You're welcome to use the API, it asks you to do that when you run out of quota on your Pro plan. The next thing you find out is how expensive using the API is. More honest, perhaps, but you definitely will be paying for that.

The fixed fee plan is because the agent and the tools have internal choices/planning about cost. If you simply pay for API the only feedback to them that they are being too costly is for you to stop.

If you look at tool calls like MCP and what not you can see it gets ridiculous. Even though it's small for example calling pal MCP from the prompt is still burning tokens afaik. This is "nobody's" fault in this case really but you can see how the incentives are and we all need to think how to make this entire space more usable.

Consumers like predictable billing more than they care about getting the most bang for their buck and beancounters like sticky recurring revenue streams more than they care about maximizing the profit margins for every user.

Not a doctor or anything, but API usage seems to support the more on-demand / spiky workflows available at a much larger scale, whereas a single seat, authenticated to Claude Code has controlled / set capacity and is generally more predictable and as a result easier to price?

API request method might have no cap, but they do cap Claude Code even on Max licenses, so easier to throttle as well if needed to control costs. Seems straightforward to me at any rate. Kinda like reserved instance vs. spot pricing models?

this Nov video talks thru via Cursor renegotiation, how in important ways a token != a token (not even within types like reasoning, output, or a model) because attention can lead to expensive logic loops. https://www.oreilly.com/videos/live-with-tim/0642572259488/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AXMO2dW0LI&list=PL055Epbe6d...