Demand Surges, Computing Power Strained! Anthropic Adjusts Claude Enterprise Pricing to Usage-Based Model

Anthropic has quietly changed the billing model for its Claude Enterprise product, potentially causing bills for heavy users to soar.

Anthropic recently adjusted the pricing model for its enterprise-grade product, Claude Enterprise. According to a report by The Information on April 14, this change had not been publicly disclosed previously.

Under the new model, enterprise customers will no longer pay a fixed subscription fee but will instead be charged an additional fee based on actual computing power consumed, on top of a base fee of $20 per user per month. An Anthropic spokesperson confirmed this.

This adjustment has taken effect gradually over recent weeks, with some customers only feeling the impact when their contracts are renewed.

From $200 Flat Rate to Usage-Based: Heavy Users Face Tripled Costs

Under the old model, enterprise customers paid up to $200 per authorized user per month for a certain quota of discounted token usage—similar to a prepaid data package.

Fredrik Filipsson, co-founder of Redress Compliance, which helps negotiate software licensing agreements, stated that for heavy users, the new pricing could lead to costs doubling or even tripling.

Several IT executives indicated they were aware of this change and were monitoring whether their actual bills would rise significantly.

Notably, this adjustment does not affect small business customers with fewer than 150 users, who use the Team subscription plan capped at $100 per user per month; their pricing structure remains unchanged.

Why the Change? Computing Cost Pressure is the Core Driver

Anthropic's official explanation is that under the old model, some heavy users frequently hit usage limits, forcing work to halt, while others paid for quotas they did not fully utilize.

An Anthropic spokesperson stated that the new pricing "better reflects how customers actually use Claude, as workloads are shifting from fixed-seat productivity tools to agent applications."

The underlying logic is straightforward: the usage of Claude Code and Claude Cowork (an AI assistant capable of automatically handling tasks across applications) has surged recently. These agent applications are extremely computationally intensive—they can run continuously for long periods or execute tasks automatically every 30 minutes according to schedule.

Sudip Roy, co-founder of AI software developer Adaption Labs and former Director of Inference at Cohere, bluntly stated: "If users consistently hit usage limits, the profit margin from subscriptions gets eroded entirely. Subscription pricing is essentially priced for 'under-utilization'."

He added that usage-based billing "is more favorable for service providers but clearly disadvantageous for heavy users."

Explosive Growth of Claude Code Forces Pricing Restructuring

The direct trigger for this price adjustment was the explosive growth of Claude Code.

According to The Information, annualized revenue from Claude Code jumped from $1 billion in December 2024 to $2.5 billion in February 2025, and continues to accelerate in recent weeks. Meanwhile, the weekly active user count for Claude Code doubled between January and February.

This growth pushed Anthropic's overall revenue annualized rate to $30 billion as of early April, nearly triple the figure at the end of last year.

However, rapid usage growth also brought cost pressure. Last year, Anthropic's inference costs grew by more than threefold, resulting in gross margins below expectations.

Earlier this month, Anthropic also announced that customers using Claude Code subscriptions would need to pay extra if they call third-party agent tools like OpenClaw—the reason being these tools consume significant computing power. Boris Cherny, head of Claude Code, wrote on X: "Computing power is a resource we need to manage prudently; we prioritize customers using our own products and APIs."

OpenAI Seizes Opportunity as Industry Shifts to Usage Models

While Anthropic adjusted its pricing, OpenAI appeared to be capitalizing on the momentum. In early April, OpenAI launched a new Codex subscription tier at $100 per user per month, positioned between the existing $20 and $200 tiers, describing it as "better supporting the growing usage demands of Codex." OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that Codex's weekly active users exceeded 3 million last week.

However, Fredrik Filipsson noted that among the Anthropic enterprise clients he has contacted, there are currently no signs of churn—customers remain satisfied with the productivity gains Claude provides.

"When your product truly creates stickiness at the user level, you can let consumption drive revenue without locking people into seats," he said.

In fact, usage-based billing is not unique to Anthropic. Salesforce adopted consumption-based pricing when launching Agentforce in late 2024; ServiceNow sells software based on employee count but charges for AI features based on usage. Replit and Cursor, leaders in AI programming, also restructured their pricing models last summer due to operational cost pressures.

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