Anthropic provides subsidized access to Claude models through Claude Code. It is well understood to be 'a loss leader' so that they can incentivize people to use Claude Code.
OpenCode lets people take the Claude-Code-only-API-Key, and lets them use it in a different harness. Anthropic's preferred way for such interaction is getting a different, Claude API key (and not Claude Code SDK API key).
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A rough analogy might be something like getting subsidized drinks from a cafe, provided you sit there a eat food. What if someone says, go to the cafe and get free drink and come sit over at our cafe and order food. It is a loose analogy, but you get the idea.
If it wasn't the case, the Claude API pricing would be the same, $200 for unlimited use. But it's metered.
We don't know if Claude Code bleeds money for every user that touches it. Probably not. But the different pricing is a strong enough clue that it's an appeal product with subsidized tokens consumption.
API is intended for a different audience - companies with a big pocket who aren't as price sensitive as private users. So the pricing will be different than for a private subscription.
There is huge value in getting people to subscribe to recurring payments. Giving people a discount to do so makes sense and does not mean that the subscription service loses money.
OpenCode lets people take the Claude-Code-only-API-Key, and lets them use it in a different harness. Anthropic's preferred way for such interaction is getting a different, Claude API key (and not Claude Code SDK API key).
---
A rough analogy might be something like getting subsidized drinks from a cafe, provided you sit there a eat food. What if someone says, go to the cafe and get free drink and come sit over at our cafe and order food. It is a loose analogy, but you get the idea.