That is not the point. That is a mere technicality.

You signed a contract. If you don't ignore the terms of the contract to use the product in a way that is explicitly prohibited, you're abusing the product. It is as simple as that.

They offer a separate product (API) if you don't like the terms of the contract.

Also, if you really want to get technical: the limits are under the assumption that caching works as intended, which requires control of the client. 3P clients suck at caching and increase costs. But that is not the overarching point.

> Creating lock-in through discount pricing is anti-competitive.

Literally everyone does this. OpenAI is doing this with Codex, far more than Anthropic is. It's not great but players much bigger than Anthropic are using discount pricing to create an anti-competitive advantage.