Claude Max and Team Plans Now Include Free Monthly API Credits: $100, $200, or Up to $500

Claude Max and Team subscribers now get a monthly credit for the Claude API on top of their plan: $100 a month on Max 5x, $200 on Max 20x, and up to $500 pooled on Team. Anthropic announced the credit on October 7, 2026, alongside Claude Haiku 5.5, and its Help Center now carries the claim flow (Anthropic; Claude Help Center). You claim it once on claude.ai by linking a Claude Console organization, and you do not need to add a card on Claude Platform. The credit pays for the Claude API, Claude Managed Agents, and the Claude Agent SDK. It does not pay for interactive Claude Code, which keeps drawing on your plan's usage limits.

Key Takeaways

• Amounts: $100 a month on Max 5x, $200 on Max 20x, and $20 per Standard seat or $100 per Premium seat on Team, pooled and capped at $500 (Claude Help Center).
• Not eligible: Free, Pro, and Enterprise plans aren't eligible (Claude Help Center).
• Claim: In the API credits section of claude.ai billing settings, link one Console organization; you can't change that link yourself later (Claude Help Center).
• Covers: the Claude API, the Console Playground, Claude Managed Agents, and the Claude Agent SDK, on any available Claude model (Claude Help Center).
• Does not cover: interactive Claude Code, extra usage in the Claude apps, or Claude on Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI, or Microsoft Foundry (Claude Help Center).
• No rollover: Unused credits expire at the end of each billing cycle (Claude Help Center).
• Rate-limit bonus: A linked organization moves up to at least the Start tier, or the Build tier when its monthly credits are over $200 (Claude Platform docs).

How Much You Get on Each Plan

The credit is a fixed dollar amount on Max and a per-seat amount on Team, where every seat pools into one balance. Anthropic's Help Center lists the amounts (Claude Help Center):

On Team plans, credits for all seats are pooled into one monthly balance, capped at $500. Anthropic's own example: a team with three Standard seats and two Premium seats receives $260 a month, and adding another Premium seat would raise the next cycle's credits to $360 (Claude Help Center). A team reaches the $500 cap at five Premium seats or 25 Standard seats.

How to Claim Your Credits

You claim the credit once, from claude.ai in a web browser, by linking a Claude Console organization; credits then go to that organization each month. New subscribers can claim once they've been on an eligible plan for seven days (Claude Help Center).

You need two roles before you start:

Then follow the four steps from the Help Center (Claude Help Center):

1. On claude.ai, open Settings > Billing as a Max subscriber, or Organization settings > Billing as a Team Owner or Primary Owner.
2. In the API credits section, select Link organization.
3. Choose the Console organization that should receive the credits, or create a new one.
4. Review the Supplemental Credit Terms, then select Link organization.

The credits then appear in the Console under Settings > Billing, in the Promotional credits section (Claude Platform docs).

Pick the organization carefully. You can link only one Console organization, and each Console organization can receive credits from only one plan. You can't change the linked organization yourself; changing it later takes a support request (Claude Help Center). If you don't see the offer yet, Anthropic says it is rolling out API credits over a few days.

What the Credits Cover

The credits work with any available Claude model on the Claude Platform, and with nothing outside it; the Platform docs add that Claude Platform on AWS is excluded too (Claude Help Center; Claude Platform docs):

The claude -p rule depends on how you sign in. API credits cover claude -p and the Claude Agent SDK when you run them yourself with an API key from your linked Claude Console organization. Signed in with your Claude plan instead, the same runs draw from your plan's usage limits. Runs started by the Claude Code GitHub Action, an IDE extension or the Claude desktop app count as Claude Code usage, so the credits don't cover them, even with -p (Claude Help Center).

Everyone with an API key in the linked organization draws from the same balance (Claude Help Center), so every app or script that calls the API with a key from that organization spends the credit. Claude Code sessions are the exception: they are not covered even with a key from that organization.

What $100 Buys on Each Model

At standard API prices, $100 buys 1 billion Haiku 5.5 input tokens on prompts up to 100,000 tokens, 50 million Sonnet 5.5 input tokens, or 25 million Opus 5.5 input tokens. The figures below divide $100 by the list price per million tokens (MTok) on Anthropic's pricing page (Claude Platform pricing); a real workload mixes input and output, so it lands between the two columns.

The Batch API stretches the credit: it charges 50% less on both input and output tokens for work that can wait. Budget separately for Claude Managed Agents, which add session runtime at $0.08 per session-hour on top of tokens and have no batch mode (Claude Platform pricing). Choose Haiku 5.5 for high-volume subagents and classification, and save Opus 5.5 for the runs where its quality pays for an input price 40x Haiku 5.5's short-prompt rate.

How the Credits Behave

The credit refreshes with your plan, is spent before anything you bought, and expires if you don't use it (Claude Help Center):

• Refresh: New credits arrive shortly after your plan payment goes through. On annual plans, credits arrive monthly.
• Expiry: Unused credits expire at the end of each billing cycle.
• Order: Your monthly credits are spent before any credits you've purchased.
• Sharing: Everyone with an API key in the linked organization draws from the same balance. To limit spending by project or teammate, set workspace spend limits in the Console.
• Plan limits: The credits don't change your usage limits in Claude, Claude Code, or Claude Cowork.

The Platform docs add the rate-limit detail. Organizations linked to an eligible plan move up to at least the Start tier, and to at least the Build tier if their monthly credits are over $200. The credits don't count toward moving to a higher tier (Claude Platform docs).

What Happens When the Credits Run Out

Your Claude plan is never billed for API overage; the API stops unless the organization has other credits or is invoiced through Anthropic sales (Claude Help Center):

When the balance is gone, the API returns "Your credit balance is too low to access the Anthropic API." If an organization holding only these credits sends a request they don't cover, such as a Claude Code session, Claude Code shows "Credit balance too low" (Claude Platform docs).

If Your Plan Changes

Plan changes adjust the next deposit, not the credits you already hold (Claude Help Center):

Not the Paused June Agent SDK Credit

This is a different program from the Agent SDK monthly credit that Anthropic announced earlier this year and then paused before it started. The Help Center answers the question directly: that credit isn't available (Claude Help Center). Anthropic's Agent SDK support article now points to the new API credits, and notes you can still use the Agent SDK, claude -p, and third-party apps with your subscription limits (Claude Help Center: Agent SDK with your plan).

The new credit also lands somewhere different: in a Console organization you link, spent through an API key, rather than inside your Claude plan sign-in.

How a Max or Team Subscriber Uses This

Use the credit for the agent and automation work you were holding off on because API billing felt open-ended. A few patterns fit the $100 to $500 range:

• Build a Managed Agent. Claude Managed Agents run on the credit, so a support or research agent can run on Anthropic's infrastructure without a card on file.
• Move scripts to an API key. A claude -p job or Agent SDK script you run yourself with a key from the linked organization spends the credit instead of your plan's limits. Runs started by the Claude Code GitHub Action still count as Claude Code usage.
• Prototype on Haiku 5.5, batch the bulk. Haiku 5.5 with the Batch API is the cheapest way to turn the monthly credit into volume.
• Cap teammates on Team. Give each project its own workspace with a spend limit so one runaway script doesn't drain the pool.

Pro subscribers get nothing from this program; the credit requires a Max or Team plan.

Sources

• Claude Help Center: Monthly API credits for Max and Team plans
• Claude Platform docs: API credits for Max and Team plans
• Claude Help Center: Use the Claude Agent SDK with your Claude plan
• Claude Platform docs: Pricing
• Anthropic: Introducing Claude Haiku 5.5