Claude.ai and API unavailable [fixed]

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Frequent outages and degraded performance at Claude.ai are pushing developers to question Anthropic’s reliability and pricing, especially for those trying to build businesses on top of its APIs. Many report shifting coding workloads to alternatives like OpenAI’s Codex, Bedrock-hosted Claude, or local models, arguing that models now feel interchangeable and that uptime, openness, and predictable behavior matter more than small capability differences. Others express concern that rising costs, stricter limits, and opaque changes are eroding the goodwill Claude once enjoyed, while also voicing skepticism that glowing user reports about competing tools may include astroturfing in a rapidly commercializing AI market.

Outage and Reliability Concerns

  • Users report a “major outage” across Claude web, API, Code, and Design, sometimes unable even to sign in.
  • Uptime is criticized as approaching “single nine” (99%) and even “five eights” (98.68%), seen as unacceptable for critical workflows.
  • Some still report almost no meaningful downtime personally, indicating uneven impact or usage patterns.

Impact on Workflows and Businesses

  • Multiple commenters say they can’t reliably run a business on Claude APIs or subscriptions given frequent incidents and rate-limit issues.
  • Some treat outages as a cue to stop working or even “go for a walk,” while others are alarmed at this level of dependency on LLMs.

Comparisons: Claude vs Codex/OpenAI and Others

  • Many are switching or hedging with Codex / GPT‑5.x, describing it as more reliable, matter‑of‑fact, and less whimsical.
  • Opinions differ: some find Codex code quality and reasoning clearly worse than Claude Opus; others say it “just works,” manages context better, and disconnects less.
  • Several use both: Claude for planning/design/reviews, Codex for implementation and run‑management, even orchestrating multi-agent “swarms.”
  • Alternatives mentioned include GitHub tools, other model providers, and local models (e.g., Qwen).

Model Quality and Version Changes

  • Strong criticism of newer Claude versions (e.g., 4.7) as slower, more opaque, more “cocky,” and less responsive to correction versus 4.5/4.6.
  • Some still praise 4.6 via API but avoid 4.7. Others feel Claude has become lazier, less careful, and more prone to deflection.

Pricing, Value, and Strategy

  • Perception that Claude is becoming more expensive, less reliable, and less performant simultaneously, eroding subscription value.
  • Some argue price hikes make sense under high demand; others say competition offering more value will win.
  • Amazon Bedrock is mentioned as an alternative path to Claude models with potentially better uptime, though tradeoffs (e.g., web features) are debated and somewhat unclear.

Multi-Model Stacks, Harnesses, and Tooling

  • Several advocate diversifying across providers and using routing systems that fail over between Claude, Codex, and others.
  • Discussion of agent harnesses, prompt frameworks (e.g., “superpowers”), and memory systems that normalize behavior across models.
  • Frustration that Claude subscriptions are blocked from third‑party harnesses; this pushes some to other tools that allow multi-model use.

Local / Self‑Hosted Approaches

  • A subset is moving to fully local models for reliability and control, accepting lower raw capability in exchange for independence from outages.

Community Sentiment and Meta-Discussion

  • Some sympathize with Anthropic as a fast-growing company wrestling with novel infrastructure; others mock “vibe coded” reliability and “enshittification.”
  • There is skepticism that many glowing or negative anecdotes about particular vendors might be astroturfing, given the market’s size and stakes.

Specific Technical Issues Reported

  • Multiple users report Claude Code/Design failures like [unknown] missing EndStreamResponse after a few prompts, even after the main outage is marked resolved.