Replit says it no longer works with Anthropic and calls ChatGPT better for coding, a claim insiders dispute

Replit, the browser-based coding platform, is no longer working with Anthropic, its chief executive Amjad Masad said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt this week, TechCrunch reported on 16 October.

"It was a decision based on both cost, partnership, and performance," Masad said. He added that Replit's internal and public benchmarks show OpenAI's models do better at building "vibe-coded" apps from scratch: "I think ChatGPT is better now." Replit announced a partnership with OpenAI in August.

The split is disputed

A person familiar with the partnership told TechCrunch it was still in place. Replit's own website, a blog post from late September and a post by a Replit employee on X suggested the company was still using Anthropic's Claude models a few weeks before Masad spoke. TechCrunch said it had asked Replit to clarify. Neither company had given a fuller statement at the time of writing.

Why it matters

AI coding tools are now one of the biggest businesses in AI, and which model sits behind a tool decides how good, how fast and how expensive it is for the person using it. Masad said enterprise customers made up about 2% of Replit's revenue last year and about 15% this year, and more than half of revenue now comes from businesses.

He also argued that AI agents need a proper "habitat" before they can be trusted: orchestration, error recovery, sandboxing and identity controls.

What it means for users in Pakistan

If you build or host apps on Replit and pay for a plan, the change may show up as different default models inside the agent; your projects and code stay where they are. Subscriptions billed in dollars on a Pakistani card carry extra tax and bank charges, which you can work out with the freelancer tax calculator and the currency converter.

Disclosure: this story was written with the help of an AI model made by Anthropic, one of the companies named.