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SemiAnalysis has calculated how big that gap really is. After testing subscription tiers from both OpenAI and Anthropic – running long-horizon coding and agentic tasks until weekly limits were exhausted – the firm found that the cost of theoretical maximum usage of these plans if priced at standard API rates far exceeds what users actually pay.

A $200 ChatGPT Pro 20x subscription could cost as much as $14,000 in API pricing if fully utilized. Anthropic's Claude Max 20x plan, also priced at $200 per month, has a comparable ceiling, with potential usage totaling roughly $8,000 in token costs.

Those figures help explain why utilization rates matter so much to the AI companies offering them. According to SemiAnalysis, Anthropic breaks even on Claude Pro and Claude Max 5x at around 20% utilization. OpenAI's margin is thinner. It begins losing money on ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Pro 5x once usage climbs above 11.4%.

The economics get tighter at the high end. Anthropic reaches zero gross margin at roughly 10% utilization on its top-tier plans, while OpenAI crosses into negative territory at just 5.7%. It doesn't take extreme use for these subscriptions to turn unprofitable.

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