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0 pointsadamoshadjivas8mo ago0 comments

Agreed on everything. Just to add, not only anthropic is offering CC at like a 500% loss, they restricted sonnet/opus 4 access to windsurf, and jacked up their enterprise deal to Cursor. The increase in price was so big that it forced cursor to make that disastrous downgrade to their plans.

I think only way Cursor and other UX wrappers still win is if on device models or at least open source models catch up in the next 2 years. Then i can see a big push for UX if models are truly a commodity. But as long as claude is much better then yes they hold all the cards. (And don't have a bigger company to have a civil war with like openai)

0 comments

adidoit8mo ago

Not sure this is true. Inference margins are substantial and if you look at your claude code usage it's very clever at caching

  Input │      Output │  Cache Create │     Cache Read
 916,134 │  11,106,507 │   199,684,538 │  2,767,614,506

as an example here's my usage. Massive daily usage for the past two months.

teruakohatu8mo ago

> CC at like a 500% loss

Do you have a citation for this?

It might be at a loss, but I don’t think it is that extravagant.

csomar8mo ago

The way I am doing the math with my Max subscription and assuming DeepSeek API prices, it is still x5 times cheaper. So either DeepSeek is losing money (unlikely) or Anthropic is losing lots of money (more likely). Grok kinda confirms my suspicions. Assuming DeepSeek prices, I've probably spent north of $100 of Grok compute. I didn't pay Grok or Twitter a single cent. $100 is a lot of loss for a single user.

manojlds8mo ago

Comparison should be with Claude API pricing. It doesn't matter what other models cost.

1 more reply

tonyhart78mo ago

what?? sonnet/opus is way better than deepseek, how can you compare that to deepseek

also you probably talking about distilled deepseek model

1 more reply

resonious8mo ago

I'm also curious about this. Claude Code feels very expensive to me, but at the same time I don't have much perspective (nothing to compare it to, really, other than Codex or other agent editors I guess. And CC is way better so likely worth the extra money anyway)

harikb8mo ago

I think GP is talking about Claude Code Max 100 & 200 plans. They are very reasonable compared to anything else that has per-use token usage.

I am on Max and I can work 5 hrs+ a day easily. It does fall back to Sonnet pretty fast, but I don't seem to notice any big differece.

2 more replies

rolisz8mo ago

Before they announced the Max plans, I could easily hit 10-15$ of API usage per day (without even being a heavy user).

Since they announced that you can use the Pro subscription with Claude Code, I've been using it much more and I've never ever been rate limited.

3uler8mo ago

This is what I don’t get about the cost being reported by Claude code. At work I use it against our AWS Bedrock instance, and most sessions will say 15/20 dollars and I’ll have multiple agents running. So I can easily spend 60 bucks a day in reported cost. Our AWS Bedrock bill is only a small fraction of that? Why would you over charge on direct usage of your API?

1 more reply

asaddhamani8mo ago

API prices are way higher than actual inference cost.

artursapek8mo ago

You can spend $200 worth of tokens in a single day using the Max $200/mo fixed cost plan.

virgildotcodes8mo ago

Seems like the survival strategy for cursor would be to develop their own frontier coding model. Maybe they can leverage the data from their still somewhat significant lead in the space to make a solid effort.

libraryofbabel8mo ago

I don’t think that’s a viable strategy. It is very very hard and not many people can do it. Just look at how much Meta is paying to poach the few people in the world capable of training a next gen frontier model.

lukan8mo ago

Why are there actually only a few people in the world able to do this?

The basic concept is out there.

Lots of smart people studying hard to catch up to also be poached. No shortage of those I assume.

Good trainingsdata still seems the most important to me.

(and lots of hardware)

Or does the specific training still involves lots of smart decisions all the time?

And those small or big decisions make all the difference?

8 more replies

bluelightning2k8mo ago

Windsurf has developed their own fron tier model. It's pretty good. It's not sota but it's very well aligned with their tool call formatting etc.

josephcooney8mo ago

interestingly windsurf have done this (I'm not sure how frontier this model is...but it's their own model) https://windsurf.com/blog/windsurf-wave-9-swe-1 but AFAIK cursor have not.

raincole8mo ago

> to develop their own frontier coding model

Uh, the irony is that this is exactly what Windsurf tried.

bluelightning2k8mo ago

As an actual user of Windsurf model, I don't think "tried" is fair. I sometimes use it. It's not as smart as Gemini but it iterates quicker and is very well aligned with their tool calls

stogot8mo ago

Why did they fail?

1 more reply

7thpower8mo ago

Where is a citation on Anthropic increasing cost to cursor? I had not seen that news, but it would make sense.

threatripper8mo ago

But Cursor is also offering OpenAI and Google models.

lvl1558mo ago

Which is interesting because Sonnet is cheap and Opus is not on par with o3 for tasks where you want to deploy it.

Aeolun8mo ago

It probably doesn’t cost them all that much? Maybe they were offering the API at a 500% markup, and code is just breaking even.

manojlds8mo ago

If open models become big, open coding agents would be bigger at that point. Even more motivation as well.

bernawil8mo ago

you mean the plans are subsidized? pay-per-use doesn't look subsidized to me, I can spend 5$ a day on a medium sized codebase easily.

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0 comments

adidoit8mo ago

Not sure this is true. Inference margins are substantial and if you look at your claude code usage it's very clever at caching

  Input │      Output │  Cache Create │     Cache Read
 916,134 │  11,106,507 │   199,684,538 │  2,767,614,506

as an example here's my usage. Massive daily usage for the past two months.

teruakohatu8mo ago

> CC at like a 500% loss

Do you have a citation for this?

It might be at a loss, but I don’t think it is that extravagant.

csomar8mo ago

manojlds8mo ago

Comparison should be with Claude API pricing. It doesn't matter what other models cost.

1 more reply

tonyhart78mo ago

what?? sonnet/opus is way better than deepseek, how can you compare that to deepseek

also you probably talking about distilled deepseek model

1 more reply

resonious8mo ago

harikb8mo ago

I think GP is talking about Claude Code Max 100 & 200 plans. They are very reasonable compared to anything else that has per-use token usage.

I am on Max and I can work 5 hrs+ a day easily. It does fall back to Sonnet pretty fast, but I don't seem to notice any big differece.

2 more replies

rolisz8mo ago

Before they announced the Max plans, I could easily hit 10-15$ of API usage per day (without even being a heavy user).

Since they announced that you can use the Pro subscription with Claude Code, I've been using it much more and I've never ever been rate limited.

3uler8mo ago

1 more reply

asaddhamani8mo ago

API prices are way higher than actual inference cost.

artursapek8mo ago

You can spend $200 worth of tokens in a single day using the Max $200/mo fixed cost plan.

virgildotcodes8mo ago

libraryofbabel8mo ago

lukan8mo ago

Why are there actually only a few people in the world able to do this?

The basic concept is out there.

Lots of smart people studying hard to catch up to also be poached. No shortage of those I assume.

Good trainingsdata still seems the most important to me.

(and lots of hardware)

Or does the specific training still involves lots of smart decisions all the time?

And those small or big decisions make all the difference?

8 more replies

bluelightning2k8mo ago

Windsurf has developed their own fron tier model. It's pretty good. It's not sota but it's very well aligned with their tool call formatting etc.

josephcooney8mo ago

interestingly windsurf have done this (I'm not sure how frontier this model is...but it's their own model) https://windsurf.com/blog/windsurf-wave-9-swe-1 but AFAIK cursor have not.

raincole8mo ago

> to develop their own frontier coding model

Uh, the irony is that this is exactly what Windsurf tried.

bluelightning2k8mo ago

As an actual user of Windsurf model, I don't think "tried" is fair. I sometimes use it. It's not as smart as Gemini but it iterates quicker and is very well aligned with their tool calls

stogot8mo ago

Why did they fail?

1 more reply

7thpower8mo ago

Where is a citation on Anthropic increasing cost to cursor? I had not seen that news, but it would make sense.

threatripper8mo ago

But Cursor is also offering OpenAI and Google models.

lvl1558mo ago

Which is interesting because Sonnet is cheap and Opus is not on par with o3 for tasks where you want to deploy it.

Aeolun8mo ago

It probably doesn’t cost them all that much? Maybe they were offering the API at a 500% markup, and code is just breaking even.

manojlds8mo ago

If open models become big, open coding agents would be bigger at that point. Even more motivation as well.

bernawil8mo ago

you mean the plans are subsidized? pay-per-use doesn't look subsidized to me, I can spend 5$ a day on a medium sized codebase easily.

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