The Information reports Anthropic ends its enterprise discounts the moment a customer hits the token cap in the contract

The bill for going one token over your Claude contract is now the full list price, according to reporting in The Information. On 28 September, the outlet published an article saying that Anthropic ends its enterprise customers' negotiated discounts the moment they use up the tokens they paid for, and that this has given OpenAI room to sell the same customers on a softer policy. Anthropic and OpenAI have not commented on the specifics in public.

The Information cites managers at three software firms that buy AI from both Anthropic and OpenAI. Each said the same thing: Anthropic's contracts include a hard cap, and once that cap is hit, the discount does not carry through to the next token. The reporting frames this as unusual for a market where large-commitment customers typically expect overage to be priced somewhere between the discounted rate and the list rate rather than jumping to full price on the day they run out.

What the reporting says the two vendors are doing

The Information's summary line is that Anthropic is taking a hard line on discounts once customers use up all the tokens they purchased, and that OpenAI is taking a more flexible approach with customers who commit to spending millions of dollars a year on the products. Both companies offer volume discounts to those large enterprise buyers.

The article names no dollar figures for a specific customer, no percentage cliff between discounted and list rates, and no specific overage terms from OpenAI's side. Every claim above is attributed to those three managers. Neither Anthropic nor OpenAI is quoted in the excerpt available outside the paywall.

Where a team should look first

A contract-level pricing change is invisible in the API dashboard until you hit it, so the useful check is administrative. If you are on a discounted Claude enterprise contract, three things are worth pulling before the next planning cycle. First, the exact wording of the overage clause in your current agreement: whether the discount applies past the cap, or whether the list rate takes over immediately. Second, your usage curve for the last three months, projected against the cap. Third, the equivalent clause in any OpenAI proposal on the table, since the reporting says that clause is where the two vendors are competing.

The other useful move is to ask both sales teams to spell out, in writing, the price of the next token past the cap. The practical difference between the two vendors, if the reporting holds, shows up on the day the cap is crossed, in the size of the surprise bill for that token onwards.

Source

• Anthropic Moves to Cut Off Discounts When Customers Hit Their Cap, The Information, 28 September 2026 (paywalled)