en.Wedoany.com Reported - Anthropic has begun charging usage-based fees for its latest AI model, Claude Fable 5 (Mythos 5). Starting at 23:59 Pacific Time on July 12, subscribers paying monthly fees of $20, $100, and $200 will incur additional charges each time they use this consumer-grade model.
This billing model is a first in consumer AI products, with rates matching developer API pricing: $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens. For example, a user on the $20 monthly plan who sends 1 million tokens to Claude Fable 5 and receives a 1 million token response would pay an additional $60, bringing the total monthly cost to $80. This is roughly equivalent to five months of an Amazon Prime subscription. One million tokens of text is approximately 750,000 English words, exceeding the length of the entire "Lord of the Rings" series. For heavy AI users, monthly API bills could reach thousands of dollars. Newer models like Fable 5 consume more tokens during responses due to internal chain-of-thought processes.
Usage-based pricing via API is standard for developers, but AI labs typically prefer fixed monthly subscription models for consumers to stabilize revenue and control demand. The industry is gradually shifting toward usage-based billing. Last year, coding startup Cursor switched its unlimited subscription to a pay-per-use model. Anthropic has also recently started charging enterprise clients based on employee usage. Some AI executives believe that in the era of AI agents (such as Claude Code, Codex), fixed subscription plans are outdated because their computational resource consumption far exceeds that of traditional chatbots. Nick Turley, former head of ChatGPT at OpenAI and now enterprise product lead, stated earlier this year that unlimited AI plans lack justification in the current era, comparing them to impractical unlimited electricity plans.
Anthropic has not abandoned all-inclusive subscription plans. Company spokesperson Reem Ateyeh told WIRED that Anthropic will reintegrate Fable 5 into Claude subscription plans when computing capacity is sufficient. This suggests the current adjustment is constrained by computational resources. Anthropic has signed multi-billion-dollar data center partnership agreements with SpaceX, Amazon, and Google, but the related capacity has yet to meet demand. It remains unclear when Claude Fable 5 will return to subscription plans.
Anthropic previously conducted a long promotional campaign for Fable 5. In a June 7 blog post, the company stated it expected extremely high and unpredictable demand for the model. Market interest further increased after the U.S. government approved public release on July 1. Regardless of external interpretations, this pricing adjustment is essentially a direct test by Anthropic of market demand for consumer-grade AI models.
Although Anthropic has primarily focused on the enterprise market in recent years, it is accelerating its entry into the consumer AI space dominated by OpenAI and Google. According to Sensor Tower data, Claude had 245 million unique visitors in May, double the figure from February, but still below ChatGPT (1.11 billion) and Gemini (662 million). Amid controversy over the fees, Anthropic is attempting to position itself as a premium AI brand, hoping users will pay a premium for top-tier models. A source familiar with Anthropic's internal thinking noted that users often choose the most powerful model without assessing actual needs. Many high-income individuals prefer using the most powerful AI models for both work and personal tasks, considering Claude their top choice.
Whether Anthropic can maintain its premium image depends on its technological leadership. OpenAI and Google may not follow suit with price increases and could generate revenue through advertising in free and low-cost tiers. Given Anthropic's aversion to advertising, price hikes have become an inevitable short-term choice. The era of subsidized low-cost consumer AI is gradually coming to an end.
