alt Hacker NewsThe quote from Forbes in the article is a claim that a subscription could use up to 5k worth of tokens.
Which is different from actaully costing 5k in tokens per Claude Code user. As users won't max out their subscriptions. And there doesn't seem to be any stronger claim elsewhere in the article.
But the title is about a strawman that it would cost Anthropic 5k per user which it seems nobody claimed.
OK, I see what you're saying, thanks for clarifying.
But headlines are short. This is so common even in mainstream news, I can't really complain about it. Especially when the full claim with "up to" is printed in the very first paragraph.
And the entire point of the article is not about which users max out their subscriptions. It's about conflating retail prices with actual costs.
So maybe the headline would be more accurate with "up to" in it, but the article itself is totally fine, and does not hinge on that distinction. The article is certainly not about a strawman.