Comment by gpm

Comment by gpm 21 hours ago

4 replies

The problem the second you stop subsidizing Claude Code and start making money on it the incentive to use it over opencode disappears. If opencode is the better tool than claude code - and that's the reason people are using their claude subscription with it instead of claude code - people will end up switching to it.

Maybe they can hope to murder opencode in the meantime with predatory pricing and build an advantage that they don't currently have. It seems unlikely though - the fact that they're currently behind proves the barrier to building this sort of tool isn't that high, and there's lots of developers who build their own tooling for fun that you can't really starve out of doing that.

I'm not convinced that attempting to murder opencode is a mistake - if you're losing you might as well try desperate tactics. I think the attempt is a pretty clear signal that Antrhopic is losing though.

shepherdjerred 19 hours ago

It’s possible that tokens become cheap enough that they don’t need to raise prices to make a profit. The latest opus is 3x less expensive than the previous.

  • gpm 19 hours ago

    Then the competitors drop prices though. The current justification for claude code is just that it's an order of magnitude (or more) cheaper per token than comparable alternatives. That's a terrible business model to be stuck in.

    • shepherdjerred 19 hours ago

      If everyone is dropping prices in this scenario then I don’t see how the user eventually gets squeezed.

      I mean I guess they could do a bait and switch (drop prices so low that Anthropic goes bankrupt, then raises price) but that’s possible in literally any industry, and sees unlikely given the current number of competitors

      • gpm 19 hours ago

        Terrible for Anthropic I mean, not the user.