Claim Your Free Claude API Credits: Team, Max and Ultra (2026)

If your business pays for Claude Team, Max or Ultra, there is money sitting unclaimed every month. Since 2026, those plans include monthly Claude API credits: up to $500 a month on a Team plan. The catch is that they don't show up inside claude.ai. You have to claim them by linking a Claude Console organisation, and most teams we speak to haven't.

This guide covers who qualifies, how much you get, the exact steps to claim, and the part that trips people up: what the credits do and don't pay for. If you're still working out which Claude plan fits your team, start with our Claude Team billing guide and our Team vs Enterprise pricing comparison, then come back here.

Who gets free Claude API credits

Plan	Monthly API credit
Max	$100
Ultra	$200
Team, Standard seat	$20 per seat
Team, Premium seat	$100 per seat
Team discounted plans (Nonprofit, Scientists)	Same as Team
Free, Pro, Enterprise	Not eligible

On a Team plan, every seat's credit pools into one balance, capped at $500 a month. Anthropic's own example: three Standard seats and two Premium seats give you $260 a month. Add another Premium seat and next month's credit rises to $360.

Two conditions apply. The plan must be active and in good standing, and you must have been on the eligible plan for seven days before the offer appears. If you subscribed through the iOS or Android app you still qualify, but you claim in a web browser.

Who is allowed to claim them

You need the right role in two places:

• On the Claude plan: the subscriber (Max or Ultra), or a Primary Owner or Owner (Team).
• In the Claude Console organisation that will receive the credits: Owner, Admin or Billing.

If you don't have a Console organisation yet, create one at platform.claude.com, or create it during the claim flow. Anthropic recommends signing in to the Console with the same email you use on claude.ai.

How to claim your Claude credits, step by step

1. Open billing on claude.ai. On a Team plan go to Organization settings → Billing. On Max or Ultra it's Settings → Billing. (The plain Settings page is the Max route, not the Team one.)
2. Find the API credits section and select Link organization.
3. Choose the Console organisation that should receive the credits, or create a new one.
4. Review the Supplemental Credit Terms and select Link organization again to confirm.
5. Check the Console. Your credits appear under Promotional credits on the Billing page at platform.claude.com/settings/billing, with the amount and expiry date.
6. Create an API key in that organisation and use it in your apps.

No payment method is needed on the Console side to claim or use the credits.

Choose the organisation carefully. Each plan links to exactly one Console organisation, each organisation can receive credits from only one plan, and you can't change the link yourself. To move it later you have to contact Anthropic support. Link the organisation your team actually builds in.

If linking fails, Anthropic suggests trying again in a few hours. If you think you're eligible but don't see the offer at all, it can take a few days to appear; after that, contact support.

What the credits pay for (and what they don't)

This is where most of the confusion sits. The credits are for building on the Claude Platform, not for using Claude more inside your plan.

Covered	Not covered
Claude API (Messages and Message Batches)	Interactive Claude Code (terminal, IDE, desktop, web)
Claude Managed Agents	Extra usage in Claude, Claude Code or Cowork
Claude Agent SDK	Claude on Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud or Microsoft Foundry
Playground in the Claude Console

Two details matter for developers:

• Claude Code is not covered when you use it interactively. claude -p and the Agent SDK only draw on these credits when they run with an API key from the linked Console organisation. Signed in with your Claude plan, they use your plan limits instead. Runs started from the Claude Code GitHub Action, an IDE extension or the desktop app count as Claude Code usage and aren't covered. We unpack this in Claude Code billing explained.
• Credits don't raise your plan's usage limits. They live in the Console and nowhere else.

How the credits behave month to month

• They refresh every billing cycle, shortly after your plan payment. Annual plans receive them monthly.
• They expire at the end of each cycle. Unused credit doesn't roll over, so plan to use it.
• They're spent first, before any credits you've purchased.
• Everyone in the linked organisation shares the balance. Every API key and workspace draws from the same pot. To stop one project eating the lot, give it its own workspace and set a workspace spend limit.
• When they run out, requests continue on purchased credits or auto-reload if you have them. If you don't, API requests pause until next month's credits arrive. Nothing is ever charged to your Claude plan.
• Seat changes count from the next month. Added seats raise the next deposit. Removed seats stay on the plan until renewal, so the credit may drop after that.

There's a quiet bonus too: organisations linked to an eligible plan move up to at least the Start usage tier, or the Build tier if the monthly credit is over $200.

What to do with $500 a month

Credits that expire unused are just a line on an invoice. A few ways South African teams can put them to work without new budget:

• Prototype the automation you keep postponing. Invoice triage, CV screening, ticket summaries: small agents built on the API or the Agent SDK.
• Run overnight batch jobs. The Message Batches API costs 50% less than standard calls, so your credit stretches twice as far on work that doesn't need an instant answer, like re-tagging a document archive or drafting product descriptions.
• Give developers a sandbox. A separate workspace with its own spend limit lets the team experiment safely.

Before you send client or customer data through the API, check where it's processed and what your data processing agreements say. Under POPIA that check comes first, not after the prototype works.

Not sure which plan you're on, or whether to switch?

If you're weighing Team against Enterprise, remember that Enterprise plans don't get these credits. For a smaller team that mostly builds on the API, that can shift the maths. Our Team vs Enterprise pricing guide walks through the trade-offs.

If you'd rather have someone set this up properly — the Console organisation, workspaces, spend limits and a first useful agent built on your credits — that's exactly what our Free AI Assessment is for.