Valid question. It's because they have a separate product intended for use with general tools: Their API.

Their subscription plans aren't actually "Claude Code Plans". They're subscription plans for their tool suite, which includes claude code. It's offered at a discount because they know the usage of this customer base.

OpenCode used a private API to imitate Claude Code and connect as if it was an Anthropic product, bypassing the need to pay for the API that was for this purpose.

Anthropic has been consistent on this from the start. The subscription plans were never for general use with other tools. They looked the other way for a while but OpenCode was openly flaunting it, so they started doing detection and blocking.

OpenCode and maintainers have gone on the offense on Twitter with some rather juvenile behavior and now they're trying to cheekily allow a plugin system so they can claim they're not supporting it while very obviously putting work into supporting it.

Most of the anger in this thread comes from people who want their monthly subscription to be usable as a cheaper version of the public API, even though it was never sold as that.

Same reason movie theaters care about you not bringing your own snacks

You pay for snacks in the cinema and they lose money if you buy elsewhere. Where does Anthropic lose money when I use OpenCode?

This has been explained many times in this thread. Your subscription to Claude models for use in Claude Code is subsidized. That is, it is only meant to be used with that harness.

When you use that API key with OpenCode, you're circumventing that.

That doesn't make sense.

The PS5 is subsidized because the make money with the games.

Printers are subsidized because the make money with the ink.

The API use is subsidized because they make money with Claude Code? I would understand if Claude Code could only be used with Anthropics API but not the other way around. 1 million tokens is 1 million tokens unless Claude Code is burning tokens and others are more efficient in token use.

They want you to become dependent on Claude Code, so that later they can milk you.

I'd say that they want Claude Code to become the standard, so that they can milk corporations on enterprise plans. We individual subscribers are nothing, but we'll go to work and be vocal about specifically having Claude.

The AI companies can spare their whining about contempt of business model. They're selling a service.

Because models are quickly moving toward commoditization, whether the big three like it or not. The differentiator now is tooling around those models. By eliminating OpenCode's auth stuff, they prevent leaking customers onto another platform that allows model choice (they will likely lose paying customers to one of the major inference catalogs like OpenRouter once they move from Claude Code to OpenCode).

Why does Netflix care how the movies they stream to you are consumed? Shouldn't your $8/mo allow you to stream any movie to OpenFlix and consume however you like?

You are also not allowed to show these Netflix movies on a big screen in front of your house and charge people. The 8 dollar are for a specific use case, just like the tokens in the subscription.

Unironically, you should. In a more just world, laws would mandate service providers not obstruct third party clients.

The pricing would also be different.

Yes, content providers would have to compete with each other on price and library, and client providers could compete on UX and privacy.

Because they're selling discounted tokens to use with their tooling.

because he is giving them at 90% discount in their subscription. they are more than happy if you use the tokens at api pricing, but when subsidized they want you to use their claude code surface.