Credits
Last checked:Anthropic free credits: Not quantified officially
creditsapianthropic
The API platform for Claude models, paid with prepaid usage credits. Official site
Anthropic signup credit, the facts
| Amount | Not quantified officially |
|---|---|
| Grant type | One-time signup credit |
| Expiry | Not stated for the signup credits; purchased credits expire one year from purchase |
| Payment method required | Not stated officially |
| Withdrawable as cash | No |
| What I ran on it | Not tested yet |
Filed under: AI API free credits
Good for
- A first API test on the small signup allowance the pricing docs now mention
Not for
- Anyone expecting the circulated $5 free credit: no official page states that figure
- Reading tier names like Build or Scale as credits: they are monthly spend caps
Anthropic’s pricing docs FAQ now states: “New users receive a small amount of free credits to test the API.” No official page states the dollar amount, so this entry publishes the allowance’s existence and no number. Beyond that allowance the API is prepaid: you buy usage credits before you use it, purchased credits expire one year from purchase, and they are non-refundable. Checked against the billing support article and the pricing docs on 2026-09-02.
The circulated $5
Tutorials and aggregator lists frequently state that new Anthropic API accounts get $5 free. The official pages now confirm that a small signup allowance exists, but none of them state $5 or any other figure: the pricing docs FAQ says only “a small amount of free credits”, checked 2026-09-02. A specific dollar figure without a current official page still does not go in this catalog as fact; what changed since this entry’s first check on 2026-08-21 is that the allowance itself is now official. The unquantified-$5 pattern also holds for OpenAI free credits, where no allowance is stated at all.
Words that sound like credits but are not
Anthropic’s platform has two naming traps. First, the rate-limit documentation describes an Evaluation tier: that is a rate-limit tier, not cash. Second, you may see Start, Build, and Scale figures of $500, $1,000, and $200,000; those are monthly spend caps, ceilings on usage, not credits anyone grants you. If a listicle counts any of those numbers as free money, it has misread the docs.
What paying actually looks like
You buy prepaid usage credits, the API draws them down, and you top up. Two rules from the official pages worth planning around: credits expire one year from purchase, and they are non-refundable. Buy in amounts you will actually use within a year.
Choose or skip
Choose Anthropic’s API knowing the free allowance is small, unquantified, and followed by prepaid billing. If you want a free path with published limits instead, OpenRouter publishes free-model daily limits, and Cohere issues a rate-limited trial key at registration.
What I have done with it
Not tested yet. I have not measured what the small allowance amounts to in practice, so this page reports only what the official pages state.
Every grant I track is on the credits index.
Anthropic, common questions
Does the Claude API give free credits at signup?
Yes, without a number attached. The pricing docs FAQ states "New users receive a small amount of free credits to test the API." No official page quantifies it, so this entry publishes the allowance's existence and no amount. Checked 2026-09-18.
How much free credit does Anthropic give?
Not stated officially. The official wording is "a small amount of free credits" and no Anthropic page puts a figure on it. A $5 signup credit circulates in roundups; it is not on any official page, which is why this entry records it as a corrected claim rather than as an amount.
Do Anthropic API credits expire?
Purchased credits do: they expire one year from purchase and are non-refundable, per the billing documentation. No expiry is stated for the signup allowance. Checked 2026-09-18.
What changed here
Anthropic changed from no stated free credit to a small signup allowance: the pricing docs FAQ now states 'New users receive a small amount of free credits to test the API', with no dollar figure.
Added Anthropic: None.
Every row links to the full record on the changelog, with the official page it was checked against.
Related entries
OpenAI: None
OpenRouter: 50 free-model requests/day
Cohere: 1,000 API calls per month on a trial key
Sources
Last checked:All numbers on this page come from the official pages above, checked on the date shown. If a figure is not stated there, this page says "Not stated officially" instead of guessing.