Anwar Bouilouta

Claim Your Monthly Claude API Credits: The Setup

Claim the monthly API credits in your Claude Max or Team plan, then build your first agent on them with one command.

A free guide by Anwar Bouilouta 4 min read

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So in the reel I showed the monthly API credits that now come with Claude Max and Team. This is the full setup, step by step, plus the one command I'd run to build your first agent on them. You only claim once and the credits keep landing every billing cycle after that, so it's worth doing today.

What it is, in a minute

  • Monthly credit for the Claude API. It comes with your plan and lands in a Claude Console organisation you link to it.
  • You claim once. After that it refreshes every billing cycle, or monthly if you're on an annual plan.
  • It's for the stuff you build. The Claude API, Claude Managed Agents, the Claude Agent SDK and the Playground. Anthropic's developer account on X says other tools that take a Claude API key work too.
  • Just not interactive Claude Code. That still runs on your plan. The exception is claude -p, which counts when you run it with an API key from your linked organisation.
  • Use it or lose it. Unused credits expire at the end of each billing cycle and don't roll over.
  • No card needed. You don't have to add a payment method on the Console side, and these credits get spent before any you've bought.

Who gets what

  • Max 5x: $100 a month.
  • Max 20x: $200 a month.
  • Team: $20 per Standard seat and $100 per Premium seat, pooled into one balance and capped at $500 a month. So three Standard seats and two Premium seats get $260.
  • Discounted Team plans: Nonprofit and Scientists get the same per-seat amounts.
  • Free, Pro and Enterprise: nothing, sadly.

Only just joined Max or Team? You can claim once you've been on the plan for 7 days.

Before you start

  • The right role. On Max, that's you, the subscriber. On Team, only a Primary Owner or Owner can claim, and one claim covers the whole team.
  • A Claude Console account at platform.claude.com, ideally signed in with the same email you use on claude.ai. You need to be Owner, Admin or Billing in the organisation you link, or you can create a new one while you claim.
  • Claude Code for the agent bit at the end.

How to claim it, step by step

  1. Open claude.ai in a browser. Even if you pay through the iPhone or Android app, the claim happens on the web.
  2. Go to Settings > Billing. Click your name or initials in the lower left, then Settings. On Team it's Organization settings > Billing instead.
  3. Find the API credits section and select Link organization.
  4. Choose your Console organisation, or create a new one. Pick the one you'll actually build in, because you can't change it yourself later. Only support can.
  5. Review the Supplemental Credit Terms, then select Link organization to confirm.
  6. Check it landed. On platform.claude.com, go to Settings > Billing. Your credits sit in the Promotional credits section, with the amount and the expiry date.
  7. Create an API key in that organisation. Every key and workspace in it draws from the same balance.

Can't see the API credits section? Either you're not on Max or Team, you're still inside your first 7 days, or the rollout hasn't reached you yet, because they're rolling it out over a few days.

The one command that builds your first agent

Anthropic's own advice is to start with Claude Managed Agents. It's basically a ready-made agent setup that runs on Anthropic's side, built for long-running jobs that carry on in the background. Open Claude Code and run this:

Run this in Claude Code
/claude-api managed-agents-onboard

Here's what it does:

  • It uses the claude-api skill built into Claude Code. If the command doesn't come up, update Claude Code first.
  • It works out what you want. It runs a quick start or a short interview about the agent you're after.
  • Then it builds the agent for you. It creates it with Anthropic's ant command-line tool, version 1.30.0 or newer, or 1.34.0 if you add one of the starter names below. If you haven't got ant, or yours is too old, it offers to install or upgrade it and asks before it does.
  • Use the API key from your linked organisation. That's what puts the agent on your credits. Claude Code itself still runs on your plan while it sets everything up.

Stuck for an idea? Anthropic's launch video runs it with a starter name on the end, like /claude-api managed-agents-onboard support-agent, and lists nine of them: support-agent, incident-commander, field-monitor, deep-researcher, structured-extractor, contract-tracker, sprint-retro-facilitator, support-to-eng-escalator and data-analyst.

To be honest, the credits reset whether you use them or not, so I'd get one small agent running this week and build from there.

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