Item — HN Reader

The subscription based plans are heavily subsidized, but the direct API inference pricing (which larger companies need to pay) is profitable.

Using a full Claude Max 20x plan to 100% of weekly usage would easily cost you 2k through the API. While the Claude Max 20x plan is 200 a month.

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> Using a full Claude Max 20x plan to 100% of weekly usage

I doubt many of their customers are on the 20X plan. Of those, I doubt many of them are using 100% of their weekly usage regularly.

Comparing the 100% maximum usage scenario of their most discounted plan against the API cost has been a trap in this conversation since it came out. I bet if we saw their financials it would be a tiny sliver in a pie chart somewhere.

True, it'd be a whole other situation if the tokens limits were cumulative. I guess it would all come down to whether their Claude Code subscription plans are turning in a profit or not.

At least for the segment of 20$ subscribers who actually use Claude Code it seems that it wasn't being profitable, as a couple months back they were testing out a pricing model where Claude Code would've not been included in the 20$ plan.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/anthropic-tested-removing...

$2k through the API

Which costs them $200 to serve.

Yes, it is a 10x markup on the API prices. Depending on whether you factor in cooling costs, data center staff, etc. Or GPU costs and the electricity the GPUs are using only.

Either way, inference is very much where the money is made, training is where the money is lost.