Claude Max and Team monthly API credits

What are the Claude Max and Team monthly API credits?

Claude Max and Team monthly API credits are a balance for the Claude API that comes with your plan every month. Max 5x includes $100, Max 20x includes $200, and a Team plan pools its seats into one balance capped at $500. All amounts are in USD (United States dollars). You claim the credits by linking a Claude Console organization to your plan, and you do not need to add a payment method to Claude Platform.

Two answers settle most questions. First, Free, Pro and Enterprise plans are not eligible. Second, the credits do not pay for Claude Code, and they do not pay for extra usage in the Claude apps. They are money for building your own software on the Claude API (application programming interface). They do not raise your chat or coding limits.

The facts below come from Anthropic's own pages, mainly the Platform docs page "API credits for Max and Team plans" and two Claude Help Center articles. All of them were read on 2026-10-12. The Help Center dates the launch with a notice headed "Update October 7, 2026".

Which Claude plans get monthly API credits?

The eligible plans are Max 5x, Max 20x and Team. Discounted Team plans count too, which includes the Nonprofit and Scientists plans. The plan must be active and in good standing.

• Not eligible: Free, Pro and Enterprise. On an ineligible plan, the API credits section does not appear in your settings at all.
• Bought in a mobile app: a plan bought through Claude for iOS or Android is eligible. Claim the credits on claude.ai in a web browser.
• Where the credits work: only the Claude API in the Claude Console. They cannot be used on Claude Platform on AWS, Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud or Microsoft Foundry.

How much does each plan get each month?

[
  {
    "plan": "Max 5x",
    "monthly_credit_usd": 100
  },
  {
    "plan": "Max 20x",
    "monthly_credit_usd": 200
  },
  {
    "plan": "Team, per Standard seat",
    "monthly_credit_usd": 20
  },
  {
    "plan": "Team, per Premium seat",
    "monthly_credit_usd": 100
  },
  {
    "plan": "Team, pooled cap",
    "monthly_credit_usd": 500
  }
]

On Team, each Standard seat adds $20 and each Premium seat adds $100. Discounted Team plans get the same per-seat amounts. All seats feed one pooled balance, and the pool stops at $500 however many seats you add. If you are still choosing a Max tier, this credit is one more line in the comparison of the $100 and $200 Claude Max plans.

The docs coverage table says the credits pay for these four things:

• The Claude API
• Claude Managed Agents
• The Claude Agent SDK (software development kit)
• The Playground in the Console

The same table says they do not pay for these:

• Claude Code
• Extra usage in the Claude apps
• Claude Platform on AWS and Amazon Bedrock
• Google Cloud and Microsoft Foundry

The docs add one more line that matters: the credits do not change your usage limits in Claude or Claude Code. Your chat and coding limits stay exactly where they were.

API credits, usage credits and cloud session credits are different things

Three things on a Claude account are called credits. They pay for different work. Mixing them up is how people end up with a blocked API key or a bill they did not expect.

• Monthly API credits (this guide). Included with Max 5x, Max 20x and Team. You claim them into a Console organization. They pay for API calls, Managed Agents, the Agent SDK and the Playground. They expire at the end of each billing cycle.
• Usage credits. Pro, Max 5x and Max 20x subscribers prepay for these under Settings > Usage on claude.ai. They let you keep working in Claude conversations and in Claude Code in the terminal after you reach your plan's limits, billed at standard API rates. The Help Center says that in most cases they do not expire. In Japan, usage credits expire six months after purchase, starting 2026-09-10. How Claude usage credits work and when to buy them covers them in full.
• Cloud session credits. Claude Code cloud sessions run on cloud infrastructure instead of your computer, by default on machines Anthropic manages. They are available on Pro, Max and Team plans, and for Enterprise users with premium seats or Chat + Claude Code seats. The Claude Code docs say there is no separate compute charge for the cloud machine, and that cloud sessions share rate limits with the rest of your Claude usage. That docs page does not describe any cloud session credit, so check your own claude.ai account for an offer, and see what we know about Claude Code cloud session credits.

The Help Center states the split in one sentence: "Usage credits are separate from the monthly API credits included with Max plans." It works in the other direction too. Monthly API credits do not apply to extra usage in Claude, Claude Code or Claude Cowork.

How do you claim the Claude API credits?

1. On claude.ai, open Settings > Billing on a Max plan. On a Team plan, open Organization settings > Billing instead.
2. Find the API credits section.
3. Choose the Console organization that should receive the credits. If you do not have one, you can create it first or during the claim flow.
4. Accept the program terms by linking the organization.
5. In the Claude Console, open Settings > Billing. The credits appear in the Promotional credits section with their amount and expiry date.

You need the right role on both sides. On the Claude side, the subscriber claims on a Max plan, and the Primary Owner or an Owner claims on a Team plan. On the Console side, you need the Owner, Admin or Billing role in the organization you link.

Pick the organization carefully. One plan links to one Console organization, and each Console organization can receive credits from one plan. You cannot change the link yourself. To move it later you must contact support, so link the organization you actually plan to build in.

New subscribers wait 7 days. You can claim after 7 days on an eligible plan. Upgrading from Max to Team ends the Max link. A Team owner can then claim the team's credits once the Team plan has been active for 7 days.

Credits arrive after payment. They land each billing cycle, shortly after your plan payment is processed. Annual plans receive them monthly.

What happens when the API credits run out?

If the organization also holds credits you bought, requests continue and draw from those. If it has no credits left, API requests stop until your next monthly credits arrive. Usage is never charged to your Claude plan. To keep going before then, buy credits or turn on auto-reload in the Console. Organizations invoiced through Anthropic sales are the exception: they are billed as usual beyond the credits.

The docs list two error messages, and they mean different things. When the balance is empty, API requests return this:

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

The second message catches people who expect the credits to pay for Claude Code. If an organization holds only these credits and sends a request they do not cover, such as a Claude Code session, Claude Code shows this:

Credit balance too low · Add funds: https://platform.claude.com/settings/billing

This message can appear while your monthly credits are still unused. The cause is the type of request. A Claude Code session is outside what the credits cover, so the organization has nothing it can spend on that request. For how Claude Code bills under each way of signing in, see logging in to Claude Code with a subscription or an API key.

Do unused API credits roll over to the next month?

No. Unused credits expire at the end of each billing cycle, or monthly on annual plans, and they do not roll over.

The order of spending is fixed. Included credits are spent first, then any credits you bought. Auto-reload looks only at your purchased balance. The docs say it "reloads when that balance reaches your threshold, even if included credits remain." This means a reload can trigger while free monthly credits still sit in the account. If you keep a small purchased balance with auto-reload on, set the threshold with that in mind.

Plan changes affect the credits in these ways:

• Cancel, downgrade or refund: new credits stop. Credits you already have stay usable until they expire.
• Upgrade from Max 5x to Max 20x: you receive prorated API credits right away, then $200 each billing cycle. If you subscribe through Google Play, that credit arrives later, by your next renewal at the latest.
• Add Team seats: each monthly credit is based on the seats on your plan at the start of that billing month. Seats added mid-cycle count from the next month.
• Remove Team seats: removed seats stay on your plan until it renews, so the credit might be lower after that.

How do the credits change your API rate limit tier?

An organization linked to an eligible plan moves up to at least the Start tier. If its monthly credits are over $200, it moves up to at least the Build tier. Claiming does not otherwise change your usage tier, and the credits do not count toward moving to a higher tier.

Read "over" literally. Max 20x receives exactly $200, which is not over $200. On the credits alone, a Max 20x organization moves to Start, not Build. In practice, only a Team pool above $200 reaches Build through this rule.

The Start, Build and Scale tiers each carry a monthly spend cap, and usage paid with credits counts toward it. Organizations on the Custom tier have no monthly spend cap; their limits are arranged with their account team.

[
  {
    "label": "Start",
    "monthly_spend_cap_usd": 500
  },
  {
    "label": "Build",
    "monthly_spend_cap_usd": "1,000"
  },
  {
    "label": "Scale",
    "monthly_spend_cap_usd": "200,000"
  }
]

The Start tier caps monthly spend at $500, Build at $1,000 and Scale at $200,000. Once an organization reaches its tier's cap, API usage pauses until 00:00 UTC on the first day of the next month, and requests return HTTP 429 with the error code enforced_spend_limit_reached. The two systems reset on different schedules. Spend caps reset on the first of each calendar month, while credits refresh on your billing cycle. Per-model request and token limits for each tier are on Anthropic's rate limits page. They change often, so read them there. To see the limits your own key actually has, read the Claude API rate limit headers on any response.

Do the credits cover the Agent SDK and claude -p?

claude -p (Claude Code started with the -p flag) appears in the Help Center pages but not in the Platform docs. Three Anthropic pages talk about the Agent SDK and these credits, and they use different words. Here is exactly what each one said on 2026-10-12. We do not draw a conclusion from them about signing in with a subscription.

The Platform docs page. Its coverage table lists the Claude Agent SDK as covered. The page does not mention claude -p anywhere. It says nothing about using the Agent SDK with a subscription login.

Help Center, "Use the Claude Agent SDK with your Claude plan". This article carries two dated notices. The October notice appears first:

Update October 7, 2026: Claude Max and Team plans now include monthly API credits, which cover the Claude Agent SDK, claude -p, the Claude API, and Claude Managed Agents. You can still use the Claude Agent SDK, claude -p, and third-party apps with your subscription limits.

The June notice follows it, still on the page:

Update June 15, 2026: We've paused the previously-announced changes to Claude Agent SDK usage. For now, nothing has changed: Claude Agent SDK, claude -p, and third-party app usage still draw from your subscription limits.

Help Center, "Monthly API credits for Max and Team plans". Its FAQ answers the claude -p question directly. It says the credits cover claude -p and the Agent SDK "when you run them yourself with an API key from your linked Claude Console organization, because that usage is billed as Agent SDK usage." The same answer says that runs started by the Claude Code GitHub Action, an IDE (integrated development environment) extension or the Claude desktop app count as Claude Code usage, "so API credits don't cover them, even with -p." The article also lists interactive Claude Code in the terminal, IDE, desktop or web as not covered. Asked whether this is the Agent SDK credit announced in June, it answers: "No. That credit isn't available."

The Platform docs and the credits article agree that the credits are spent through the linked Console organization. The credits article adds that claude -p and the Agent SDK use the credits when they run with an API key from that organization. If you are setting up your first project, building a first Claude API app on a VPS is a good next step.

Worked example: what does a Team plan receive?

The docs give one Team example. The first row below is that example, and the second row is the docs' follow-up. The third row is our own arithmetic from the published per-seat amounts and the pool cap.

[
  {
    "config": "3 Standard + 2 Premium seats",
    "monthly_credit_usd": 260
  },
  {
    "config": "3 Standard + 3 Premium seats",
    "monthly_credit_usd": 360
  },
  {
    "config": "6 Premium seats (pool cap applies)",
    "monthly_credit_usd": 500
  }
]

A team with three Standard seats and two Premium seats receives $260 a month. That is three seats at $20 plus two seats at $100. Adding another Premium seat raises the next month's credit to $360. The rise waits for the next month because each credit is based on the seats on the plan at the start of that billing month.

Six Premium seats would add up to $600, but the pool is capped, so the team receives $500. Both of the docs' examples are over $200, so those teams also move to at least the Build tier. If you are weighing Premium seats against individual Max plans, Claude Team Premium seats compared with Max covers the other differences.

How do you cap one project's spend with a workspace?

Every API key and workspace in the linked organization draws from the same credit balance. One project with a loop that keeps calling the API can spend the whole month's credits before anyone else uses them. The docs' answer is to give that project its own workspace and set a spend limit on it.

1. In the Console, go to Settings > Workspaces and choose Create workspace. Only organization admins can create workspaces.
2. Select the new workspace under Settings > Workspaces, and in the panel that opens, click Spend limits.
3. Set a monthly spending cap, and add alerts at the thresholds you want to hear about.
4. Run the project's API traffic in that workspace.

Two rules apply. A workspace limit can be lower than the organization's limit, but not higher. You cannot set limits on the Default Workspace, so a project you want to cap must live in a workspace you created.

When the workspace limit is reached, requests return HTTP 400 with the error type invalid_request_error. The message begins with this text:

You have reached your specified workspace API usage limits

Compare this with the two credit errors above. This error means your own cap stopped the request. The balance may still hold credits. For an agent that runs unattended, pair the workspace cap with cost controls for an AI agent running on a VPS, so a runaway job stops before the cap does.

FAQ

Can I use my Claude Max API credits for Claude Code?

No. The Platform docs list Claude Code as not covered, and the Help Center lists interactive Claude Code in the terminal, IDE, desktop and web as not covered. If an organization holds only these credits and Claude Code sends a request, Claude Code shows "Credit balance too low · Add funds". To keep using Claude Code past your plan's limits, the separate product is usage credits, which you turn on under Settings > Usage on claude.ai.

Does Claude Pro include monthly API credits?

No. Free, Pro and Enterprise plans are not eligible. Only Max 5x, Max 20x and Team plans get them, including discounted Team plans. Pro subscribers can buy usage credits, but those pay for extra Claude and Claude Code usage, not for the Claude API.

Why can't I see the API credits section in my Claude billing settings?

Subscribers on an ineligible plan do not see the section. On an eligible plan, check the details. New subscribers can claim only after 7 days on the plan. On a Team plan the section is under Organization settings > Billing, and only the Primary Owner or an Owner can claim. The plan must also be active and in good standing.

Do unused Claude API credits carry over to next month?

No. Unused credits expire at the end of each billing cycle, or monthly on annual plans, and they do not roll over. Included credits are spent before any credits you bought. If you cancel or downgrade, new credits stop, but credits you already have stay usable until they expire.

How much API credit does a Claude Team plan get?

Each Standard seat adds $20 a month and each Premium seat adds $100. All seats pool into one balance capped at $500. The amount is based on the seats on the plan at the start of each billing month, so seats added mid-cycle count from the next month.