Anthropic has notified Claude Code users that additional fees will be required if they use third-party tools such as OpenClaw.



Claude Code is an AI coding assistant offered by Anthropic to its paid subscribers. It has come to light that Anthropic has notified users that additional fees will be required if they use Claude Code in conjunction with third-party tools such as OpenClaw.

Anthropic says Claude Code subscribers will need to pay extra for OpenClaw usage | TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/04/anthropic-says-claude-code-subscribers-will-need-to-pay-extra-for-openclaw-support/

On the social forum Hacker News, a Claude user shared the contents of an email they received from Anthropic. The email stated, 'Starting April 4th at 12 PM (Pacific Standard Time) / 8 PM (British Summer Time), third-party harnesses, including OpenClaw, will no longer be subject to Claude subscription usage limits. You can continue to use them with your Claude account, but you will need to subscribe to a pay-as-you-go option which will incur additional charges separate from your subscription.' This indicates that using Claude Code in conjunction with third-party tools such as OpenClaw will incur additional charges separate from your subscription.

Furthermore, the email states, 'Your subscription covers all Claude products, including Claude Code and Claude Cowork. To continue using third-party harnesses with your Claude account, please enable additional usage for your account. This policy will be implemented starting April 4th with OpenClaw, but will apply to all third-party harnesses and will be gradually rolled out to more harnesses in the future.' This indicates that you cannot use Claude Code in conjunction with third-party tools such as OpenClaw unless you enable the option.

Anthropic also explained that they are offering additional usage credits, stating, 'To ensure a smooth transition, we will provide a one-time bonus credit equal to the monthly fee. Please use the credit by April 17th. Additionally, you can receive up to a 30% discount if you purchase an additional usage pack in advance.'

In addition, Boris Czerny, head of Claude Code at Anthropic, also announced on X that Claude subscriptions would no longer cover the use of third-party tools such as OpenClaw. Czerny explained the decision to charge an additional fee by saying, 'The existing subscriptions were not designed to accommodate the usage patterns of these third-party tools.'




Anthropic's announcement that it would charge an additional fee for using Claude Code in conjunction with third-party tools came after Peter Steinberger, the developer of OpenClaw, announced that he was joining OpenAI, an Anthropic rival.

Steinberger explained that he and OpenClaw board member Dave Morin 'tried to persuade Anthropic,' but could only manage to postpone the price increase by a week. OpenClaw will continue as an open-source project with support from OpenAI.




In response, Cherny explained, 'We are big fans of open source. In fact, we just submitted several pull requests to improve OpenClaw's prompt cache efficiency. This decision is due to engineering constraints. Our system is highly optimized for certain types of workloads, and we continue to optimize it to serve as many people as possible with the most intelligent model.'




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