It’s about to get more expensive for Claude Code subscribers who rely on Anthropic’s coding assistant with OpenClaw and other third-party tools.
According to a customer email shared on Hacker News, Anthropic said that starting at noon Pacific on April 4, users will no longer be able to use subscription limits for third-party harnesses like OpenClaw. Instead, they will need to pay through a pay-as-you-go model, billed separately from their existing subscription.
The company added that while the change begins with OpenClaw, it will soon apply to all third-party harnesses. More tools are expected to fall under this policy in the coming weeks.
Boris Cherny, who leads Claude Code, said the decision was partially based on X and other users of similar tools. He said that current subscription models have not been built with their use cases in mind. He said.
“The company intends to take a measured approach to growing and also set up its services for long-term sustainability.”
The timing has raised questions. Peter Steinberger, creator of OpenClaw, recently joined OpenAI, a key rival of Anthropic. He said OpenClaw will continue as an open-source project with support from OpenAI. Steinberger also claimed he and board member Dave Morin tried to convince Anthropic to reconsider but only managed to delay the pricing change by a week.
He criticized the move, suggesting Anthropic first adopted popular features and then restricted open-source access.
Cherny pushed back on that claim. He said the team supports open source and is still contributing to OpenClaw improvements. He described the change as a result of engineering limits, not strategy. He added that users who were blindsided by the move could also obtain full refunds.
Meanwhile, OpenAI is also making its own adjustments, allegedly slashing products to direct more efforts toward developers and enterprise users—segments where tools like Claude Code are gaining traction.
