April 22, 2026
Are tokens the new hours?
Long-time list member and Umbraco expert Heather Floyd wrote in to share an article about the changing economics of AI assistants (shared with permission, lightly edited for clarity):
Heather
Hi Jonathan!
I saw this today:
Anthropic closes door on subscription use of OpenClaw
Looks like the major model companies are feeling the squeeze from OpenClaw. Do you use “cheaper” models for your tasks?
Jonathan
Funny you should ask! I’m currently in the process of switching from Claude to something cheaper because the price with Claude has jumped from $200/mo to about $50-100/day, which obviously changes the economics of what is worth having my claw handle.
I don’t mind paying more, but I need it to be a fixed monthly amount for “unlimited” usage. Otherwise, I have to make too many decisions about what I ask it to do, and it becomes more trouble than it’s worth.
IOW - my experience of Claude switched from “monthly retainer” to “hourly biller” and hourly stinks ;-)
Heather
Having such a price jump does put a damper on things, for sure. I guess you’ll have to reevaluate the “value” you are getting
Jonathan
Absolutely!
But the more important dynamic for me is uncertainty.
I am now forced to blindly make a purchase decision every time I ask my AI agent to do something. The fear of a giant surprise bill overshadows whatever value it’s creating.
It’s just like hourly billing... the buyer can’t get a price up front. They only know how much something costs AFTER it’s done, which is too late.
Heather
Agreed. There isn’t any reasonable way to pre-determine the pricing for a given prompt, and thus the irritating blindness.
Good luck finding an alternative model!
Jonathan
Thanks!
BTW - It’s totally fine to say no, but... may I share our thread from today with the list?
Heather
Go right ahead
Thanks to Heather for writing in and agreeing to share our thread!
My current take on things?
The hard economics and squishy psychology of AI “tokenomics” are probably going to slosh around quite a bit for a while.
If I had to make a prediction, I’d bet fifty bucks that at least one of the big players will end up offering AT&T-ish fixed-price monthly plans for typical usage bands, and handle overages with throttling instead of upcharges.
We’ll see!
Yours,
—J