Anthropic restricts third-party tool access for Claude Code users

Anthropic is changing its subscription policy to require extra payment for third-party harnesses—external software tools that integrate with its Claude Code assistant—such as OpenClaw. Starting at noon Pacific on April 4, subscribers will no longer be able to use standard Claude subscription limits for these third-party tools. Instead, Anthropic is introducing a pay-as-you-go option billed separately from the standard subscription. The company asserted that this new policy applies to all third-party harnesses and will be rolled out to more shortly, beginning with OpenClaw. As a result of the change, it will become more expensive for Claude Code subscribers to use Anthropic’s coding assistant with OpenClaw and other third-party tools.

Boris Cherny, the head of Claude Code at Anthropic, attributed the policy shift to engineering constraints. Cherny stated that Anthropic’s subscriptions were not originally designed for the usage patterns of these third-party tools, and that the change is an attempt to manage growth intentionally to serve customers sustainably over the long term. He maintained that the Claude Code team members strongly support open source, noting that he recently submitted pull requests—a method of submitting contributions to open-source software projects—specifically to improve prompt cache efficiency for OpenClaw. Cherny added that Anthropic is offering full refunds for subscribers, acknowledging that the company knows not everyone realized this usage pattern was unsupported, and framing the policy as an attempt to make that clear and explicit.

The decision has drawn criticism from Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw, who recently joined Anthropic’s rival OpenAI. Steinberger stated that he and other supporters tried to talk sense into Anthropic but were only able to delay the policy change by a week. Steinberger criticized the move, alleging: “Funny how timings match up, first they copy some popular features into their closed harness, then they lock out open source” as the policy was rolled out.

Meanwhile, OpenAI has reportedly shut down its Sora app and video generation models. This reported shutdown comes as the rival company, which supports OpenClaw, refocuses its resources on software engineers and enterprise clients who rely on tools like Claude Code.

Why it matters

This shift highlights the growing friction between proprietary AI platforms and the open-source ecosystem, as companies like Anthropic move to monetize and control the usage patterns of third-party integrations.