Using the Claude API from Russia

Why Anthropic sign-up stalls at a Russian card

Anthropic gates API keys behind billing: opening an account requires a supported billing country and a payment method issued there, and from Russia that check fails before a key is ever generated. The models themselves are ordinary HTTPS endpoints — the lock sits on payment and account creation, not on the API protocol. apiToken.sale removes exactly that lock by issuing the key and the balance itself, so the billing-country question never comes up.

This is also why the usual workarounds disappoint. A VPN changes where your traffic appears to originate, but it does not produce a card from a supported billing country, and borrowed foreign cards tend to die at the first re-verification. The durable fix is to stop depending on Anthropic's checkout at all.

See also: Pay for the Claude API with cryptocurrency

What apiToken.sale changes — and what it does not

The service acts as the billing layer Anthropic will not be in your region. You create a free account, top up balance, and generate a key that looks like sk-pool-… — no Anthropic account, no supported billing country, no waitlist, no company verification. Activation is instant: the key works on the very next request.

• No Anthropic account or billing country required at any step.
• Bank card or cryptocurrency at checkout — your choice per top-up.
• Instant key activation, with no manual review.
• Support in Russian and English over Telegram.

One honest limitation. Buying balance and generating a key are not region-locked, but network reachability of the API endpoint depends on your own connection. If your network can reach the router, everything works end to end; if it cannot, that is a routing question on your side, not a billing one.

Prepaid balance instead of a foreign subscription

Top-ups are any whole-dollar amount — there is no fixed plan to pick and no monthly fee. The balance never expires and is spent only when requests actually run: each request is converted to official Anthropic API spend, then your discount is applied. B2C accounts get a flat 50% off official spend on every request, so you fund the balance once and draw it down as you build. Card and crypto feed the same balance, and you can switch between them per top-up — useful when one method is declined and the other is not.

One key, every Claude model, one balance

The same sk-pool-••• key unlocks the full supported Claude line, and the same balance also covers supported GPT, Gemini and Kimi models — useful when one project mixes providers. The model IDs below are exactly what you put in the request's model field.

Per-model pricing, cache rates and context windows →

Pointing Claude Code, Cursor and the SDK at the router

Nothing about the protocol changes. The router speaks the Anthropic Messages API — POST /v1/messages with x-api-key and anthropic-version headers — so every Anthropic-compatible tool works by overriding the base URL. Claude Code needs two environment variables:

export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=https://router.apitoken.sale
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-pool-•••

# Claude Code now talks to the router
claude

Before wiring up an IDE, prove the whole path — billing, key and network — with one request:

curl https://router.apitoken.sale/v1/messages \
  -H "x-api-key: sk-pool-•••" \
  -H "anthropic-version: 2023-06-01" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "claude-haiku-4-5",
    "max_tokens": 64,
    "messages": [{"role":"user","content":"Reply with: ok"}]
  }'

Cursor and Cline take the same two values in their settings panels (Anthropic provider, then Base URL and API key), and the Python and TypeScript SDKs accept a base URL in the client constructor. Tools that only speak the OpenAI protocol can use the OpenAI-compatible lane at https://router.apitoken.sale/v1 with Authorization: Bearer and the same key.

Streaming behaves exactly as upstream: pass "stream": true and the answer arrives as incremental server-sent events, so Claude Code and chat frontends render tokens as they are generated instead of waiting for the full response.

If the curl call returns JSON, your network path is fine and any remaining setup is client-side. If it times out, test reachability of https://router.apitoken.sale itself before touching any config.

From sign-up to first request in one sitting

1. 01Create a free apiToken.sale account — sign up with Google or GitHub to start with $5 of platform bonus credit (email/password accounts do not receive the bonus).
2. 02Top up any whole-dollar amount by bank card or cryptocurrency; a crypto top-up credits once the network confirms the transaction.
3. 03Generate an API key in the dashboard — it looks like sk-pool-… and works across supported Claude, GPT, Gemini and Kimi models.
4. 04Export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=https://router.apitoken.sale and ANTHROPIC_API_KEY with your key, or paste the same two values into Cursor or Cline.
5. 05Run the curl smoke test from the previous section; a JSON answer means billing, key and network path are all live.

Treat the sk-pool-… key like a password: anyone holding it can spend your balance. Keep it in environment variables or your tool's settings, never in source control.

Frequently asked questions

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