Claude Max and Team plans now come with monthly credits for the Claude API, claimed by linking one Claude Console organisation to the plan. The credits cover the API, Managed Agents and the Agent SDK, but not Claude Code or cloud platforms, they expire each cycle, and the linked organisation cannot be changed without support.
What was released
Monthly API credits for Claude subscribers were announced by Anthropic on 7 October 2026 in the Claude API release notes, with the details on the API credits for Max and Team plans page. The credits are claimed from billing settings on claude.ai and land in the Console as promotional credits. No payment method is needed on the Claude Platform side.
What each plan gets
- Max 5x: 100 US dollars a month.
- Max 20x: 200 US dollars a month.
- Team, including the discounted Nonprofit and Scientists plans: 20 US dollars per Standard seat and 100 per Premium seat, pooled into one balance capped at 500 US dollars a month. The amount is set by the seats on the plan at the start of each billing month.
- Not eligible: Free, Pro and Enterprise plans. New subscribers can claim after their first week on an eligible plan.
What the credits cover and what they do not
The credits pay for the Claude API, Claude Managed Agents, the Claude Agent SDK and the playground. They do not pay for Claude Code, for extra usage in the Claude apps, or for Claude on Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud, Microsoft Foundry or Claude Platform on AWS. They also do not change the usage limits of the plan itself in Claude or Claude Code.
Three billing rules matter in practice:
- No rollover. Unused credits expire at the end of each billing cycle, or monthly on annual plans.
- Included credits are spent first, then purchased credits. Auto-reload looks only at the purchased balance, so it can top up while included credits remain.
- A hard stop when they run out. If the organisation holds no other credits, API requests stop until the next monthly credits arrive. Anthropic says usage is never charged to the Claude plan.
The linked organisation also moves up to at least the Start usage tier, or at least the Build tier when its monthly credit is over 200 US dollars. The credits do not count towards reaching a higher tier after that.
What it means for teams building AI products and agents
In CodeDTX's view, the choice that is hardest to undo comes first, and the rest follows from it.
- Decide which Console organisation to link before anyone clicks. Each plan links to one organisation, each organisation takes credits from one plan, and only support can change the link. On a Team plan the Primary Owner or an Owner claims, and they also need an Owner, Admin or Billing role in the Console organisation. Agree on the target with whoever runs your Console account first.
- Treat a credits-only organisation as a capped sandbox. An organisation with no payment method and only these credits simply stops when the balance is gone, which suits prototypes, evaluations and internal agents where a surprise bill is the bigger risk. Linking your production organisation instead means the credits just offset part of the normal bill, and if you are invoiced by Anthropic sales, usage beyond them is billed as usual.
- Give each project its own workspace and spend limit. Every API key and workspace in the linked organisation draws on the same balance, so one runaway agent loop can use up the month for everyone. Our guide to controlling what an AI agent costs to run covers the budgets and alerts to put around it.
- Keep Claude Code on its plan login. If a developer points Claude Code at an API key from an organisation that holds only these credits, Anthropic documents that it fails with a "credit balance too low" message rather than drawing on them.
- Check where production will run. Credits spent on the Claude API do not follow a workload to Bedrock, Google Cloud or Foundry, so if production will run there, use the credits for evaluation and plan the cloud bill separately.
- Spend them on work that would not happen otherwise. Because nothing rolls over, scheduled evaluation runs and batch jobs are a good fit. Pairing them with cheaper cached prompts on Sonnet 5.5 or Claude Haiku 5.5 stretches a fixed monthly amount further.
When the credits change little
For a company on Enterprise or Pro there is nothing to claim. For a production workload already spending well beyond the monthly amount, the credits are a small discount rather than a reason to change anything. And they are no reason to move a workload from a cloud provider to the Claude API on their own: data residency, existing contracts and feature availability decide that.
Frequently asked questions
Which Claude plans include monthly API credits?
Claude Max 5x, Max 20x and Team plans include them, along with the discounted Team plans for nonprofits and scientists. Free, Pro and Enterprise plans are not eligible. The plan must be active and in good standing, new subscribers can claim after their first week on an eligible plan, and plans bought through the Claude iOS or Android apps qualify, though the claim itself is made on claude.ai in a web browser.
Can I use the Max or Team API credits with Claude Code?
No. The credits cover the Claude API, Claude Managed Agents, the Claude Agent SDK and the playground in the Claude Console. They do not cover Claude Code or extra usage in the Claude apps, and they do not raise the usage limits of your plan. A Claude Code session using an API key from an organisation that holds only these credits stops with a low balance message.
Do unused Claude API credits roll over to the next month?
No. Unused credits expire at the end of each billing cycle, or each month on annual plans, and new credits arrive shortly after the plan payment is processed. Included credits are spent before any credits you have bought. Since nothing carries over, plan recurring evaluation or batch work for each cycle rather than saving credits up for a larger project later.
Can I change which Console organisation receives the credits?
Not yourself. Each Claude plan links to one Console organisation and each organisation can receive credits from only one plan. To move the credits to a different organisation you have to contact Anthropic support. Decide in advance whether the credits should fund a separate prototype organisation with a hard stop or offset the bill of the organisation you already use for production.
