Drew Dawson spent $449 on his AI subscriptions in May. He’s also a college junior.
The 23-year-old isn’t some mega-coder, burning through tokens to build heaps of software. He’s not a computer science major; Dawson studies philosophy, politics, and economics at the University of Southern California.
Rather, Dawson has a variety of income streams, from a college prep program to gigs on UpWork. He uses the Claude Max plan to help complete those tasks, though he recently switched to ChatGPT Pro.
The hefty bill came from one month of overlap.
“Obviously, $400 a month is quite steep,” Dawson said, “but I’ve been able to recoup it through side projects.”
Drew Dawson
Dawson is one of many who subscribe to Anthropic’s most expensive subscription, Claude Max. For the everyday user who asks ChatGPT or Claude for a recipe idea, spending $200 a year on AI may sound obscene. Claude Max is significantly higher than many other consumer subscriptions, like Netflix (up to $26.99 a month) or Spotify (up to $21.99 for a family plan).
Those who use AI in every part of their lives say the triple-digit monthly cost is common sense, though, and that they’d be willing to spend more. Business Insider asked eight of these subscribers why they pay.
The big (personal) spenders of AI
Sterling Cobb pays over $1,000 a month for AI.
The 38-year-old CTO of FlowStay has three Claude Max accounts, a ChatGPT Pro account, and a Google AI Ultra account. He orchestrates and rotates the three plans to make sure he rakes in all the tokens.
“I think it’s necessary,” Cobb said. “I think I’m doing the right thing and staying ahead of the curve.”
Most AI users’ bills aren’t reaching the thousands, but many are using similar orchestration techniques.
Dominik Martin pays for the highest Claude plan, plus $20 a month for ChatGPT and $20 a month for Gemini. Like Dawson, Martin said that he recoups the funds through his work. The 29-year-old from southern Germany has “five jobs in parallel,” he said — all in product design.
Dominik Martin
I spoke to Martin before the public launch of Anthropic’s Mythos Fable 5, a model he was excited about. “If it’s going to be as crazy as people think, then I would be down to pay $1,000,” he said. (Fable 5’s launch has since proven controversial, with significant safeguards limiting which tasks the model handles.)
I asked everyone what their ceiling would be. If Anthropic raised its prices, what’s the most you’d be willing to pay? Some, like Martin, listed high-flying sums.
Others stayed in the neighborhood of $200. Vincent Vukovic, a 41-year-old consultant from Stockholm, said he wouldn’t pay more than $250 a month.
“None of the products that I’ve created are generating sufficient revenue to cover the costs for my subscription,” he said.
Devin Hill, a 33-year-old AI engineer from Nashville, predicted the prices could surge to $300-500 a month — a price he said he’d pay. Hill said that his willingness to fork over the cash relied on a “time-money correlation.”
“If you hit a session limit, then you’re back to the stone ages where you’ve got to write it yourself,” he said.
Rebecca Bultsma uses her Claude Max plan for research. The 44-year-old from Calgary has multiple agents running through her $200 Claude and ChatGPT plans. One agent scans relevant articles and social media data to compare them to her research. Another goes through her inbox, and another checks her website.
Bultsma called the two subscriptions the “biggest spend in my life.” The tools help her cut through noise and be more efficient, she said.
“For someone who’s super busy, that efficiency is worth money,” she said. “It ends up being no-brainer math.”
Turning away from Claude
Alyssa Clarcq spends her free time learning to vibe code. The 31-year-old CPA from Tampa started by chatting with Claude, then moved to Claude Cowork, and eventually Claude Code. She sends $200 a month to Anthropic.
She doesn’t want to feel “dependent” on Anthropic, though. She’s been using Codex recently and spending over $100 a month there, too.
“I’m going to start pulling back from Claude,” she said. “I think Claude is getting a little slower and using a bit more tokens than might be needed.”
Clarcq isn’t alone in that feeling. After the launch of Opus 4.7, Anthropic faced backlash for its costliness. Anthropic later said that it found issues with Claude Code, but denied “nerfing” the model.
Shopify product manager Michael Averto is also testing out OpenAI’s products. The 41-year-old from Brooklyn said he worries that Anthropic will face a compute shortage.
Averto said that he’s hitting rate limits. He watches his token-tracking CodexBar “constantly,” trying to “pace himself” and not hit his ceiling.
But he’s hesitant to drop the plan. “It works,” he said. “It’s reliable. It does the thing.”
