I will mainly use it alongside cursor, I love claude’s models especially in anything that requires any tool use its so good and seamless

I will use it alongside cursor just want to know what I will get and if it will be good enough, I can do with 40-50 messages every 5 hours that’s really good for me especially alongside cursor

And before you say “just get the 100$ one this one won’t do anything” I can’t afford it

i’m CONSIDERING upgrading to the $100-200 max subscription just because of how costly using claude is on cursor (and far worse through that damned api — still can’t believe designing a new glassmorphic card costed $4[?!?!] for one prompt).

i kind of want to test around with claude code more; i’ve used it in the past (wasn’t extremely impressed but keep in mind i’m building more simple webapps and whatnot). when i am doing something more novel, generally a massive amount of context or manual programming is still required, even if it’s integrating an API that the AI is not familiar with.

don’t send a firebomb through my window, but i kind of like gemini and the huge context window for their cli/vscode extension is awesome. i haven’t hit any usage caps, afaik it’s free but i also pay for gemini and it’s super cheap.

i do this partially for a living, so i don’t mind paying for a good tool, but i don’t want to throw $200 at something if my cursor, windsurf and gemini subscription will work fine. i am doing this 8-12+ hours a day generally speaking, so if it’s that large of a step up, i’m game.

main question: has anyone actually tried using the normal $20 subscription for claude code? will i get anything out of it other than seeing if paying for claude is right for me?

i despise burning money and buying stuff i won’t use, and i am not super apt on feeding in to anthropic’s greed…

please, if you’ve tried the different pricing tiers, give me an example of how much you can use of both sonnet and opus on each

I absolutely love Claude Code and have been a Max subscriber for a while. Regardless, the buzz around the new weekly limit and release made me curious whether Claude's $200/month Max subscription was actually a good deal compared to paying for API usage, so I built a network instrumentation tool to capture and analyze my actual Claude Code usage.

Methodology:

- Captured network logs during 1% of my weekly rate limit (I'm still early in my weekly reset so didn't want to spend too much)

- I'm using Sonnet only for this instrumentation as I don't see the difference between Sonnet 4.5 and Opus 4.1

- Analyzed token usage and calculated costs using official pricing

- Projected monthly costs at full usage

The Results, for 1% of weekly limit:

- 299 total API requests

- 176 Sonnet requests (164K tokens + 13.2M cache reads)

- 123 Haiku requests (50K tokens - mostly internal operations)

- Total cost: $8.43

This is around $840/week with Sonnet, which I believe isn't even half the previous limit.

Monthly projection (full usage):

- Claude API: $3,650/month

- OpenAI API (GPT-5 + mini): $1,715/month

Key Findings

1. Claude Max is 18.3x cheaper than paying for Claude API directly

2. GPT-5 is 2.1x cheaper than Claude API at the token level

TL;DR: Is this still a good deal? If Claude is still the best model for coding, I would say yes. But compared to ChatGPT Pro subscription, the weekly limit hits hard. Will I keep my Claude subscription for now? Yes. Will that change soon if Anthropic still isn't transparent and doesn't improve their pricing? Of course.

Interesting Notes

- Haiku is used internally by Claude Code for things like title generation and topic detection - not user-facing responses

- Cache reads are HUGE (13.2M tokens for Sonnet) and significantly impact costs

If you are curious about the analysis, I open-sourced the entire analysis here https://github.com/AgiFlow/claude-instrument

--- Edited: Published a separated post on how I use Claude Code. This is part of the reason why I like Sonnet 4.5 which is amazing when it come to instruction following.

The last time I was a premium member of Cloud was in June 2024, but I am interested in returning. Is it really worth it? Are the paid models stronger, or is the difference only in usage limits?

I hear use cases on the 100$ max subscription that sonnet is almost limitless for claude code, but has anyone actually tried the 20$ pro subscription yet and felt any limits? How long does it take for me to get rate limited on a medium/large scaled laravel/react app if I try to use sonnet semi-regularly? Of course if I give it the right files that I need for the job where I can use it, but I need to know if it is really worth using sonnet for the pro subscription or should I go for the max subscription.

Thanks!

Hi everyone, I'm a developer who has been using Claude Code Max ($200 plan) for 3 months now. With renewal coming up on the 21st, I wanted to share my honest experience.

Initial Experience (First 1-2 months): I was genuinely impressed. Fast prototyping, reasonable code architecture, and great ability to understand requirements even with vague descriptions. It felt like a real productivity booster.

Recent Changes I've Noticed (Past 2-3 weeks):

1. Performance degradation: Noticeable drop in code quality compared to earlier experience

2. Unnecessary code generation: Frequently includes unused code that needs cleanup

3. Excessive logging: Adds way too many log statements, cluttering the codebase

4. Test quality issues: Generates superficial tests that don't provide meaningful validation

5. Over-engineering: Tends to create overly complex solutions for simple requests

6. Problem-solving capability: Struggles to effectively address persistent performance issues

7. Reduced comprehension: Missing requirements even when described in detail

Current Situation: I'm now spending more time reviewing and fixing generated code than the actual generation saves me. It feels like constantly code-reviewing a junior developer's work rather than having a reliable coding partner.

Given the $200/month investment, I'm questioning the value proposition and currently exploring alternative tools.

Question for the community: Has anyone else experienced similar issues recently? Or are you still having a consistently good experience with Claude Code?

I'm genuinely curious if this is a temporary issue or if others are seeing similar patterns. If performance improves, I'd definitely consider coming back, but right now I'm not seeing the ROI that justified the subscription cost.