One user consumed tens of thousands in model usage on a $200 plan.
That’s from Anthropic’s own admission when they killed Claude Code’s unlimited tier. Not $200 worth of usage. Tens of thousands of dollars on a $200/month plan.
TechCrunch said Cursor hit $500 million ARR. Fastest growing application ever, but still losing money on every power user. When Anthropic rolled out new rate limits, they pointed to their biggest power users as the problem. Some were “running it continuously in the background 24/7”.
These aren’t edge cases. These are the natural consequences of unlimited AI.
This is the paradox of AI economics: the better your product gets, the faster you go bankrupt.
At least if you don’t price it right.
Replit’s reality check
The Information got their hands on Replit’s actual financials. The numbers are magnificent, but not in a good kind of way:
- February 2025: 36% gross margins
- April 2025: -14% gross margins
In two months, they went from barely profitable to paying customers to use their product.
They discovered what every power user eventually discovers: if you’re not rate-limited, you might as well run your agents 24/7. The marginal cost to you is zero. The marginal cost to Replit is everything.
The 10B token man
This one’s from Anthropic’s Claude Code experiment, documented by viberank:
One user used 10 billion tokens in one month.
Why? I believe every code commit triggers a complete rewrite. Every rewrite triggers another commit. An infinite loop of AI talking to itself on Anthropic’s infrastructure, which eventually caused Anthropic to kill it off.
The Windsurf warning
TechCrunch reported what everyone in the valley already knew: Windsurf and Cursor are “absolutely bleeding VC money on every call”.
The specifics, according to their sources:
- Revenue per user: $20/month
- API costs for power users: $80-200/month
- Margin on heavy users: -300% to -500%
Windsurf sold for parts. $82 million ARR but nobody wanted it at any price…
When buyers pay billions for your employees but won’t touch your revenue, you’re not running a business but an extremely expensive training program – so what are you selling exactly?
The industry-wide delusion
Nicholas Charriere, founder of Mocha, told TechCrunch the quiet part out loud: “Margins on all of the ‘code gen’ products are either neutral or negative. They’re absolutely abysmal”.
Read that again – he said all, not some. All.
This is an entire industry subsidizing compute at venture capital’s expense. Like Uber before, and Moviepass before that.
That glorious dumpster fire that let you watch unlimited movies for $9.99/month, and lost $150 per customer per month and thought they’d make it up on volume.
Your path forward
Path 1: The Anthropic retreat
Charge 10x more ($200/month when competitors charge $20).
Add every optimization possible.
Auto-scale from expensive models to cheap ones.
Offload processing to user machines.
Still lose money. Kill unlimited. Pretend it was always the plan. ✌️
Path 2: The Windsurf exit
Burn VC money to subsidize users.
Collect training data.
Hope someone acquires you for the team before the music stops.
Some owners of Windsurf won at that game – the rest lost.
Path 3: The Replit pivot
- January: Outcome-based pricing
- April: Lose money on every task
- July: Switch to effort-based pricing
- Result: 4-5x price increases overnight
The CEO of replit insists unit economics aren’t a problem. The Information’s numbers suggest otherwise.
If Anthropic couldn’t make it work, why will you be able to?
Every founder tells me their free tier is essential.
“It’s our funnel, it’s how we grow”.
Sure, cool, yeah. But if Claude Code at $200/month with Anthropic’s own models couldn’t make unlimited work, why do you think you can do it at $20?
You know you can’t.
Your investors know you can’t (or they’re cheating themselves).
Everyone pretends because admitting it would mean admitting the entire business model is broken.
Your free tier isn’t a growth engine. It’s a time bomb.
And the clock’s ticking louder than you think.
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