Anthropic Forces Users to Pay Extra to Run OpenClaw Using Claude.
Bad news for OpenClaw fans: Anthropic wants you to pay more to use its AI models. Anthropic didn’t announce this in advance; the company began sending emails to affected users , informing them that they would no longer be able to use their Claude Code subscription limits with third-party “apps,” including—most importantly—OpenClaw. Anthropic confirmed that users can still connect to OpenClaw using their Claude account, but they will have to pay more—including a “pay-as-you-go” option that will be added to the subscription price.
Anthropic representatives say this policy change is not without logic and justification. As TechCrunch notes , Boris Cherny, CEO of Claude Code, explained on X that the company’s subscriptions “were not designed with these third-party tools in mind,” and that Anthropic prioritizes customers using the company’s own products and APIs.
OpenClaw has seen its fair share of ups and downs . Formerly known as Moltbot and first as Clawdbot, this tool is designed as an interactive AI assistant that runs locally on your devices. For many, this means running OpenClaw on a Mac mini, which is specifically designed for this purpose. Unlike ChatGPT or Gemini, which have their own proprietary interfaces, with OpenClaw you communicate through the chat app of your choice. You can send OpenClaw messages to WhatsApp, Apple Messages, Microsoft Teams—anywhere—to organize your inbox, write code for a project, plan your monthly goals, or whatever else you want your assistant to do.
But OpenClaw doesn’t just… work. It needs to be enabled by an AI model. In this case, users rely on Anthropic’s Claude—and if they had a Claude Code subscription, they were simply using their existing subscription plan. As expected, running agent tasks through OpenClaw requires significant resources, which forced Anthropic to reconsider its user pricing system.
Interestingly, OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger joined OpenAI, one of Anthropic’s main competitors, back in February . Steinberger stated on X that he and OpenClaw board member Dave Morin “tried to reason with Anthropic, [but] at best we managed to delay it for a week.”