Extra usage credit for Pro, Max, and Team plans | Hacker News Reader

Extra usage credit for Pro, Max, and Team plans

support.claude.com

64 pointsangst62 comments

The only listed qualification is "You’ve subscribed to a Pro, Max, or Team plan by April 3, 2026 at 9 AM PT", however I am not getting the banner for this credit. I suspect that there's an unstated additional qualification: that your account hasn't previously received an extra usage credit.

I don't know if they should be handing out more credits right now considering that my Sonnet requests in Claude Code are routinely delayed by several minutes, presumably due to capacity issues...

I previously received one and was able to activate this one too. I agree it seems like there's more to this, just wanted to add another anecdote to further confuse things. :)

I'm not seeing the usage credit banner either. Didn't manage to claim it.

> I suspect that there's an unstated additional qualification: that your account hasn't previously received an extra usage credit.

My account has never received any credit. I subscribed to Pro only a few weeks ago.

I was able to claim the bonus usage today. It just randomly appeared.

maybe they've changed the page since you checked but there are two requirements, the second one being: - You’ve enabled extra usage

If you haven't, then you don't get the credit.

That's not really a qualification so much as a required step, as you can do it anytime in the next two weeks to get the credit. And I have, but no credit.

I received the old one and I've received the new one too, so that's not the rule.

Yeah, same here. I think it's just rolling out gradually, mine wasn't showing for the longest time then just randomly appeared.

I agree. I happened to see Boris' tweet about it as soon as it posted, and the endpoint for redeeming the credits (the one that fires when you click it on the usage page) was already returning sporadic 400s for everyone.

I wouldn't be surprised if they pulled it back so they could spread out the load.

edit: whoops, meant to leave this as a reply to the (now-sibling) comment from 'flutas.

Dunno, maybe there is a bug. I was both a subscriber, and had the extra usage enabled, and paid for extra usage before, and didn't get the extra credits. I am on the max plan, so was rather looking forward to the extra $100 to burn on /fast mode.

I guess it was just delayed. I received the credit banner just now and redeemed it successfully.

> I suspect that there's an unstated additional qualification: that your account hasn't previously received an extra usage credit.

I received extra usage credit in February, and I got the email today asking me to claim this extra credit. Managed to claim this one too.

TBH, it looks to me as a trick to enable extra usage by baiting me with $20 credit by toggling on the feature that lets me burn another $20 without realizing it.

Toggling it again to turn it off immediately after (which I assume most people will miss) seems to guard against this.

By contrast, OpenAI simply multiplied your subscription usage by 0.5x for the past month. For all the shit they’re rightfully getting, Codex is so nice it’s actually weird.

And you can also use the long context version on their cheaper plans, where as with Anthropic it's only available to enterprise and Max customers

It eats more tokens than before, but is still more token efficient than Claude Code.

OpenAI is in deep trouble and are doing everything they can to get back in the game. If they get back in, they will monetize.

Auto-reload is off by default, is it not?

As in, what you're toggling on is "use my extra usage balance" not "automatically spend money by adding to my extra usage balance".

I read it as they'll invoice me up to $20. Not sure?

I don't believe so. I'll explain how I think it works.

    [x] Turn on extra usage to keep using Claude if you hit a limit.

^^^ This toggles whether it will automatically spend from your pre-paid balance when you hit limits.

    $20
    Monthly spend limit

^^^ I'm not actually sure which this toggles, but I think it is either a maximum amount to reload per month, OR I think it is a maximum amount of your balance to spend per month. I think it's how much to auto-reload but it is a confusing setting.

    Auto-reload off

^^^ This toggles whether it auto-reloads. It accepts a trigger balance and how much to top it off to. This setting shows the following text, which is

    You agree that Anthropic will charge the card you have on file in the amount above on a recurring basis whenever your balance reaches the amount indicated. To cancel, turn off auto-reload.

Yes it works exactly like that. Beware

That's not the purpose of the trick. The purpose is to soften the blow for turning off support for OpenClaw and other third party connectors. Now to use OpenClaw et all you'll have to pay at extra usage pricing, it won't count against your normal quota.

I'd actually be happy with this if they turned OpenCode support back on.

I can “buy extra usage” for “up to 30% off” right now, but no free credits to be claimed on profile dashboard at the moment.

Same

Did you have extra usage enabled before checking? Mine was disabled and I received the $20 credit.

Yes, I did have it enabled. Though the terms say you "must have it enabled", not "must not have had it enabled". Perhaps there is a roll-out difference.

Well this feels scammy, or at least annoying AF. I tried toggling it on to see if that would make the credit appear, even though I'd never had it on before and never needed to use it, and since my balance was under $5, it auto-charged me $15. All I wanted to do was try to make the free $20 banner appear, and I didn't get that either.

It got extra fun. I tried to talk to the Fin AI and it closed the chat twice without even responding. It just told me I'd have to try again.

Fin isn't half as useful as Claude, and if that's not telling, I don't know what would be.

I'm also not seeing it. Did you have the "Auto-reload" on or off?

Same

Update 13hr later: I was able to claim my credit.

That's a nice gesture after they seemingly changed the rate at which my credits were being used to like less than half of what I was getting a week ago. But I'm getting tired of all of this changing all the time.

You mean this?

https://support.claude.com/en/articles/14063676-claude-march...

No, I think they mean:

- https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1s7mkn3/psa_claud...

- https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1s7zgj0/comment/o...

Pretty sure I was hit by that caching bug because there was a few hours where I immediately hit my session limit and then shortly after I hit it again all while the system wasn't even working because of downtime, likely due to the increased token usage...

But I think it only lasted for a short period of time.

Hmm, the bug I hit lasted for days and burned through my credits/limits/tokens like crazy, consistently. It's gone after the last update.

Did Anthropic run Claude in a loop and tell it "work on our pricing and usage strategy", or something?

As far as I can tell, they now have Free, Pro, Max x5, Max x20, Team, and Enterprise tiers. Plus session usage, weekly usage, extra usage (up to a spend limit (set by you) and/or a monthly cap (set by Anthropic)), and now usage bundles, which are extra usage but with a lower price and a fixed amount.

I don't know, but it really feels like there's an LLM churning away somewhere, endlessly tinkering on a PRICING.md file that is gradually accreting strategic slop.

For you, there's only one Anthropic. For them, there are thousands of you, and it's a non-trivial question how to group them.

I feel this is a payoff to alleviate the complaints of people who already paid for the month and they restricted usage after the fact. Not impressed.

On a pro account and tried to claim it yesterday (had to turn on extra usage). First it wanted to bill me $50 - but the text entry for the amount only showed $5, slight bug there. I closed that dialog and the settings showed a current balance of zero. Looked at it again today and its the same. So I guess I failed to claim it.

Ok, so this is how they try to compensate for their messed up month of bugs (insane token burn)

> Your credit expires 90 days after the date you claim it.

I am guessing the vast majority of eligible credit will not be claimed or expire unspent.

Worth mentioning that normal credit expires after 12 months too, use it or lose it.

That free credits have some kind of short expiry date seems to be normal for me.

At least for european consumers the 12 month limit is probably illegal, as it is equivalent to cash and probably also needs to be refundable (similar to prepaid phone cards).

Sales tax is charged at the "top up" point - guessing that renders the cash into non-refundable disney dollars that vanish to the balance sheet after 1 year and 1 nano second.

Sadly, no: you'll almost certainly burn it, faster than you think.

Anthropic recently (within the last few months) gave out what amounted to around $70 CAD im free credit. I rationed it slowly, spending maybe $5 in a month, using it a few dozen times to allow a Haiku-based task to finish past my usage window.

When Opus and Sonnet 4.6 released, I made the unfortunate mistake of "experimenting" with them on some work that couldn't be thrown away. I hit my timed usage cap, allowed Claude Code to consume 'extra usage' credits, and... nearly vaporized the entire credit balance within a couple tasks.

I understand that Opus and Sonnet are (considerably) more expensive than Haiku, but watching money burn by the dollar, in real-time, was enough for me to turn off extra usage entirely.

i've still got about 9$USD left from that last free credit round, I am a poor example though. I think i keep a strange amount of discipline compared to most when it comes to usage. I see why it happens to people where stuff is just burned fast, and I've even caught myself a few times in moments where i wasn't monitoring properly and COULD have destroyed my usage and perhaps just got lucky that whatever i asked wasn't causing loops.

I also really dislike compacting though, and perhaps that is the catalyst for why i never burn unexpected amounts. In my Claude.md i have instructions to wrap up work around 150k tokens, from there i usually have enough of a window of tokens to decide what to do with the work done that session.

sometimes thats a simple ya, in those situations i use the remaining usage to have claude update .claude/ with relevant changes, if i've got more wiggle room for tokens, i might even craft up my next plan which is usually TDD style, and i have it write the failing tests before ending the session and passing the handoff.md which is the finished plan to a fresh context window.

This is probably not the best way for rapidly getting stuff done, but i think its one of the best ways to be effective with less usage at your disposal.

I enabled the credits to be used to extend my session for a few minutes.

And they are gone.

Wait, not only does this turn on extra credit, it sets the amount to £75.00 (UK)... so you now have a £75 extra credit set, before it will cut off.

Wow, that's shitty Antropic.

Feels tricksy to require you “claim” it when it could just be awarded to all automatically.

Getting an error claiming it, but I assume they’re getting pelted by people claiming it right now.

I received the error, but then my account reflected that I had been credited the $20 eventually but still showed that I could claim it.

What do we say to dealers who give away complimentary doses of smack?

Why would I want this, if I already have a subscription?

Because it lets you ignore your 5 hour quota for a while.

Because they're turning off OpenClaw being able to use your subscription quota, so you'll have to pay Extra Usage in order to use it.

I'm honestly curious who on these plans that's not working with an unlimited enterprise budget would even choose to burn real dollars like this beyond the subscription? What is the personal use case? It seems exorbitantly expensive after you've exhausted your subscription.

Wow they really are scrambling huh. London bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down…

Why is this company so desperate? Are they running out of cash?

No, they’re being eaten alive by Openclaw usage and need more people on metered billing as opposed to subscription.

EDIT: I guess that means they are indeed running out of cash.

My interpretation: they're kicking the OpenClaw, OpenCode, etc. users off and telling them they can use extra usage for third-party tools, and they're softening the blow by offering free and discounted usage, and they're offering it to everyone else too to avoid the appearance of unfairness.

I assume it was to make-up for the token overconsumption bug.

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