OpenAI Is Giving Big Discounts to Win Anthropic's Top Accounts

In May, Anthropic's models handled 57% of the coding work done by Rippling's engineers, and OpenAI's handled 16%. By late October those shares had flipped to 52% OpenAI and 18% Anthropic, Rippling chief executive Parker Conrad told The Information. The publication reported on October 24 that OpenAI is cutting prices to win Anthropic's largest accounts. Conrad put the shift down to cost. DataCamp chief executive Jonathan Cornelissen said OpenAI's pricing cut DataCamp's AI costs by 80% to 90%, The Decoder relayed. (That range is DataCamp's own saving, not a discount OpenAI advertised.)

According to one person familiar with the deal, OpenAI offered Replit more than 30% off a contract worth over $100 million a year, AI Weekly reported from The Information's story. Anthropic reportedly declined to extend Replit's earlier discount unless Replit committed to spend more. Replit hasn't confirmed the terms.

The two largest model sellers now run opposite motions on the same customers. OpenAI prices the account it wants to win, and Anthropic prices the commitment it can book. Call it the rival quote. The discount only shows up when the other lab is in the room, so a renewal signed without one probably paid close to list.

OpenAI is selling against named accounts, and Anthropic is pricing the commit

OpenAI is running a displacement motion, the same play an enterprise sales team runs against an entrenched incumbent. It picks accounts where Anthropic is strong, prices them one at a time and, in at least one case, ties the price to adopting its own tools. Techpresso's summary of The Information's story says DataCamp's discount was about 40%, on the condition that its roughly 200 employees use Codex instead of Claude Code or OpenCode. The discount buys model volume and a coding seat at the same time.

The motion has been building since spring. On May 13, OpenAI offered two free months of Codex to enterprises that signed up new users within 30 days. On June 10, the Wall Street Journal reported that OpenAI was weighing significant token price cuts to win Anthropic's customers, with nothing decided. October's report shows the cuts arriving account by account instead of on a public price list.

Anthropic's terms run the other way. In late September, TNW reported, citing The Information, that Anthropic ends a customer's enterprise discount once the contracted tokens run out. That discount is often around 15% off list for a large commitment. The customer then renegotiates or pays list. OpenAI reportedly gives the rest of the month plus one more before list applies. Replit's experience fits, since its earlier discount came back only with a bigger commitment. It's the same push toward commitments we described when Anthropic's draft prospectus and SpaceX's filing went public.

Switching has also been quick. Rippling moved most of its coding volume to OpenAI in about five months. Replit moved its default model to OpenAI in mid-October, and most of its users never change the default. Ramp's data put the share of businesses changing AI model providers in a month at a record 8% in September.

Kyle Poyar, who writes Growth Unhinged, gave software founders a matching warning on October 20. Pricing that used to be revised every 18 months, he wrote, "could be out of date within 6 months," and credit and token pricing is heading toward commoditization.

Anthropic's growth is the case against reading this as a rout

Anthropic is still growing fast. It told prospective investors that third-quarter revenue rose about 45% to $16.8 billion, according to reports on a private meeting. A lab growing that fast can hold its price and let some accounts go, and its discount policy suggests that's the choice it's made. The customers that moved haven't fully left, either. Replit still lists Claude models, and a person familiar with the partnership told TechCrunch it's still in place. Rippling still runs 18% of its coding work on Anthropic, and Replit's own chief executive gave performance as one of three reasons for moving, alongside cost and the partnership.

OpenAI pays for this too. It's buying share out of its own margin while both companies prepare to go public. The price set to win a rival's customer this quarter is the one a lab will most want to raise once the customer has moved and the rival has stopped calling. So the length of the discount matters as much as its size.

What this means for AI buyers and the vendors building on them

Before you sign or renew any AI commitment, get a written quote from the second lab for the same workload, even if you have no plan to move. October's report suggests a competing quote, as much as the size of the account, is what produced the discounts. If coding is your big line item, a two-week split test like the one Rippling ran gives that quote something real to price against.

Then write down what happens past the commitment. Under the terms TNW described, Anthropic's discount ends when the contracted tokens do, so a team that grows faster than planned pays list on the overage. Ask for the discount to cover usage above the commit for the rest of the term (TNW said the cloud providers usually allow it).

Ask how long any switching discount lasts and what the renewal price will be. A first-year price with no second-year term is a promotion, and you should treat it as one, the same caution we gave on usage-priced AI contracts that the market can undercut before year two.

If your product runs on one lab, you're now on the other side of this table. Your model costs just became negotiable, and your customers read the same reports. A vendor that can say which model runs its product, and what it does with a cheaper rate, will have the easier renewal conversation.

Our bet is that by the end of March 2027, either Anthropic cuts the published price of at least one Claude model aimed at coding, or a named company says on the record that Anthropic matched an OpenAI offer to keep its business. If neither happens, Anthropic will have shown that it can hold list against a rival that's paying customers to leave.

OpenAI prices the account it wants to win, and Anthropic prices the commitment it can book.

Before you sign or renew any AI commitment, get a written quote from the second lab for the same workload, and ask how long any switching discount lasts and what it renews at.

By Business of GTM