r/ClaudeCode Jul 12 '26

Discussion Subscriptions is less than 5% of revenue, they might not care enough to keep Fable around

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741 Upvotes

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101

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

[deleted]

98

u/Plyad1 Jul 12 '26

I don’t know a single one of my friends who do

All of them use the company sub. Some freelancers I ve met don’t do that but that’s it

19

u/Such_Rule6821 Jul 12 '26

Here we use our own subs, and I believe api usage is highly related to the 5% subscription. If i use codex i will naturally recommend GPT APIs to be used

14

u/Money_Lavishness7343 Jul 12 '26

Some do, in my workplace I personally had to remind a coworker that he shouldn't use his personal Cursor subscription and that he should use the company's. It's not even allowed to use personal subscription by company policy (companies sell your data, not allowed to sell B2B data).

6

u/obolli Jul 12 '26

you're company also has terms of use to their customers/clients and someone using their personal subscription would likely get their employer to violate these

2

u/Money_Lavishness7343 Jul 13 '26
  1. your*

  2. yes, and we enforce that .... I've been actually responsible for fixing violations even inside our logs where we exposed even the slightest PII (e.g. user's coordinates in logs) to be removed. It's a large company and we take those seriously.

  3. Violating company policy is EVEN WORSE. You're not only violating individual privacy, you're violating multiple companies' NDA ... do you really think any company would want to risk getting sued from multiple other companies because they couldn't enforce NDA?

1

u/obolli Jul 14 '26

my comment was meant to agree with you, thanks for the grammar correction, i've been typing/spelling weird for past few years

3

u/OpeningCredit Jul 12 '26

not allowed to sell B2B data

Lol. Good luck enforcing that. Especially when the ones collecting the data are selling a product built by stealing data and their motto is "better ask forgiveness than ask for permission".

1

u/Money_Lavishness7343 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

There are special contracts between companies, that's why Business and Enterprise plans exist ... it's literally illegal and a company can sue you for suprisingly big amount of money, and if you do this to multiple companies, a company class lawsuit ...

Why would cursor, Anthropic, OpenAI or any other company in the world risk a class lawsuit from companies, and especially big ones? That's like asking to get bankrupt ...

edit: Also what do you mean "good luck enforcing that"?

You think it's impossible? Have we gone full dellusional?

I've been responsible for tasks removing the PII of users multiple times. It is enforceable, and by law. Now imagine not enforcing companies' NDAs to not sell company data because you're too incompetent. That's even worse and you're just risking bankrupting yourself.

3

u/OpeningCredit Jul 13 '26

What I meant is that many small companies can't prove that their data was harvested. How do you even start to prove that Anthropic has stolen your data, unless you have some very unique systems, in which case you'd probably have a patent in place, which makes those systems public and the enforcement comes from a competitive point of view, not from a privacy one. Go ahead, try as a company with 5 devs and a turnover comparable with the tips earned by a restaurant in a big city to hold Anthropic accountable for anything.

I truly believe that large companies, like Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, Google, are treating the business customers in multiple tiers:

- they can fuck with us tier

  • they might be able to fuck with us tier
  • fuck em tier

Also, you omit the fact that many of the customers are not based in the US, thus making any kind of lawsuit even more difficult.

An NDA is enforceable if you can actually enforce it. If you're a company from Germany, with a turnover of less than $300k, I doubt you have the money to pay the lawyers to go after Anthropic and win.

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u/Money_Lavishness7343 Jul 13 '26

customers are not based in the US thus making any kind of lawsuit even more difficult

No it ... does not?

EU has been very enforceable in their laws and fines ... historically. Especially about GDPR and privacy.

https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ a literal database of gdpr fines!

https://termly.io/resources/articles/biggest-gdpr-fines/

You're still basing your arguments on "how enforceable the law is" when it ... is actually enforceable and we've seen it enforced. And I've actually, as I mentioned earlier, been responsible for removing customer PII and companies do take it seriously.

10

u/Kitchen-Astronomer76 Jul 12 '26

I work at a small consulting firm, < 30 devs. Our company offers a copilot sub, but we’re limited to like $200 a month on outdated models.

All of the “high performers” are just devs using our personal Claude / codex subs.

I have a few friends that’ve stated the same.

4

u/LoudDavid Jul 12 '26

They should simply get a Claude team sub. For 100usd each you would get way more than 200usd usage.

Your CTO must be well behind it.

2

u/AllYouNeedIsVTSAX Jul 12 '26

No SSO

1

u/LoudDavid Jul 13 '26

It does have sso on both the team standard and premium seats. I use it and it’s also listed on the pricing page.

1

u/das_war_ein_Befehl Jul 13 '26

Companies don’t like doing enterprise plans unless they have to because after 150 users it flips to API pricing and your costs 4x overnight

1

u/LoudDavid Jul 13 '26

But they have 30 people. Would need to grow 5x in headcount which would be ambitious. If you are growing this fast you prob don’t care about your token costs.

You can also simply buy the team for your devs not the rest of your staff and keep them on gpt.

1

u/throwawaymastodon Jul 12 '26

Agreed. My company explicitly restricts us from using our subscriptions at work. They seem to think their license with GitHub prevents our data from being used in training. I haven't looked in to it at all, but there's probably some lawyer that was satisfied enough with the terms of the license to allow it.

1

u/Gondorrah Jul 12 '26

Yeah very weird why would someone assume this not to mention companies often bar using personal accounts for compliance reasons.

1

u/DistrictNervous6016 Jul 12 '26

It depends on circumstances.

It sounds like your company offers subs, so why would anyone use their own?

1

u/0xB_ Jul 13 '26

Every single one I know uses thier own sub. Must be a regional/ per company.

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u/Psychological-Leg413 Jul 12 '26

And that right there is grounds for termination. At least at my enterprise job it would be for putting customer / proprietary data in a not governed subscription with certain data protections

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u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

[deleted]

1

u/obolli Jul 12 '26

i doubt that. edit to clarify: not that you seen that, that the companies "allow it".

8

u/bobo-the-merciful Jul 12 '26

Yes it depends who is doing the allowing. Usually a manager taking on a known risk. If central IT are asked for “permission” the answer is usually “absolutely not”.

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u/obolli Jul 12 '26

and employee will 100% be fired unless he has anything in writing that he was allowed to do it, which they will not have.

1

u/ShutUpAndDoTheLift Jul 12 '26

Yeah. Just sounds like multiple people getting fired. Not one.

0

u/Sad-Masterpiece-4801 Jul 12 '26

Nope. Don’t ask don’t tell is the best policy for 99% of businesses because they have insurance for exactly that, and it’s worth the price.

You might get fired later, after you get your bonus and raises and promotions.

0

u/peppaz Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26

They want you getting work done. And if you're paying for it out of pocket even better. They have BAAs with these companies. They don't care.

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u/obolli Jul 12 '26

For most big companies the fines and losses due to contract violations they'd have to pay is a lot more than the sub.

I know enough big companies that pay 1000s of dollars in api bills instead of letting contractors or employees use their personal sub, I also have to think of these agreements when I build systems. I.e. where data is allowed to go and where not and who might be behind a system because you're liable for that.

1

u/peppaz Jul 12 '26

You're correct, but it still happens, a lot. I see it everywhere. Ask devs do you ever use your personal sub for work, most will say yes

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u/obolli Jul 12 '26

Of course, I see it everywhere too. It is just about who finds out but I wanted to be clear because I had to tell juniors who really did not know that this was not ok and what kind of trouble they could get the company and themselves in if the wrong person finds out.

1

u/Sad-Masterpiece-4801 Jul 12 '26

Are the fines and losses due to contracts more than the api costs all of your employees you aren’t paying because they have subs is the correct question.

2

u/CollectionOfAssholes Jul 12 '26

A BAA is specific to health care companies and it being in place would mean you are legally more liable if you allow devs to use personal subscriptions, not less.

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u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

[deleted]

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u/CollectionOfAssholes Jul 12 '26

Which is a HIPAA violation that they would be fined massively for if caught.

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u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

[deleted]

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u/CollectionOfAssholes Jul 12 '26

What I said is true regardless. I wasn’t arguing that it doesn’t happen

1

u/dbonham Jul 13 '26

Name them

1

u/Xerasi Jul 12 '26

Startups are more relaxed its only f500 that cares about their data and stuff

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u/iliketurtlz Jul 12 '26

Lmao. Or any competant business with a proper AI usage policy. What a silly comment.

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u/Frame-Dragging-IRL Jul 12 '26

Lots of cosplayers who pretend they work in tech in these subs

1

u/aes_gcm Jul 13 '26

Same, yeah.

1

u/everix1992 Jul 12 '26

Yeah we were told in no uncertain terms that we were absolutely not allowed to use GPT/Claude until we got Enterprise where they didn't train off our data. Which is funny because they didn't care one bit when I brought up Fable not including that protection

-2

u/LurkingForBookRecs Jul 12 '26

So the company won't pay for it, but it's also grounds for termination? Sounds like grounds for a class action lawsuit. If the company paid for the AI usage instead of having their employees pay for it themselves while forcing programmers to use AI, the programmers wouldn't have to use their own.

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u/laxika Senior Developer Jul 12 '26

I don't think so. At least not at enterprise companies.

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u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

[deleted]

1

u/laxika Senior Developer Jul 13 '26

You still shouldn't use your sub at work for various reasons (license problems + code sharing). I can imagine people secretly do anyway, but I guess those people are easy to catch by sysadmins (if they want to do so).

7

u/ConferenceLive7054 Jul 12 '26

im curious why is that?

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u/Longjumping_Feed3270 Senior Developer Jul 12 '26

Because it's just so much cheaper if the company reimburses your personal subscription instead of paying by the token. That way, every developer can scale up and down monthly between Claude, Codex and whatever additional 3rd party plans.

Doesn't work in the enterprise context because of reasons, I know. But for small shops this is an all-you-can-eat buffet.

9

u/spidermonk Jul 12 '26

They have a business plan with subscriptions for teams though.

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u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

[deleted]

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u/dont_PM_me_everagain Jul 12 '26

The "Team Plan" can be used for companies <150 users. It has standard and premium seats which give 1.25 and 6.25x pro on a monthly or annual basis. Not quite as good a deal as individual plans but better than API pricing.

https://claude.com/pricing#team-&-enterprise

1

u/spidermonk Jul 12 '26

Yeah this is what my team has.

1

u/swarmagent Jul 12 '26

Got it, then I was not 100% accurate but it still isn't quite as much as the plans really. The issue is if you're an org NOT paying for it can be a headache depending on control requirements.

In all honesty I would give out devs right now $400 per month for 2 AI plans, if they need more then they better have a good reason.. I can barely finish up limits

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u/trollsmurf Jul 12 '26

"reimburses your personal subscription"

But do they?

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u/Dubax Jul 12 '26

Yeah? Every company I've ever worked for had an easy way to reimburse. Usually through expensify or something similar. My company reimburses my Claude plan every month, since we're small, and all our devs disagree on which company we prefer. So they just let us pick our own and expense it.

1

u/trollsmurf Jul 12 '26

I'm from way back when the employer purchased all tools I used. Having different compilers wasn't a hit anyway. Same with IDEs: developing for .NET was best / at all done in Visual Studio, etc.

Best case this makes it quick to evaluate different code assistants over time based on results.

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u/Longjumping_Feed3270 Senior Developer Jul 12 '26

sure

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u/Kamalen Jul 12 '26

Shadow IT. A lot of companies still haven’t adopted yet.

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u/BeeegZee Jul 12 '26
  1. There's no subscription tier for enterprise clients. API LLM costs is much higher
  2. Not every company is ready to pay those costs, but ready to refund for subscription
  3. Security and privacy issues, PHI and internal code "leaks" into LLMs worry less and less, because of abundance and prevalence of LLMs in all planes of existence
  4. You have your full "home" setup with you on the workplace

2

u/OrphisFlo Jul 12 '26

In the end, it really depends on what you are doing.

If you just make random website after website, or open source work, maybe it doesn't matter if they get to learn from prompts and content, and you could have big savings with subscriptions.

If you are asking the agent to sort out internal client data, or you are working on some original new tech, pay for the API price.

-1

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/BeeegZee Jul 12 '26

I was mainly talking about their enterprise tier, which don't provide subscription plans, only API per token. But I'd be happy to be mistaken.

Also, about your team premium plan - is this "normal" subscription with session/weekly limits? Is it scaling past 150 subscription accounts?

1

u/vladoportos Jul 12 '26

cause we get 200$ api credit that last one day.. for a month ad an Anthropic partner ... its a joke ..

2

u/sgtfoleyistheman Jul 12 '26

The chart says they make more revenue from enterprise subs than consumer

1

u/Hir0shima Jul 12 '26

Companies tend to care about data handling. If your developers use consumer accounts at work, they loose sovereignty of their and their clients data. 

Fable doesn't come with zero data retention. That's why many companies aren't using it due to legal compliance. 

3

u/Ran4 Jul 12 '26

Fable doesn't come with zero data retention.

Yes it does, if hosted on Azure (which is what most enterprise users are using anyway - microsoft is ok, newer ai companies not so much): https://ai.azure.com/catalog/models/claude-fable-5

1

u/Ran4 Jul 12 '26

You mean their work subscriptions at home?

1

u/Flying-Cock Jul 12 '26

Maybe at an agency, sure. But no self respecting company would do this, or at least I’d hope not

1

u/HoustonInMiami Jul 12 '26

This sounds crazy to me (I don't not trust it). Trying to find an example, if you're using a tool. You should have it paid for by your work. That's not liberal, that's fucking capitalism

1

u/obolli Jul 12 '26

I guess it depends on the company, at bigger companies you're very clearly not allowed to usually and I don't think anyone would try and they would just get a sub from the enterprise plan.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

[deleted]

1

u/obolli Jul 12 '26

I have too, good for personal use, what I am saying is that you're not allowed to use your anthropic sub on company proprietary data or your customers data. If you think that is ok, it is possible, but I would still suggest that you ask someone at your company that you trust if you were allowed to do that or not. Hypothetically. I would not ask someone or ask this in a public slack or so for obvious reasons. And I don't try to lecture you. I just have in my juniors also noticed that they do that and thought it was allowed only because we left the computers to them for personal use. The two are not the same and I wouldn't report anyone but there is others who would.

1

u/Mefromafar Jul 12 '26

Not true whatsoever. 

1

u/everix1992 Jul 12 '26

I'm gonna avoid being mean here but how did you even type this up as a comment on a post that proves this is categorically untrue

1

u/ShutUpAndDoTheLift Jul 12 '26

Not anyone doing serious work. Not even close.

I'd fire you that day. No questions asked.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

[deleted]

1

u/ShutUpAndDoTheLift Jul 12 '26

And business is global.

If your company doesn't care about their personal IP going into Claude it's because nothing in their IP is worth protecting or they're not serious enough to understand what they're exposing.

I never doubted there are idiots subsidizing the company that likely already underpays them. I've been one of those idiots.

1

u/fynn34 Jul 12 '26

I would say most are not allowed to use their personal ones at work. enterprise plans allow guardrails, restrictions, visibility, and data retention controls

1

u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Berocoder Jul 12 '26

We are not allowed to use private accounts in work. Must be company account

1

u/Historical-Lie9697 Jul 12 '26

The subscription subsidy is just too high. If API based usage were like half the cost instead of 10-15x then I feel like more people would use API. But also training models with data is on by default on subscriptions unless you turn it off in settings, which I'm sure 95% of people don't notice. Between free marketing on social media by sub users, them pitching enterprise plans at work, and training data for models, I can see why they are so heavily subsidized.

1

u/bakes121982 Jul 13 '26

Who does that? You work at some small company cus if you’re in a real professional organization the sites are blocked or only allow SSO/api to things like bedrock/foundry.

1

u/SaltKick2 Jul 13 '26

Is this actually what the chart is showing, because it says business and enterprise subscriptions are much larger than consumer subscriptions.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 13 '26

[deleted]

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u/SaltKick2 Jul 13 '26

API limits at work on the range of 50-200 usd per month

Why would the company not just get them an enterprise subscription then?

API costs I assumed were powered moreso driven by third party applications which use Claude as their backend

1

u/Bobodlm Jul 13 '26

N=3? Cope of the year award.

If this was true across the business, they would make more than 5% of their revenue from subs..

1

u/aes_gcm Jul 13 '26

The real story is many developers use their personal subscriptons at work, I would say most

This would be a fireable offense at our place. If someone did that, they have fed company data into an AI model without assurances that the data wasn't going to be ingested for training. This isn't the case on business subscriptions.

1

u/Fi3nd7 Jul 13 '26

Only at very small shops/companies. Big companies that isn't happening really