Just now, a historic "closed-door" event occurred in the AI community. Anthropic has officially banned access to OpenClaw using its own subscription plan! Boris Cherny, the creator of Claude Code, announced: Starting at 3 PM Eastern Time on April 4th (3 AM Beijing Time on April 5th), Claude will block all third-party tools; users can only access these tools through additional subscription plans or APIs. This means that tens of thousands of developers and startups who relied on OpenClaw to improve their efficiency have suddenly lost the benefits of "unlimited" usage and have been forced to switch to the extremely expensive "pay-as-you-go" model. Loyal Claude users of OpenClaw have taken a heavy blow. The timing of this announcement is also quite intriguing—Peter Steinberger, the father of OpenClaw, had recently jumped ship to OpenAI, making Anthropic's intentions crystal clear! This can be seen as a commercial revenge disguised as policy. The news quickly topped the Hacker News charts in the developer community. Let us remember this day: April 4, 2026. From this day forward, the AI industry will shift from open collaboration to a landscape dominated by giants. Claude's official email confirms that Anthropic is targeting OpenClaw this time! This policy will be enforced first on OpenClaw starting April 4th, but applies to all third-party toolchains and will soon be extended to more tools. As a gesture of goodwill, Anthropic has provided a one-time subsidy equal to one month's subscription fee. It is valid until April 17th. Note the timing of Anthropic's email: April 3rd, a Friday evening—the perfect time for internet companies to release bad news. Anthropic has sent a notification to tens of thousands of OpenClaw users: Starting tomorrow, your Claude subscription quota can no longer be used for OpenClaw. If you want to continue, you will be charged on a pay-as-you-go basis.

https://x.com/VadimStrizheus/status/2040199979927482618
After three months of siege, the final blow has finally fallen.
The Trigger: A Game-Changing "Defection" Why would Anthropic, at this particular moment, so ruthlessly attack an open-source tool? Because Peter Steinberger, the key figure behind OpenClaw and the "father of lobster," joined their arch-rival, OpenAI. Previously, Peter Steinberger was one of the developers who best understood the Claude ecosystem; his OpenClaw made Claude incredibly user-friendly. Now, however, for Anthropic, OpenClaw has become a "Trojan horse" in the enemy camp. Anthropic believes OpenClaw is no longer a purely efficiency tool, but an "intelligence gatherer" infiltrating their own backyard. Since the founder has joined OpenAI, your tools can no longer mooch off my subscription quota. Peter himself also spoke out helplessly, implying that Anthropic was "closing the door and beating the dog," "freeloading" the open-source community: "Dave Morin (a board member of OpenClaw) and I tried to persuade Anthropic to remain calm. But in the end, all we could get was to postpone that day by a week."

https://x.com/steipete/status/2040209434019082522
Developers are lamenting everywhere Budgets exploded overnight