Anthropic Bills OpenClaw, Tensions with OpenAI

Anthropic recently informed its customers that using the coding assistant Claude Code with OpenClaw and other third-party tools will become more expensive. Starting at noon Pacific Time on April 4, subscribers will no longer be able to use their Claude subscription limits for these tools. Instead, they will have to pay an additional fee through a pay-as-you-go option, separate from their regular subscription.

This new policy, communicated via email and shared on Hacker News, marks the beginning of a broader approach by Anthropic. The company clarified that while it is starting with OpenClaw, this policy will apply to all third-party tools and will be extended to others soon. Boris Cherny, head of Claude Code at Anthropic, explained on X that current subscriptions were not designed for the usage models of these third-party tools. He emphasized the importance for Anthropic to manage its growth sustainably in order to continue serving its customers well.

This announcement comes amid changes for OpenClaw. Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw, recently announced that he is joining OpenAI. OpenClaw will continue as an open-source project with the support of OpenAI. Steinberger expressed his frustration, stating that he and Dave Morin, a board member of OpenClaw, tried to convince Anthropic to delay the price increase but only managed to secure a one-week extension.

Steinberger also criticized Anthropic for allegedly copying some popular features from OpenClaw into their own closed tool while locking access to the open source. In response, Cherny assured that the Claude Code team supports open source, mentioning their own contributions to improve the efficiency of OpenClaw's prompt cache.

Cherny added that this decision was primarily driven by technical constraints and reminded that Anthropic offers full refunds for subscribers. He emphasized that this clarification was necessary to make explicit what the company truly supports.

Additionally, OpenAI recently shut down its Sora application and video generation models, likely to free up computing resources and focus on attracting software engineers and businesses, an area where Claude Code plays a key role.