> But wouldn't a less efficient tool simply consume your 5-hour/weekly quota faster?
Maybe.
First, Anthropic is also trying to manage user satisfaction as well as costs. If OpenCode or whatever burns through your limits faster, are you likely to place the blame on OpenCode?
Maybe a good analogy was when DoorDash/GrubHub/Uber Eats/etc signed up restaurants to their system without their permission. When things didn't go well, the customers complained about the restaurants, even though it wasn't their fault, because they chose not to support delivery at scale.
Second, flat-rate pricing, unlike API pricing, is the same for cached vs uncached iirc, so even if total token limits are the same, less caching means higher costs.
Again, subscription gives you a fixed allotment of tokens, doesn't matter if you consume them with claude code or with a 3rd-party tool, both get the same amount of tokens and thus cost Anthropic the same.
In fact it might even be better for Anthropic if people use 3rd-party tools that cache suboptimally because the cache hits don't consume the fixed allotment so claude code users get more of a free ride and thus cost Anthropic more money.
Maybe.
First, Anthropic is also trying to manage user satisfaction as well as costs. If OpenCode or whatever burns through your limits faster, are you likely to place the blame on OpenCode?
Maybe a good analogy was when DoorDash/GrubHub/Uber Eats/etc signed up restaurants to their system without their permission. When things didn't go well, the customers complained about the restaurants, even though it wasn't their fault, because they chose not to support delivery at scale.
Second, flat-rate pricing, unlike API pricing, is the same for cached vs uncached iirc, so even if total token limits are the same, less caching means higher costs.