Ask HN: LLM Subscriptions, Why? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: LLM Subscriptions, Why?

2 pointscedws6 comments

Why would I pay a $20 per month subscription for ChatGPT or Claude when I can pay as I go just by plugging an API key into an app? I know I'm very unlikely to rack up $20 worth of tokens so I'll save money. It seems like they're just capitalising on their customers lack of technical know how and overcharging, which is just further evidence to me that the business model is not sustainable.

It's like paying a $20 per month subscription for an all you can eat buffet (not quite accurate analogy, even the subscribed customers have usage limits!) have when you know you only want to eat the $2 salad once in a blue moon.

A subscription incentivises the company to lower cost per token and move customers to cheaper models to increase margins, even if it's at the detriment of output quality.

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> It seems like they're just capitalising on their customers lack of technical know how and overcharging

So...doing what every other tech company does? Or really, any company does?

"Overcharging" is true if you value your time doing all this at $0. If you don't know how to "plug an API into an app", which is a lot of people, then it's definitely worth it. If you know how to do this, how long did it take you to learn, and what is that time worth to you? Was there something else you'd rather spend that time doing? Is that time worth $20 a month to you?

For you, the answer sounds like it's no, you'd rather do it yourself.

Using older ChatGPT models is free* and the people who pay for it do so for convenience. Sure, you can jump through 10 hoops to make it cheaper but for most people $20/month is less than the value they get from it.

* prepaid with your data

> A subscription incentivises the company to lower cost per token and move customers to cheaper models to increase margins, even if it's at the detriment of output quality.

Due to the high-stakes vibes of LLM development and the similarity between UI, customers can switch to another provider pretty quickly in case the quality drops significantly.

It used to matter more when it got you gpt4/opus vs 3.5/sonnet. Nowadays the GPT4o free tier is good enough for most non power users. The subscription to chatgpt also gets you some data tools (transform data documents using transformers in parallel) and dall-e use in addition to the higher quota.

You can easily rack up $20 worth of tokens using the API. Especially if you are loading in a bunch of code or program output etc.

Not everyone knows how to use API.

FOMO

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