# Claude API 30 Hacker News commenters recommended Claude API and 71 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months. **Verdict:** Developers build apps and automate work on pay-as-you-go billing with prompt caching and clear key setup; critics cite frequent outages and unannounced changes. ## Why people recommend it - Good output quality for coding and tasks (4 comments): "Claude is weirdly good at generating functional game logic from vague prompts" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46185526)) "Anthropic/OAI/Google "just work" and you get what it says on the tin" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47545532)) "Claude performed better on legal nuance" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46767265)) - Pay-as-you-go billing with no usage caps (3 comments): "It is the simple no hassle way to get around any issue you are having, pay the API cost and you will have no limitations!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47742341)) "Just move to API billing if not getting enough subsidized compute is that big a deal for you?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48041298)) "If subscriptions are for humans and API is for automation, fine." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47635441)) - Prompt caching lowers repeat costs (2 comments): "prompt caching on fixed system prompts cut my Anthropic bill by ~60% overnight" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48058066)) "caching has to be specifically managed by the client with Anthropic" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48292307)) - Direct requests and full prompt control (2 comments): "Requests go directly from your app to the Claude API; Apple is not in the request path and does not see prompts or responses." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48546190)) "you keep control over how and where you run your prompts" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47642121)) ## What people warn about - High costs and short cache limits (3 comments): "If that was true, then getting equivalent usage of the API without claude.ai and Claude Code should cost less , not more ." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47077340)) "Claude's stingy cache TTL of 5 minutes (unless you up it to 1h at a sizeable increase in token cost) for API billing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50238655)) "people don't want to pay the 10-50x price increase that Anthropic charges for credits" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49763286)) - Frequent outages and rising downtime (2 comments): "without guardrails and good engineering practices the number of incidents, downtime is increasing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48646496)) "Clearly they just want to be down all the time. They have the ability to throttle down traffic." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49416546)) - Breaking changes and unannounced edits (2 comments): "frequently makes undocumented changes and only publishes acknowledgement of change after users complain" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47881421)) "The breaking API changes are frustrating, especially the one that removes forced tool use." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49526912)) - Account bans and refusals to engage (2 comments): "they are banning for financial economic interests, not nominal alleged contractual violations, so Anthropic is not sympathetic" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46551771)) "I am unable to access claude api at all and never used any of the banned bots on the account." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47966804)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Mistral](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mistral-large-4.md): 314 recommend - [DeepSeek API](https://hackerapproved.com/p/deepseek-api.md): 171 recommend - [OpenAI API](https://hackerapproved.com/p/openai-models.md): 166 recommend - [Anthropic API](https://hackerapproved.com/p/anthropic-api.md): 58 recommend - [System One Models by TypeSafe](https://hackerapproved.com/p/system-one-models.md): 37 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://claude.com/platform/api) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Claude API", https://hackerapproved.com/p/claude-api/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).