Anthropic tells subscribers they must now pay separately to use Claude through third-party AI agents like OpenClaw

Anthropic notified subscribers over the weekend that heavy use of its Claude models to power third-party AI agents like OpenClaw will no longer be covered under the standard $20 monthly subscription, requiring users to pay via the API or a separate pay-as-you-go option. The move comes as Anthropic simultaneously rolled out new native features that replicate some of what made OpenClaw popular, prompting OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger, who was recently hired by OpenAI, to accuse Anthropic of copying popular features into its own platform before locking out the open source tools that inspired them. Anthropic wrote in its email to customers that “these tools put an outsized strain on our systems,” noting that agent tools like OpenClaw require far more compute than standard human chatting and burn through tokens significantly faster.