Anthropic is implementing a significant change for its Claude Code subscribers, making it more expensive to utilize its AI coding assistant with third-party tools like OpenClaw. Effective April 4, subscribers will no longer be able to use their existing Claude subscription limits for these external integrations. Instead, they will be required to opt for a separate pay-as-you-go billing option for such usage. While OpenClaw is the initial focus, Anthropic has stated that this new policy will be extended to all third-party harnesses in the near future.

Boris Cherny, Anthropic's head of Claude Code, explained the rationale behind this decision on X, citing that the company's "subscriptions weren’t built for the usage patterns of these third-party tools." He emphasized that this move is an attempt by Anthropic to "be intentional in managing our growth to continue to serve our customers sustainably long-term."

This announcement comes amidst some notable developments in the AI industry. Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw, recently announced his departure to join Anthropic's competitor, OpenAI. Despite Steinberger's move, OpenClaw is set to continue as an open-source project with support from OpenAI. Steinberger, along with OpenClaw board member Dave Morin, reportedly attempted to negotiate with Anthropic to delay the pricing increase, succeeding only in pushing it back by a week. Steinberger expressed frustration, noting the timing coincided with Anthropic copying popular features into its own "closed harness" before restricting open-source tools.

Conversely, Cherny defended Anthropic's position, asserting that Claude Code team members are "big fans of open source" and even mentioned contributing pull requests to improve prompt cache efficiency specifically for OpenClaw. He characterized the policy change as being driven by "engineering constraints" rather than anti-open-source sentiment. Anthropic is also offering full refunds to subscribers, acknowledging that some may not have realized the lack of official support for third-party tools, and aims to make this clear and explicit.

In a related context, OpenAI recently closed down its Sora app and video generation models. This decision was reportedly made to free up computing resources and align with a broader strategic shift towards attracting software engineers and enterprises, segments increasingly relying on powerful AI products like Claude Code.