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Posted by jnord 18 hours ago

No, it doesn't cost Anthropic $5k per Claude Code user(martinalderson.com)
375 points | 265 commentspage 5
amelius 8 hours ago|
Tl;dr, their guesstimate:

> Anthropic is looking at approximately $500 in real compute cost for the heaviest users.

beepbooptheory 12 hours ago||
Ok but so it does cost Cursor $5k per power-Cursor user?? Still seems pretty rough..
scriptsmith 12 hours ago||
Yes, you could turn it around to say that using Anthropic models in Cursor, Copilot, Junie, etc. is 'subsidising' Claude Code users.
arthurcolle 12 hours ago|||
$5 = $5

but $5 that I amortize over 7 years might end up being $1.7 maybe if I don't rapidly combust (supply chain risk)

dimava 9 hours ago|||
Cursor may be losing money only on $200 sub people who do over $200 of usage (it grants $400)

Everyone else pays them at API prices

oefrha 12 hours ago|||
No, to use $5k in Cursor you have to pay $5k.
beepbooptheory 3 hours ago||
Oh. Nice! That works out.
unlimit 12 hours ago||
I wonder how they are defining a power user. How many tokens, what could be the size the code base?
dietr1ch 12 hours ago||
The $5k power user is the one that consistently uses all input and output tokens available under the Max subscription
fnord77 12 hours ago||
> I'm fairly confident the Forbes sources are confusing retail API prices with actual compute costs

Aren't they losing money on the retail API pricing, too?

> ... comparisons to artificially low priced Chinese providers...

Yeah, no this article does not pass the sniff test.

versteegen 11 hours ago|
> Aren't they losing money on the retail API pricing, too?

No, they aren't, and probably neither is anyone else offering API pricing. And Anthropic's API margins may be higher than anyone else.

For example, DeepSeek released numbers showing that R1 was served at approximately "a cost profit margin of 545%" (meaning 82% of revenue is profit), see my comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46663852

bandrami 10 hours ago||
Weird that they're all looking for outside money then
vidarh 9 hours ago|||
They're all looking for outside money because they're all looking for outside money, and so need to keep up with their competitors investments in training. It's a game of chicken. Once their ability to raise more abates, they'll slow down new training runs, and fund that out of inference margins instead, but the first one to be forced to do so will risk losing market share.
aurareturn 9 hours ago|||
Inference is profitable. No one is selling at a loss. It’s training to keep up with competitors that is causing losses.
bandrami 8 hours ago||
> Inference is profitable

Eh. We don't really know that, and the people saying that have an interest in the rest of the world believing it's true.

aurareturn 6 hours ago||
How are we so sure that deep inside the moon isn't made out of cheese?
bandrami 4 hours ago||
I remember Enron. Hell, I remember the S&Ls. I've seen this movie too many times to not know how it ends.
dr_dshiv 7 hours ago|
I easily go through two pro max $200/m accounts and yesterday got a third pro account when I ran out.

It’s worth it, but I know they aren’t making money on me. But, of course I’m marketing them constantly so…