alt Hacker News> It is well understood to be 'a loss leader'
You have zero proof for this claim. It's like people read somewhere that stuff and keep spitting it out again and again without understanding..
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theshrike79 • yesterday at 8:54 PM
It's not a loss leader - as in they're not making a loss on the subscription.
Because they control the harness(es) and the backend, they can optimise caching and thus the costs to them.
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If it wasn't the case, the Claude API pricing would be the same, $200 for unlimited use. But it's metered.
We don't know if Claude Code bleeds money for every user that touches it. Probably not. But the different pricing is a strong enough clue that it's an appeal product with subsidized tokens consumption.