The API is far more expensive. For Opus 4 it's almost priced in a way that says "don't use this".

That’s not what the parent commenter asked though, they wanted a price for not being concerned about limits. The API pricing is that.

I doubts thats what they want. They want a static fixed price, $5k a month for example and never have to think about it.

Take the API and assume 24/7 usage (or whatever working hours are). That’s your fixed cost.

It’s more likely that this sum is higher than they want. So really it’s not about predictability.

Even if you used the API 24x7 for a single session (no parallel requests) I doubt you'd be able to hit $5k/mo in usage for Claude 4 Sonnet.

The way these work is they're net profitable given all users, so you have to recategorize users in one of two ways:

- a user subsidizing other users

- a user subsidized by other users

I don't know what OP prefers, but given that people are saying "woof, API pricing too expensive", it sounds like the latter.

The problem, of course, is the provider has to find a market where the one sustains the other. Are there enough users who would pay > $200/mo without getting their money's worth in order to subsidize users paying the same rate, but using more than the average? I think the non-existence of a higher-tier plan says there probably isn't, but I don't want to give too much credence to markets, economics, etc.

I use Claude Code authenticated via the API (Anthropic Console). There's no limits for me. And I also assume API-metered requests are prioritized, so it's faster as well.

The API does have limits but they’re determined by your monthly spend. I did a trial of tier 1 spend and did hit the limits, but on on tier two spending it was much much better.

https://docs.anthropic.com/en/api/rate-limits#requirements-t...