I'm not a lawyer - and even if I were I don't know what jurisdiction you're in or what kind of lawyer would be qualified to give you a proper answer to that question.
My personal observation was that when we looked into setting up those monthly subscriptions for some users at a small business in the UK we stopped at the point where they appeared to be offered only under Anthropic's Consumer Terms of Service because those terms clearly state:
"Non-commercial use only. You agree not to use our Services for any commercial or business purposes and we (and our Providers) have no liability to you for any loss of profit, loss of business, business interruption, or loss of business opportunity."
I can see this wording right now at https://www.anthropic.com/legal/consumer-terms but maybe if you're not in the UK you will see different content at that location.
In contrast the API key route appeared to be specifically offered under Anthropic's Commercial Terms of Service and those obviously don't contain the same restriction.
I would be very happy to find that there's some misunderstanding here and Anthropic do actually allow the use of their (very much cheaper) monthly subscriptions instead of API keys for small businesses like ours. But they aren't exactly known for their transparency in either their legal agreements or their billing policies and pricing plans and so until we know better we've chosen to err on the side of caution.
My personal observation was that when we looked into setting up those monthly subscriptions for some users at a small business in the UK we stopped at the point where they appeared to be offered only under Anthropic's Consumer Terms of Service because those terms clearly state:
"Non-commercial use only. You agree not to use our Services for any commercial or business purposes and we (and our Providers) have no liability to you for any loss of profit, loss of business, business interruption, or loss of business opportunity."
I can see this wording right now at https://www.anthropic.com/legal/consumer-terms but maybe if you're not in the UK you will see different content at that location.
In contrast the API key route appeared to be specifically offered under Anthropic's Commercial Terms of Service and those obviously don't contain the same restriction.
I would be very happy to find that there's some misunderstanding here and Anthropic do actually allow the use of their (very much cheaper) monthly subscriptions instead of API keys for small businesses like ours. But they aren't exactly known for their transparency in either their legal agreements or their billing policies and pricing plans and so until we know better we've chosen to err on the side of caution.