A few days ago, a Reddit thread blew up about “the guy who consumed $50,000 worth of Claude Code tokens in 30 days on a $200 plan.”
👉 That guy was me.
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How It Happened
Claude Code currently offers a $200/month plan with:
- Generous usage (effectively no hard caps)
- Access to Ultrathink and Opus
- 24/7 background commands (added in v1.0.71)
I leaned heavily on these features — but always within the official terms — to build real, user-facing products. By doing so, I unintentionally became the #1 token consumer worldwide.
Some people on Reddit called this abuse. Personally, I don’t think so:
- I didn’t hack anything.
- I didn’t bypass limits.
- I simply used the service as it was offered.
If anything, I see it as proof of how powerful Claude Code can be when you treat it not just as a coding assistant, but as a full-scale development engine.
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What I Built With Claude Code (and a bit of Cursor 😉)
Here are three of the products I launched:
A free-to-use AI image generator.https://raphael.app
- No login required
- Unlimited image generation for everyone
- VIP users can unlock higher-fidelity models and pro features
This lowers the barrier for anyone to try AI art without worrying about credits or accounts.
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🗣️ AnyVoice
A voice cloning platform that works with only 3 seconds of audio.https://anyvoice.net
- Produces highly realistic, near-indistinguishable voices
- Used for content creation, dubbing, gaming, and personal assistants
- Extremely fast and easy to use
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🧊 Fast3D
A text-to-3D and image-to-3D tool, optimized for speed.https://fast3d.io
- Generates 3D models in seconds
- Accessible to developers, designers, and hobbyists
- Aims to simplify what used to take hours or days
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All three products are already profitable and sustaining a small company. We also have two more major launches coming before September.
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The Bigger Question
So here’s what I’d love to hear from the dev community:
- When a SaaS offers generous usage, is pushing it to the limit “abuse” or just smart use?
- Should companies celebrate their power users — or restrict them?
- And more broadly, what does this say about the future of building businesses on top of AI tools?
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💬 I’d love to hear your take. Do you see me as an abuser or a power user?
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