Anthropic temporarily blocked access to Claude for developer OpenClaw, but shortly after lifted the restriction.

Short summary of events

Anthropic temporarily blocked Peter Steinberger’s account—the creator of the OpenClaw project—just hours after the company changed its terms for working with Claude. After a stir on X (formerly Twitter), access was restored.

What happened
1. Subscription policy change

Last week Anthropic announced that the Claude subscription no longer covers third‑party “wrappers,” including OpenClaw. Such services must now be paid separately via the Claude API based on actual usage volume.

2. Account block

In response, Steinberger received a notification of a block due to “suspicious” activity and posted on X that maintaining OpenClaw’s compatibility with Anthropic models would become more difficult.

3. Anthropic’s reaction

A company engineer replied that he had not previously blocked users for working with OpenClaw and offered assistance. The reason for the unblock remains unknown.

Why the subscription changed
Anthropic explained that the standard subscription is designed for typical requests and scenarios, while wrappers can consume significantly more compute resources:

- continuous reasoning loops;
- automatic task repetition;
- integration with many third‑party tools.

Therefore separate payment is required for such workloads.

Steinberger’s stance
Steinberger rejected Anthropic’s explanation and noted that after revising its pricing policy the company first moved some popular features into its own closed wrapper, then “cut off” open‑source solutions. He did not provide details, but it may have involved new capabilities of Cowork and Claude Dispatch—tools for remote agent management.

Additional nuances
- Competitive context – Steinberger works at OpenAI, which competes with Anthropic.
- Answers to questions – He said he uses Claude only for testing so that OpenClaw updates do not break users’ Claude experience.
- Role in OpenClaw – His job is to ensure compatibility with any AI‑model provider and to work on product strategy within OpenAI.
- Claude popularity – OpenClaw users tend to choose Claude over ChatGPT more often.

Conclusion
Peter Steinberger’s account block was a reaction to Anthropic’s subscription terms revision, after which the company quickly restored access in response to public pressure. Questions about how exactly the rules changed and which features were “cut off” remain open, but it is clear that OpenClaw continues to strive for broad compatibility with various AI platforms.