Anthropic Switches to Usage-Based Billing for Enterprise Customers

Anthropic has reportedly begun charging enterprise customers based on their levels of AI use.

That’s according to a report Tuesday (April 14) from The Information, which characterizes the change as the latest sign of how the startup is handling the surge in popularity for its artificial intelligence (AI) coding and agent offerings.

The new pricing system means customers of Claude Enterprise — its product suite for large companies — will have to pay for the amount of computing capacity they use as well as a flat monthly $20 per user fee.

Those customers had been paying up to $200 a month for each licensed user, getting a set amount of discounted token usage, Fredrik Filipsson, co-founder of Redress Compliance, told The Information.

Flipsson, whose company helps businesses negotiate software licensing agreements, estimated that the pricing changes will double or even triple the cost for heavy users of Claude Enterprise.

The Information said it spoke with several IT executives who said they are monitoring whether pricing changes — which have gone into effect in recent weeks — will lead to substantially higher bills from Anthropic.

A company spokesperson told the publication that the pricing changes don’t apply to businesses that pay for free than 150 users.

Writing about AI adoption last week, PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster argued that tools like Claude are able to gain ground as consumers encounter new AI models on the job.

“ChatGPT expands outward from the consumer, earning trust in low-stakes, high-frequency tasks and carrying that trust into the workplace. The habit comes first; the enterprise follows,” Webster wrote.

“Claude follows the opposite path. It is encountered in the context of work, where precision matters and the cost of getting it wrong is higher. Contract analysis, code review and complex research are not entry points for casual use. They are reasons to adopt something new. In this case, the enterprise is not the endpoint but the starting point.”

In related news, PYMNTS wrote earlier this week about the factors that hinder AI adoption at larger companies.

“For most large enterprises, organizational readiness is still the bigger barrier than cost,” Ben Schein, chief analytics officer and senior vice president of product at Domo, told PYMNTS.

That’s backed by research from PYMNTS Intelligence’s “The Enterprise AI Benchmark Report,” which shows that 71% of executives at companies with at least $1 billion in annual revenue believe that organizational readiness is the chief limitation on AI performance. Only 11% said they think that AI technology itself is the primary barrier.

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