AI company Anthropic recently notified customers that starting from noon Pacific Time on April 4, Claude Code subscribers will no longer be able to use their subscription allowances to access OpenClaw and other third-party tools. Instead, users need to pay extra through a "pay-per-use" option, which will be billed separately from their subscription plans. This change means that the cost of using Anthropic's coding assistant will rise.
The background of this policy adjustment is closely tied to Anthropic's resource management strategy. Claude Code lead Boris Cherny explained on the X platform that the company's subscription model was not designed for the usage patterns of third-party tools, and this move aims to "consciously manage growth to serve customers sustainably in the long term." Notably, OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger joined Anthropic's competitor OpenAI in February this year, and OpenClaw will continue to be supported as an open-source project by OpenAI. Steinberger revealed that he and his team attempted to communicate with Anthropic, only succeeding in delaying the policy implementation by one week.
