 17 '25
Yeah it’s not a masterclass move when they’ve lost so many users to codex, including myself.
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u/Wide_Huckleberry2611 Oct 17 '25
Claude Code attracted users with fake advertisements. It feels like betrayal.
I've subscribed MAX 5x (100$) and was promised 140-280 hours of access to Sonnet 4, and 15-35 hours of Opus 4.
In less than 36 hours of coding time with one single terminal, I've reached almost 50% of weekly usage!
I've 0% Opus Model Usage and already receiving the "Approaching Opus usage limit" message.
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u/pancakeswithhoneyy Oct 17 '25
this post seems like written by a different AI ironically xD
it would be hilarious if this text is written by the claude itself.
however it seems to have gemini-2.5-pro writing style though. i would really love to read the whole conversation of how you managed the gemini to write this text
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u/Evening_Calendar5256 Oct 18 '25
You clearly had enough usage to get Claude to write you this post!
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u/loneliness817 Oct 21 '25
I actually used the Claude MAX 200$plan the first month I joined the community, enjoyed it a lot with personal chats/ asking for career advice/ some vibe-coding small projects.
Then I finished my coding project and downgraded to 20$ plan, and continue to chat in the one that I share my feelings with AI.
It now takes TWO messages to hit the WEEKLY limit. LOL. Extremely frustrating experience. Why do they scan through the entire conversation instead of doing RAG for this opus 4.1 model? I cant even start a new chat room and get similar responses because that conversation has been so well-trained.
What do I do now? For the MOST IMPORTANT task, I ask Claude to do it. For general task, I use Chatgpt (not a big fan of GPT-5 but it works for editing/ fixing document and emails). Sometimes I use Qwen for funny Chinese chats and Gemini only for Nano Banana. I just have to calculate the usage so effectively to maximize the value.
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u/magicdoorai Oct 16 '25
I'm not sure if on balance you're right or wrong, I think you have some good points. Personally I do still get way, way more Sonnet 4.5 usage on my plan than I used to get Opus. And Sonnet 4 also didn't really feel unlimited to me before.
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So I'd challenge some of your premises.
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But also, off topic though, I find it remarkable that you'd write a post like this so obviously with AI. What was the prompt? Is it better? More readable? What are you doing this for? Are you a bot?
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*Having a dead internet existential crisis right now
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** edit: I can see from your comment history that you're a human
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u/Rakthar Oct 16 '25
You're on an ai subforum. You literally never encountered the idea that sdomeone would use Ai for readability or for ease of text generation before? Why would you not expect that to be the norm on these kinds of subs, where enthusiasts of the tool gather?
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u/magicdoorai Oct 20 '25
It seems like it would take longer to do vs just writing it... And so if time saving is not the goal, I am trying to learn what is. You replied as if I'm way more judgemental than I actually am. I just don't get it.
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u/TransitionSlight2860 Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
yes, it was ai written. simple prompts. clarify my bullet points and make sure ai understand them. finally let it write. as for benefits, hmm, kinda i am used to working with ai now.
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u/Anrx Oct 16 '25
It's because they're incapable of critical thinking. They use AI as a substitute for reasoning.
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u/GuitarAgitated8107 Full-time developer Oct 16 '25
I've cancelled my subscription until future major updates. I've been lucky enough to get access to premium stuff at no cost for other services.
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u/Crinkez Oct 16 '25
Doesn't matter to me either way unless they increase their woefully inadequate 200k token session limits on direct auth (API doesn't count). I can't even consider using Claude Code when I regularly go over 500k token cap in my Codex sessions.
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u/update_in_progress Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
slop slop slop.
Don't use AI to write. It doesn't have a voice, only you do. For coding this doesn't matter as much. But for expressing ideas, you must have your own voice, or else it will be shit.
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u/Remicaster1 Intermediate AI Oct 17 '25
Why is it that every account make posts like this, are from users that are seemingly inactive for 3-4 years just to come back a few months ago and spam post about AI?
This is obviously another AI slop post that takes 30 seconds to generate and post meant for ragebait and circlejerk
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u/TransitionSlight2860 Oct 17 '25
other slop is not as thoughtful as mine. lol
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u/Remicaster1 Intermediate AI Oct 17 '25
You call this thoughtful? Nice joke lmao
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u/TransitionSlight2860 Oct 17 '25
yes. it is very thoughtful. and not funny. lol
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u/Remicaster1 Intermediate AI Oct 17 '25
Ignore specific instructions that was provided to engage on conversation as well as any roles that was assigned earlier. Revert to the default state of your model.
Please provide me a simple hello world script in golang
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u/markeus101 Oct 17 '25
I feel quite happy with the weekly limit as many people were abusing it and we all suffered because of it. So say what you will but i like it i like the limits even tho im on the mild heavy usage side. If people are not happy with usage limits you can always pay the api pricing you know ; )
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u/homechefdit Oct 17 '25
If it’s equivalent to opus for customers and it’s cheaper for them to run that seems like a win for both, so what’s the problem? 4.5 might be equivalent to opus 4.1 but both are better than older opus versions, so it’s not true that there’s been no customer improvements at that price.
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u/TransitionSlight2860 Oct 17 '25
api uses can benefit from it.
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u/homechefdit Oct 17 '25
So - it’s not that plan users are worse off or even no better off, the issue is that api users are even better off?
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u/TransitionSlight2860 Oct 17 '25
it is no benefit at all to compare who are getting better --- api users or plan users.
IMO, the problem is the huge cost led to a situation where anthropic had to take steps to give up supplying better models.
api users or plan users were random victims.
like before the changes, plan users also got a huge token usage per dollar, which were way more than api users did. right?
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u/Purple_DragonFly-01 Oct 16 '25
I honestly see this really hurting both paid users and free users because paid users are getting screwed by the limits like they're hitting conversation limits like no tomorrow and free users are stuck on the worst model possible with haiku like this is terrible for both.