⚡️ Today Anthropic introduces separate billing for Claude SDK - $100/month per account. I moved in advance, and in the process discovered something most developers will miss until they get the bill.
Details of the switch to Claude CLI:
A month ago Anthropic announced: starting June 15, all calls through Claude SDK go on separate billing. Sounded like you just flip a config and forget about it. In reality it turned out to be nothing like that. Many client projects were built entirely on Claude SDK - I had to migrate them first, and only then deal with my own system. The process took way longer than I expected - especially where the SDK was baked deep into the automation layers.
What I found during the system audit:
✅ Client projects on Claude SDK - the first and most labor-intensive migration priority
⚡️ claude -p in automation tools is also Claude SDK, and there are way more of these calls inside the system than it seems at first glance
💡 $100/month per account starting today - under real production load it won't last even a few days
The biggest surprise was exactly claude -p. Automation tools call it where you don't expect it and don't even think it's an SDK call. Run grep across all your configs and scripts right now. Makefiles, bash scripts, workflows - that's where claude -p shows up most. Migrating one process takes 10-15 minutes if you know where to look. Find it and move it to plain Claude CLI.
Why this is just the beginning:
I expect the screws to keep getting tighter. Even the methods I'm using right now - Anthropic will eventually change or cancel those too. This isn't paranoia, it's a pattern: every few months the terms change and you have to move again.
The only way out is to build a system that doesn't depend on a specific API. So my next stop is a multi-LLM architecture where each process calls its own model. Different tasks - different models. I've almost built a system like that, and it's a whole other level of independence from any provider.
⭐️ Simon Willison, developer and author of a blog on hands-on LLM practice:
"Every AI API you use today is technical debt with an unknown due date. Build systems that can swap models like gloves - otherwise you're working on the provider's terms, not your own"
💡 Deadline: June 15, 2026 - that's today
🗒 I've almost built a multi-LLM system where each agent calls its own model for its own task - I'll tell you more soon. If you don't think about architecture right now, later you'll be moving in a panic under new prices and restrictions. Better to do it with a cool head