Paying for Claude App vs Paying for Tokens

AI
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I see more and more smart people in this community talk about using Claude as an app. I’m using Claude as my primary tool, but I pay for only the tokens used. With two people we used $15-20 over the course of a few months, even with the little bit of coding I’ve been doing again lately.

I use it through BoltAI a chat interface (available via SetApp), Zed a modern development platform and occasionally via DevonThink and ObsidianCopilot.

What is that the Claude app, provides that justifies $20/mth? (As far as I can it won’t support the DevonThink or Obsidian uses)

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I use the same setup as yourself, but I will occasionally use the Claude app without a paid plan to get the artifacts feature.

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Thanks for this tip. I have a Setapp subscription so I can get it and play with it.

I just looked at their website. Two questions.

  • Can you use Claude and/or Chatgpt projects?
  • Can you use an integration to Google Drive?
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Effectively, your asking the inverse of the question I asked in: Paying for Claude App vs Paying for Tokens

In Bolt I don’t think you can use Claude Projects, they do have their own folder system and prompts per folder.

Google Drive - No idea.

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Artifacts, Collaborative Projects, webmail search, Sharepoint integration, chats with colleagues, iOS app.

And it comes with credits for API use, so I use it with DEVONthink too.

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That is very helpful - thanks. Collabrative Projects and Webmail Search might be very helpful.

Sadly, Chat across Projects is only available on a Team Plan. (At least from what I can see.)

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That I didn’t know. I’ve used OpenRouter for credits, so I can choose which AI I’m using, or compare results. My usage is generally far below a monthly fee and certainly much lower than subscribing to them all.

I’ve recently received a one year academic subscription to Gemini for free… its results are variable! I like Claude’s style…

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One question that came to mind was: what about security? When I’m using a third party service to route my questions/ideas/conversations to an AI system it moves through their servers and infrastructure, right?
Given the potential personal or sensitive data that some people talk about with AI systems nowadays I wouldn’t want another player in between that I would have to „monitor“ its security standards and trust them as well besides the actual AI provider. Or am I getting something wrong here?

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What subscription do you have that comes with API credits? Mine does not—at least not for general use. I get a capped allotment for Claude Code, but not for anything else. I have to buy API credits separately if I want to use them for, say, Devonthink.

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Security and Privacy - the whole GenAI space is a minefield here.

BoltAI - they connect directly to the Al provider from your computer, no middleman, so no increased risk.
Open Router - no idea, it could be very secure but I’ve never used it.

Model Provider - OpenAI, Gemini and likely Anthropic are all the real risk. OpenAI stores your chat in plain text for months; Gemini stores your chat history for 18 months and presumably Anthropic is similar to OpenAI. I don’t know about if Gemini and Anthropic encrypt the data. I know OpenAI does not, because it came out in a court case where they were subpoenaed to hand over chat history.

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We have a corporate account (Claude Team? I think), so I don’t know if its included in a flat sub or if we pay more, that wasn’t really my point. I just meant I can use API where needed if I want to with that account.

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It seems like you now have to have a Pro or other paid plan to be able to create an API code. This makes the instructions on the BoltAI site for using Claude outdated. Has anyone upgraded to a paid account, generated an API code, then dropped back to the free and pay per use by API? That’s what I thought could be possible with the approach described in this thread.

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I’m not on a monthly subscription, I just have prepaid credits. I would also note that apparently those credits expire after 12 months, for both OpenAI and Anthropic, so don’t top up too much lest it mostly expire.

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I assume you can do it via the developer platform: Claude Developer Platform | Claude

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And the recently introduce Claude Custom Skills is extremely useful

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Thank you for that information. So at least BoltAI doesn’t seem to be kind of a man in the middle and as for the providers it comes down to „pick your poison“ it seems :smirk:.

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You don’t need a paid plan to create an API code. You do need to create a developer account, but you don’t need to be a capital-D developer to do so, of course. Once you’ve created your account, you can get an API code and buy credits. The minimum purchase is in the $5-$10 dollar range, which you can top up on an as-needed basis.

Start on this page. There should also be a chart laying out how much tokens cost based on which Claude model you use, etc.

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Thanks to you and @mlevison for the help, I was able to buy some credits and start playing around with it.

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When I’m using a third party service to route

OpenRouter allows you to select only models and providers that do not use your data

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Followup on this. A recent ATP episode had an ad for Claude Pro and 50% discount for 3 months:

Based on the comments here and the possibility of using Claude Code I decided to sign up for the 3 month trial and see how it goes.

In addition, Teresa Torres (Agile Product focused person) posted a good article about using Claude Code for non-coding tasks:

Also on the subject of cost. If you’re coding with an AI tool using API tokens, you might use a lot more tokens. This article, is what prompted me to work out the math:

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