How to Get Free Claude API Credits Every Month (and What They Won't Cover)

Claude API credits are a monthly allowance that Anthropic includes with Max and Team subscriptions: $100 per month on Max 5x, $200 on Max 20x, and up to $500 pooled on Team. Claim them once by linking a Claude Console organization to your plan. Credits are deposited into that organization each billing cycle and can be spent on the Claude API, Managed Agents, the Agent SDK, and the playground without adding a card. They do not cover Claude Code, do not roll over, and are not available on Free, Pro, or Enterprise plans.

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Anthropic announced the credits in its Claude Haiku 5.5 launch post on October 7, 2026, and the API credits docs page defines the rules. This guide covers eligibility, claiming credits, supported products, and what the balance buys at current model prices. You need an Anthropic API key from the linked organization. Use Apidog to securely store the key and inspect the usage block on every request.

How much each plan gets

Plan	Monthly credit	Notes
Max 5x	$100	Refreshes each billing cycle
Max 20x	$200	A prorated credit arrives immediately if you upgrade from 5x
Team, Standard seat	$20 per seat	Pooled with the other seats
Team, Premium seat	$100 per seat	Pooled with the other seats
Team pool cap	$500	Hard cap on the combined monthly balance
Nonprofit and Scientists Team plans	Same per-seat amounts	Same $500 cap
Free, Pro, Enterprise	None	Not eligible

For Team plans, the pool is calculated from seats on the plan at the start of the billing month. Anthropic’s example: three Standard seats and two Premium seats receive $260 per month (3 × $20 + 2 × $100). Add another Premium seat, and the next month’s credit becomes $360. Annual plans still receive credits monthly.

For scale, Claude’s pricing page lists Max from $100 per month, so a Max 5x subscriber receives the plan price back as API credit every month.

Who can claim

You must meet all three conditions from the documentation:

• Your plan is Max 5x, Max 20x, or Team, including discounted Nonprofit and Scientists Team plans, and it is active and in good standing.
• New subscribers must wait seven days after starting an eligible plan.
• Plans purchased through the iOS or Android apps are eligible, but you must claim the credit on claude.ai in a web browser.

If the API credits section is missing, the support article says rollout happens “over a few days.” Check again before contacting support.

How to claim the credits

Claiming creates a one-time link between your Claude plan and a Claude Console organization.

You need both required roles:

• Plan side: Max subscriber, or a Team Primary Owner or Owner.
• Console side: Owner, Admin, or Billing role in the organization receiving credits.

1. On claude.ai, open Settings → Billing for a Max plan, or Organization settings → Billing for a Team plan.
2. In the API credits section, select Link organization. Choose an existing Console organization, or create one in the flow, then accept the credit terms.
3. Open Claude Console and go to Settings → Billing. Under Promotional credits, verify the balance and expiry date.
4. Create an API key in that organization and send a test request.

Each plan can link to exactly one Console organization, and each organization can receive credits from only one plan. Support must change the link later, so choose the organization where you will actually build and deploy.

No payment method is required in the Console to use the included credits.

What the credits cover—and what they do not

Product	Covered
Claude API: Messages, streaming, tool use, caching, Batch	Yes
Claude Managed Agents	Yes
Claude Agent SDK run with an API key from the linked organization	Yes
claude -p run with an API key from the linked organization	Yes
Console playground	Yes
Interactive Claude Code: terminal, IDE, desktop, web	No
claude -p while signed in with your Claude plan	No; uses plan limits
Claude Code GitHub Action, IDE extension, or desktop-app runs, even with -p	No; counted as Claude Code
Extra usage in the Claude apps, Claude Code, or Cowork	No
Claude on Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI, Microsoft Foundry, or Claude Platform on AWS	No

The claude -p behavior depends on the billing identity:

• An API key from the linked organization bills as Agent SDK usage and spends API credits.
• A Claude plan login bills against subscription limits.

The credits never change usage limits in Claude or Claude Code. See the Claude Managed Agents guide for the hosted-agent workflow.

How the balance behaves

Timing: Credits arrive shortly after each plan payment is processed. Annual plans receive the deposit monthly.

Spend order: Included credits are spent before purchased credits. Auto-reload checks only the purchased balance, so it can top up while included credit remains.

Expiry: Unused credit expires at the end of the billing cycle. It never rolls over.

Sharing: Every API key and workspace in the linked organization draws from one balance. Isolate experiments in their own workspace and set workspace spend limits to prevent a single test from draining the pool.

Spend caps and tiers: Credit usage counts toward the organization’s monthly spend cap. The cap resets on the first day of the month, while credits refresh on the plan billing date. According to the rate limits page, linked organizations move to at least the Start tier with a $500 cap, or Build with a $1,000 cap when monthly credit exceeds $200. Credit spend does not count toward tier promotion.

When the balance reaches zero: If you have purchased credits or auto-reload enabled, requests continue. If the organization has no other balance, API requests stop until the next monthly credit deposit. Your Claude plan is never charged.

Expect this API error:

Your credit balance is too low to access the Anthropic API. Please go to Plans & Billing to upgrade or purchase credits.

Plan changes: Canceling or downgrading stops future deposits, but existing credit remains usable until expiry. Upgrading from Max 5x to Max 20x provides a prorated top-up immediately, then $200 per cycle. Moving from Max to Team ends the Max link; a Team owner can claim after seven days.

Not the same as the other “credits”

“Claude credits” can refer to four separate concepts:

• Monthly API credits: The credits covered in this post. Available to Max and Team plans, deposited into a Console organization, and usable for the API and Agent SDK.
• Usage credits in Claude apps: Pay-as-you-go additional usage at standard API rates after hitting a plan limit. These are not Console credits.
• The June Agent SDK change: This was announced, then paused on June 15. The support FAQ says October credits are not that program.
• New-user trial credit: The pricing docs say new users receive “a small amount of free credits to test the API.” This is a one-time amount unrelated to your plan. See how to use Claude for free.

What $100 of credit buys

Credits are charged at list price, so the selected model determines how far the balance goes. At Anthropic’s current pricing, a request with 2,000 input tokens and 500 output tokens costs:

Model	Input / output per MTok	Cost per request	Requests per $100
Claude Haiku 5.5, prompts up to 100K tokens	$0.10 / $0.50	$0.00045	About 222,000
Claude Sonnet 5.5	$2 / $10	$0.009	About 11,100
Claude Opus 5.5	$4 / $20	$0.018	About 5,500

For Sonnet, the calculation is:

Input:  2,000 / 1,000,000 × $2  = $0.004
Output: 500 / 1,000,000 × $10   = $0.005
Total:                              $0.009 per request

Use three practical levers to stretch the budget:

1. Route simple tasks to cheaper models. See Claude Haiku 5.5 pricing.
2. Use prompt caching for repeated context. Cache reads cost $0.10 per MTok on Sonnet 5.5 and $0.01 on Haiku 5.5 for prompts up to 100K tokens.
3. Send non-urgent work through the Batch API for 50% off.

Track credit spend in Apidog

A fixed monthly credit balance makes per-request costs worth testing, not estimating. Set up a repeatable Claude API request in Apidog:

1. Add ANTHROPIC_API_KEY as a secret environment variable. Store an API key from the linked organization and reference it as {{ANTHROPIC_API_KEY}}.

2. Configure these request headers:
   

   x-api-key: {{ANTHROPIC_API_KEY}}
   anthropic-version: 2023-06-01
   content-type: application/json

1. Save a POST request to:

   https://api.anthropic.com/v1/messages

Use a realistic system prompt and typical user input. For example:

   {
     "model": "claude-sonnet-5-5",
     "max_tokens": 500,
     "system": "You are a concise technical support assistant.",
     "messages": [
       {
         "role": "user",
         "content": "Explain how API credits expire."
       }
     ]
   }

1. Add assertions:
   • Status code is 200.
   • $.usage.input_tokens stays below the expected prompt budget.
   • $.usage.output_tokens stays below max_tokens.

This catches prompts that grow beyond your cost assumptions before they ship.

1. Duplicate the request with claude-haiku-5-5. Run the same prompt and compare the usage object to decide which route needs Sonnet versus Haiku.

2. Add a cached-system-prompt variant. On the second run, assert that:
   

   $.usage.cache_read_input_tokens > 0

1. Save a negative test that expects the “credit balance is too low” response. This validates error handling before the balance reaches zero.

Download Apidog to save and share these runs. The free plan covers four users. For broader test design, see testing LLM applications.

FAQ

Do Claude API credits expire?

Yes. Each month’s credit expires at the end of its billing cycle. Annual plans still receive and expire credits monthly. Credits do not roll over.

Does Claude Code use API credits or my subscription?

Interactive Claude Code does not spend these monthly credits; it draws on subscription limits. The monthly credits apply only when claude -p or the Agent SDK runs with an API key from the linked organization.

Can I split or gift credits?

No. Credits are deposited into one Console organization, which can receive credits from one plan. All keys and workspaces in that organization share the balance.

How do I check the balance?

In Claude Console, open Settings → Billing → Promotional credits to see the amount and expiry date. Use the Cost page to review consumption.

What if I need more than the included credit?

Purchase credits or enable auto-reload in the Console. Rate limits do not change. A burst of 429 responses indicates a rate-limit or monthly spend-cap issue, not necessarily an empty balance. See the rate limit guide for the headers to inspect.

Is the Claude API free with a Pro plan?

No. Pro users receive only the one-time new-user credit available to new Console accounts, then pay list price. See how to use Claude Haiku 5.5 for free for the current free options.

Where to start

Link the Console organization where you will build, send one saved request from Apidog, and inspect usage before writing more application code. Credits refresh on your billing date, so the limits and model-routing rules you set in week one determine whether $100 lasts the month.