Anthropic bans OpenClaw: Claude subscription fully restricts third-party tools, significantly increasing developer costs

BlockBeats message, April 4, an AI company Anthropic announced that starting from 15:00 on April 4 in U.S. Eastern Time, it will prohibit access to third-party tools via the Claude subscription service, including the open-source project OpenClaw. The new regulation requires that the relevant functions can only be used through additional tiers or via metered billing through an API.

This adjustment means that developers and teams that rely heavily on OpenClaw to build automated workflows will shift from the original fixed subscription cost model to an uncapped metered-pay system, leading to a significant increase in overall usage costs. Some developers said that the original usage cost of about $20 per month could skyrocket to several hundred or even up to $1,000.

The market generally believes this move is related to OpenClaw’s founder, Peter Steinberger, recently joining OpenAI. At the same time, Anthropic is accelerating the promotion of its own tool ecosystem, including Claude’s native integration solutions, to replace third-party toolchains.

It is worth noting that Anthropic has previously gradually tightened third-party access through technical restrictions, updates to service terms, and feature substitutions. This policy is seen as a “final lockdown,” and will be rolled out to more tools.

Industry analysis points out that the incident reflects an intensifying trend of AI platforms “tightening ecosystems,” with leading vendors strengthening their control through vertical integration. Meanwhile, developer ecosystems face rising cost uncertainty and increased platform dependency risk, which may further drive some users to switch to alternative solutions with greater openness.