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Just days after the company confirmed a source code leak of its Cloud Code CLI (which it attributed to a “human error”), it has now officially cut off support for third-party AI agent tools like OpenClaw from its subscription plans. The move has sparked debate across the developer community, especially given how widely these tools were being used.

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Third-Party Access Gets Pulled

Boris Cherny, who heads Cloud Code at Anthropic, confirmed the change in a post on X, making it clear that this is a structural shift, not a temporary tweak.

"Starting tomorrow at 12pm PT, Claude subscriptions will no longer cover usage on third-party tools like OpenClaw."

The reasoning, according to the company, comes down to scale. Demand for Claude has been rising fast, and the way third-party tools consume resources doesn’t align with how subscriptions were originally designed.

"We've been working hard to meet the increase in demand for Claude, and our subscriptions weren't built for the usage patterns of these third-party tools."

He added:

"Capacity is a resource we manage thoughtfully, and we are prioritising our customers using our products and API."

In short, Anthropic is prioritising direct users over those accessing the system through external layers.

What Changes For Users

For existing subscribers, Anthropic says it will issue a one-time credit equivalent to their monthly plan. After that, access to tools like OpenClaw won’t disappear completely—but it will no longer be bundled in.

Users can still continue using such tools, but only through additional paid usage bundles or by switching to API-based access.

"You can still use these tools with your Claude login via extra usage bundles... or with a Claude API key."

That effectively shifts third-party usage from an included feature to a paid add-on.

OpenClaw Creator Pushes Back

The decision hasn’t gone down well with everyone—especially those building in the open ecosystem.

Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw, publicly criticised the move, suggesting it reflects a broader pattern.

"Funny how timings match up, first they copy some popular features into their closed harness, then they lock out open source."

He also hinted at the impact this could have on adoption:

"We have many users who only signed up... because of OpenClaw."

That highlights just how closely tools like OpenClaw were tied to Anthropic’s growth among developers.

A Bigger Pattern Emerging

This isn’t the first time Anthropic has tightened access. Recently, it also reduced Cloud session limits, restricting how often users could run sessions and how many tokens they could use during peak hours.

Taken together, these changes point to a clear direction: the company is trying to control infrastructure strain while scaling demand.

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There’s also a broader industry angle here. OpenClaw, which launched in November 2025, quickly gained traction as an open-source AI agent, even raising concerns among enterprise security teams.

Adding another twist, Steinberger joined OpenAI earlier this year, putting him on the other side of an increasingly competitive AI ecosystem.

Right now, this doesn’t feel like just a policy update. It feels like part of a bigger shift, one where AI companies are slowly drawing stricter boundaries between open experimentation and controlled, monetised platforms.


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