I use the free model and API, when I look at the pricing page I see (for the extant $20 Pro plan)
- More usage
- Access to Projects to organize chats and documents
- Ability to use more Claude models
- Extended thinking for complex work
What does "more usage" mean? It doesn't say anywhere what the free tier usage limits are. What are "more" models? It also doesn't make clear what models are available with each tier (except for "extended thinking" which is a separate bullet point)
The only thing I can reason is that they want to keep this vague so that they don't have to update their marketing copy each time they update their offerings, but that's absurd.
I mean how CF has advertises "unlimited bandwidth" and "unmetered DDOS protection" on their free and flat-rate paid plans, which abruptly turns into not-unlimited pay-per-gigabyte if they decide you're using them too much, but you're not allowed to know where that line is so you can plan around it. It's a fun surprise where they suddenly ask you to pay 10x more out of nowhere.
Can you point to a single example of CF doing this to a legitimate entity that wasn't obviously abusing their plan? Every time this comes up it's always some shady website that's getting the limited treatment.
And it's not "unlimited bandwidth", it's "unlimited bandwidth with restrictions". That's an important and critical distinction. I'm not sure I understand the position that somehow CF needs to subsidize every customer.
Nobody said CF needs to subsidize every customer. The rules need to be clear though, not secret. Same with anthropic's usage limits, since they're not public they can degrade the service you're paying for at any point in time with no notice.
I'd much rather have "unlimited" bandwidth with restrictions and the current ambiguous enforcement than clearly defined limits and strict enforcement which penalizes all customers. The current model benefits considerably more people than the alternative.
5x what though? Even if we assume this is the true figure, everyone who uses Claude regularly knows that usage limits fluctuate over the course of days and weeks.
In the near future, everyone will have an intelligence meter in their hall and pay IQCoin to the National Intelligence Utility based on how much intelligence they use each month.
"more" usage likely means that they have a limited number of GPUs, and what models you get access to depends on how much you've used them recently, but also on how busy the GPUs are at this moment.
This is also how batching works for API users. If you don't need the results immediately, you can give them a batch with an attached 24-hour deadline, and they'll slot you in whenever they expect low usage, in exchange for better prices.
The only thing I can reason is that they want to keep this vague so that they don't have to update their marketing copy each time they update their offerings, but that's absurd.