GSA expands OneGov agreement with Anthropic, touting steep discounts
With the end of an already-extended deal in sight, the General Services Administration has secured an expanded OneGov agreement with Anthropic for its Claude models.
GSA said Tuesday that federal agencies will have access to a 40% discount on token-based usage across Claude models with consumption-based pricing and no minimum purchase required.
Anthropic is in an ongoing legal battle with the Pentagon, though its relationship with officials elsewhere in the federal government appears to be solid.
The new OneGov agreements have been highly anticipated as agencies contend with dependency on promotional pricing. Anthropic initially extended its original deal until the end of October, offering a $1 per user offering for Claude for Government. The new agreement follows the lead of OpenAI, which switched to consumption-based pricing last month as part of its new OneGov deal.
Consumption-based pricing has rapidly replaced seat-based pricing in private-sector enterprises, and the trend is bleeding into the federal government. GSA sees the pricing model as one that “scales with actual use.” Rather than solve AI’s cost problem, however, it introduces a new one.
Analyst firm Gartner said consumption-based pricing makes it difficult to predict costs as vendors lack transparency into how token consumption is calculated and billed. Analyst firm Forrester has echoed the sentiment.
“A small group of power users can drive a disproportionate share of costs, turning successful AI adoption into both a productivity win and a budgeting challenge,” Tracy Woo, principal analyst at Forrester, said in a blog post in August.
No details have been shared regarding Google’s Gemini OneGov deal. The company is currently offering access to Gemini for $0.47 per agency with an expiration date of Nov. 15.
“As offers expire, GSA will renew agreements where appropriate and work to ensure continued access to critical tools while delivering the best value for taxpayers,” GSA said in a statement.
