Try the Claude API free

What the free trial actually is

A Claude API free trial on apiToken.sale is not a demo environment and not a limited sandbox. New accounts created with Google or GitHub start with $5 of platform bonus credit, and that credit buys real, metered calls against every supported model — the same endpoints, keys and streaming behavior paying customers get. No card is required, and there is no plan to cancel afterwards.

One eligibility rule matters: the bonus is attached to the sign-up method, not to the account itself. Registering with an email address and password creates a fully working account, but it starts with a zero balance — so choose Google or GitHub at registration if you want the free start.

See also: Get a free Claude API key in minutes

Claim the credit and generate a key in one sitting

1. 01Sign up with Google or GitHub. The $5 platform bonus lands on your balance automatically — this is exactly the step that email and password registration does not trigger.
2. 02Open the dashboard and generate an API key. It looks like sk-pool-… and one key covers every supported Claude, GPT, Gemini and Kimi model, so there is no per-model setup to configure.
3. 03Pick the protocol your tool already speaks. Anthropic-native clients call https://router.apitoken.sale with an x-api-key header; OpenAI-compatible clients call https://router.apitoken.sale/v1 with Authorization: Bearer. Both lanes draw from the same trial balance.

From sign-up to a working key is a few minutes of clicking. There is no approval step, no sales call and no waitlist between you and the first request — the key is live the moment it is generated.

Prove the gateway with one real call

The fastest sanity check is a single non-streaming Messages request with a small token cap. The point is to confirm auth, the base URL and the model ID — not to generate prose.

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":"Hello"}]
  }'

A 200 response with content blocks and a usage object means the whole path works: key, endpoint and metering. Every response reports the exact tokens it consumed and the dashboard shows the remaining balance, so you can watch what the trial costs in real time instead of guessing.

A 402 response means the balance is empty, not that the key is broken. Top up any whole-dollar amount and retry the identical request — the key itself stays valid.

A trial checklist that fits in one sitting

Treat the $5 as a verification budget. The goal is not to build something during the trial; it is to prove that everything you plan to use behaves correctly through the gateway before real money is involved.

Stretch the $5 across more tests

Five dollars goes surprisingly far if you evaluate like an engineer instead of chatting like a user. Four habits decide whether the credit lasts an afternoon or a week:

• Iterate on claude-haiku-4-5. Run wiring tests, prompt drafts and error-path checks against the cheapest supported Claude model; switch to claude-sonnet-5 or claude-opus-4-8 only for final quality comparisons.
• Cap max_tokens aggressively. The Messages API requires the field anyway, and a low ceiling stops a rambling completion from eating the budget.
• Reuse long context with prompt caching. If your test loop re-sends the same large prompt, marking the stable prefix for caching makes repeat calls bill a fraction of the input tokens.
• Read the usage object on every response. input_tokens and output_tokens tell you the exact cost shape of your workload before you scale it to production traffic.

The trial covers more than Claude

The bonus credit is platform-wide, not Claude-only. The same key and the same balance call supported GPT, Gemini and Kimi models, which makes the trial genuinely useful for cross-model evaluation: send one prompt to several models and compare the answers side by side on your own tasks.

curl https://router.apitoken.sale/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sk-pool-•••" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "gpt-5.6-terra",
    "messages": [{"role":"user","content":"Hello"}]
  }'

Gemini-native tools authenticate with an x-goog-api-key header against the same router host, and Kimi models answer on both the Anthropic Messages lane and the OpenAI-compatible one. One balance, four providers, zero extra sign-ups.

After the free trial ends

There is no trial expiry date and no plan to pick. When the balance gets low, top up any whole-dollar amount — your flat discount applies immediately — and keep calling with the same key. The prepaid balance never expires, there is no subscription and no monthly minimum, so after the trial you only ever pay for the tokens you actually use.

Estimate your real monthly spend from the trial's usage numbers →

Compare every supported model and its price →

Wire up curl, Python, Node and your IDE end to end →

Frequently asked questions

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