alt Hacker NewsI Cancelled Claude: Token Issues, Declining Quality, and Poor Support
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I'm torn because I use it in my spare time, so I've missed some of these issues, I don't use it 9 to 5, but I've built some amazing things, when 1 Million tokens dropped, that was peak Claude Code for me, it was also when I suspect their issues started. I've built up some things I've been drafting in my head for ages but never had time for, and I can review the code and refine it until it looks good.
I'm debating trying out Codex, from some people I hear its "uncapped" from others I hear they reached limits in short spans of time.
There's also the really obnoxious "trust me bro" documentation update from OpenClaw where they claim Anthropic is allowing OpenClaw usage again, but no official statement?
Dear Anthropic:
I would love to build a custom harness that just uses my Claude Code subscription, I promise I wont leave it running 24/7, 365, can you please tell me how I can do this? I don't want to see some obscure tweet, make official blog posts or documentation pages to reflect policies.
Can I get whitelisted for "sane use" of my Claude Code subscription? I would love this. I am not dropping $2400 in credits for something I do for fun in my free time.
I use Claude Code with GLM, Kimi and MiniMax models. :)
I was worried about Anthropic models quality varying and about Anthropic jacking up prices.
I don't think Claude Code is the best agent orchestrator and harness in existence but it's most widely supported by plugins and skills.
Switched to local models after quality dropped off a cliff and token consumption seemed to double. Having some success with Qwen+Crush and have been more productive.
I used Opus via Copilot until December and then largely switched over to Claude Code. I'm not sure what the difference is but I haven't seen any of these issues in daily use.
i ran prompts used up a ton of usage, and got no return just showed error.
Asked support hey i got nothing back i tried prompting several times used a ton of usage and it gave no response. I'd just like usage back. What I payed for I never got.
Just bot response we don't do refunds no exceptions. Even in the case they don't serve you what your plan should give you.
If all Claude does is automate mundane code, why not just make a "meta library" of said common mundane code snippets?
I cancelled in the minute my subscription stopped working in Pi. Not going back to the slopfest what Claude Code is.
The usage metering is just so incredibly inconsistent, sometimes 4 parallel Opus sessions for 3 hours straight on max effort only uses up 70% of a session, other times 20 mins / 3 prompts in one session completely maxes it out. (Max x20 plan) Is this just a bug on anthropic side or is the usage metering just completely opaque and arbitrary?
I don't get it. I use Claude Code every day, what I would consider pretty heavy usage...at least as heavy as I can use it while actually paying attention to what it's producing and guiding it effectively into producing good software. I literally never run into usage limits on the $100 plan, even when the bugs related to caching, etc. were happening that led to inflated token usage.
WTF are y'all doing that chews tokens so fast? I mean, sure, I could spin up Gas Town and Beads and produce infinite busy work for the agents, but that won't make useful software, because the models don't want anything. They don't know what to build without pretty constant guidance. Left to their own devices, they do busy work. The folks who "set and forget" on AI development are producing a whole lot of code to do nothing that needed doing. And, a lot of those folks are proud of their useless million lines of code.
I'm not trying to burn as many tokens as a possible, I'm trying to build good software. If you're paying attention to what you're building, there's so many points where a human is in the loop that it's unusual to run up against token limits.
Anyway, I assume that at some point they have to make enough money to pay the bills. Everything has been subsidized by investors for quite some time, and while the cost per token is going down with efficiency gains in the models/harnesses and with newer compute hardware tuned for these workloads, I think we're all still enjoying subsidized compute at the moment. I don't think Anthropic is making much profit on their plans, especially with folks who somehow run right at the edge of their token limit 24/7. And, I would guess OpenAI is running an even lossier balance sheet (they've raised more money and their prices are lower).
I dunno. I hear a lot of complaining about Claude, but it's been pretty much fine for me throughout 4.5, 4.6 and 4.7. It got Good Enough at 4.5, and it's never been less than Good Enough since. And, when I've tried alternatives, they usually proved to be not quite Good Enough for some reason, sometimes non-technical reasons (I won't use OpenAI, anymore, because I don't trust OpenAI, and Gemini is just not as good at coding as Claude).
My main problem with claude code right now is observability. I've been experimenting a lot with vibe coding, but nowadays I can't even tell what it's doing. It's still delivering me value, but the trust on the company is going down and I've already started looking for alternatives.
Yeah, session limits are kinda show stoppers.
Waiting 60s every time I send a msg really kills the ux of claude
AI has a lot of future potential but at every level... it's still not very good. And certainly not good enough to validate the expense, let alone what the actual cost would be were it profitable.
I just cancelled my Max20 plan yesterday.
Same, it's a mess.
Anthropic is astroscaling. We're essentially buying into a loop where speed and iteration take precedence over stability and support. If you view them as an experimental lab undergoing rapid atmospheric friction rather than a company, the "unreliability" is just the cost of being at the frontier. This is not an endorsement for Anthropic, just imagining their craziness on how you "can" grow in a fraction of time.
Codex is becoming such a good product. I have the 100$ pro lite. I have Claude still but 20$. I rarely use it. Let’s see if they give generous limits and more importantly a model that’s better than 5.5. The mythos fear mongering did not give me a good impression that they care about the average developer.
This sounds just like all my neighbors complaining about their internet provider.
Those AI using software developers begin to show signs of addiction:
From "yay, claude is awesome" to "damn, it sucks". This is like with withdrawal symptoms now.
My approach is much easier: I'll stay the oldschool way, avoid AI and come up with other solutions. I am definitely slower, but I reason that the quality FOR other humans will be better.
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I think choosing which companies to support during this period of pre-alignment is one way to vote which direction this all goes. I'm happy to accept a slightly worse coding agent if it means I don't get exterminated someday.
I have token issues three times a day, and I just upgraded to pro... and now this... now I cancel. my work flow was co-pilot to Gemini to Claude Code... and the bottle neck was always CC. Always. I am done. It should be pretty easy to replace CC.
AI used to be, the punched card replicator... its all replaceable.
The midwit curve of LLMs has OpenAI on both ends.
Me too.
I just noticed today that it doesn't warn about approaching limits and just blows straight into billing extra tokens.
I'm pretty sure it used to warn when you got close to your 5hr limit, but no, it happily billed extra usage. Granted only about $10 today, but over the span of like 45 minutes. Not super pleased.
Imagine vibe coding your core consumer application and associated backend…
Oh wait, I don’t have to imagine. That’s what Anthropic does. A nice preview for what is in store for those who chose to turn off their brains and turn on their AI agents.
absolute garbage support was the reason why I canceled. who would have thought that an AI company has only bots as support agents
It also seems to me they route prompts to cheaper dumber models that present themselves as e.g. Opus 4.7. Perhaps that's what is "adaptive reasoning" aka we'll route your request to something like Qwen saying it's Opus. Sometimes I get a good model, so I found I'll ask a difficult question first and if answer is dumb, I terminate the session and start again and only then go with the real prompt. But there is no guarantee model will be downgraded mid session. I wish they just charged real price and stopped these shenanigans. It wastes so much time.
Cool
Welcome to the future. Anthropic is currently speed running it but this is what all LLM tools are going to look like in the next few years, once they turn the enshitification corner.
I've spent thousands of dollars on API tokens in the last few months. Out of my own pocket, as an indie contractor. I used the API specifically instead of Pro/Max/Plus/Silver/Gold/Platinum/Diamond to avoid all of the mess there regarding usage resets and potential hidden routing to worse models. It worked great for months, I got a ton of shit done, shipped a bunch of features. I really began to rely on the tech. I was not happy about the cost, but the value proposition was there.
Then within the last few months everything changed and went to shit. My trust was lost. Behavior became completely inconsistent.
During the height of Claude's mental retardation (now finally acknowledged by the creators) I had an incident where CC ran a query against an unpartitioned/massive BQ table that resulted in $5,000 in extra spend because it scanned a table which should have been daily partitioned 30 times. 27 TB per scan. I recall going over and over the setup and exhaustively refining confidence. After I realized this blunder, I referred to it in the same CC session, "jesus fucking christ, I flagged this issue earlier" -- it responded, "you did. you called out the string types and full table scans and I said "let's do it later." That was wrong. I should have prioritized it when you raised it". Now obviously this is MY fault. I fucked up here, because I am the operator, and the buck stops with me. But this incident really galvinized that the Claude I had come to vibe with so well over the last N months was entirely gone.
We all knew it was making making mistakes, becoming fully retarded. We all felt and flagged this. When Anthropic came out and said, "yeah ... you guys are using it wrong, its a skill issue" I knew this honeymoon was over. Then recently when they finally came out and ack'd more of the issues (while somehow still glossing over how bad they fucked up?) it was the final nail. I'm done spending $ on Anthropic ecosystem. I signed up for OpenAI pro $200/mo and will continue working on my own local inference in the meantime.
Same here. The single prompt burnt all my tokens in 3 minutes for the day. What happened to Claude in the last 2 months? I was happy with what they were providing and was happy to pay whatever for it. Why did they mess with it? Why are they destroying the tool we all loved?
I hate enshittification and I hate seeing this happening to Claude Code right now.
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The great de-skilling programme continues in Anthropic's casino. They completely want you dependent on gambling tokens on their slot machines with extortionate prices, fees and limits.
Anthropic can't even scale their own infrastructure operations, because it does not exist and they do not have the compute; even when they are losing tens of billions and can nerf models when they feel like it.
Once again, local models are the answer and Anthropic continues to get you addicted to their casino instead of running your own cheaper slot machine, which you save your money.
Every time you go to Anthropic's casino, the house always wins.
I would love to just say that if you are using claude code, you should no be on pro. I feel like all the people complaining are complaining that an agent cant handle the work of a developer for $20/m. Get on at least max 5, its a world of a difference.
It's bad, really bad.
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