Anthropic has quietly changed its Claude Enterprise pricing model from a flat subscription of up to $200 per user per month to a usage-based system that charges customers for compute consumption on top of a $20 per user monthly base fee, a move driven by surging demand for Claude Code and Claude Cowork that has been eroding subscription margins. One software licensing consultant estimates the change could double or triple costs for heavy users, and several IT executives said they are tracking whether their bills will increase significantly when renewals hit. The pricing shift mirrors moves by Salesforce, ServiceNow, Cursor, and Replit, all of which have adopted consumption-based models as the high compute costs of running AI agents make flat subscriptions financially unsustainable at scale.
