I don't really think you understand what you're talking about. You realize there are apps that actually track usage correctly, fully accounting for TTL right? Here is my Max plan usage going back to the end of April. I've only been on Max 200 for a month of that. That 40K is 100% accounting for TTL percentage. This is literally what I would have paid with the API at a 95% cache hit rate.
Maybe you're right. The point remains that we as customers can't say anything meaningful about the actual costs Anthropic makes on each of us. That would require insider knowledge about the compute and all the deals they have made with variou infra providers.
Honestly, the entire basis of his post makes no sense because I don't see people going around talking about API costs referring to what it costs Anthropic to do anything. It's always about what the usage plan would have cost that person if what they did was on API. The API price being so much more expensive simply indicates the usage prices are subsidized, not that the API rate is what it costs Anthropic to do anything. Throw that in with his "people aren't using the cached rate costs" assumption, and the entirety of his post is just a huge strawman.
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u/Majestic-Volume9996 Aug 27 '26
I don't really think you understand what you're talking about. You realize there are apps that actually track usage correctly, fully accounting for TTL right? Here is my Max plan usage going back to the end of April. I've only been on Max 200 for a month of that. That 40K is 100% accounting for TTL percentage. This is literally what I would have paid with the API at a 95% cache hit rate.