Get a free Claude API key in minutes

The short answer: free credit, not a free tier

You can hold a working free Claude API key about two minutes from now. Register with Google or GitHub, open the dashboard, generate a key, and the $5 platform welcome bonus is already on your balance — no payment details asked for at any point. Every supported Claude model is callable immediately, at the same endpoints paid balance uses.

Understand what the offer is and is not. It is a one-time credit grant for evaluating the gateway with real traffic, not an ongoing free tier with a monthly refill. There is no sandbox mode and no reduced feature set: streaming, tool use and long context all behave exactly as they do for paying accounts, because the billing path is the only thing that differs.

See also: Try the Claude API free

Claim the bonus with Google or GitHub

1. 01Create the account with Google or GitHub OAuth. This signup route is what attaches the $5 welcome bonus — there is no approval queue, invite or manual review.
2. 02Open the dashboard and generate an API key. It looks like sk-pool-…, and one key covers the full supported Claude line — Opus, Sonnet and Haiku — on a single balance.
3. 03Pick the wire protocol your tool expects: the Anthropic Messages API at https://router.apitoken.sale with an x-api-key header, or the OpenAI-compatible lane at https://router.apitoken.sale/v1 with Authorization: Bearer.

Signed up with email and password first? That account works but never receives the welcome bonus — the grant is tied to the OAuth signup method, not to being new. If your dashboard shows a zero bonus, sign out and register again through Google or GitHub instead of topping up out of frustration.

Prove the integration with a cheap first call

Do not burn the bonus on an Opus monologue. Validate the plumbing with the smallest useful request: Haiku, a short prompt, a hard max_tokens cap. A 200 response with a usage block confirms auth, routing and metering end to end.

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": 256,
    "messages": [{"role":"user","content":"Reply with the word ok"}]
  }'

Troubleshooting is mechanical. A 401 means the key or base URL is wrong. A 400 usually means a missing max_tokens or a mistyped model ID. An insufficient-balance error on a brand-new account almost always means the account was created with email and password, so no bonus was ever attached.

How far the free credit actually stretches

Every request is metered at official Anthropic token rates, then the flat 50% B2C discount is subtracted before the balance moves. That means the bonus buys roughly double what the same dollars would buy at list price.

Read the last column as an evaluation budget, not a production one. Two million Haiku output tokens is enough to wire up your editor, replay a realistic workload and compare model quality on your own prompts. The same bonus spread across Opus runs dry in a single afternoon of agentic coding — which is itself useful information before you spend real money.

Full per-model pricing, including cache rates →

Estimate your monthly cost in the free calculator →

The same key also calls GPT, Gemini and Kimi

The bonus is valid on supported models from all four providers, and the key you already generated is the only credential you need. Claude runs on the Anthropic Messages lane; GPT models run on the OpenAI-compatible lane; Gemini answers natively at https://router.apitoken.sale with an x-goog-api-key header; Kimi works on Anthropic Messages and through the universal OpenAI-compatible lane.

This is the underrated part of the free credit: it is a cross-provider benchmark budget. Run the same prompt set against Claude and its alternatives, measure quality on your tasks instead of vendor leaderboards, and only then decide where the paid balance goes.

When the credit runs out

Top up any whole-dollar amount — there is no fixed package catalog — by bank card or cryptocurrency through a secure checkout provider. The flat discount applies automatically to every subsequent request; nothing needs to be unlocked or negotiated.

There is no subscription and no monthly minimum, and prepaid balance never expires, so an idle month costs exactly nothing. Treat the first top-up as a continuation of the evaluation: add a small amount, point one real project at the gateway, and scale only when the numbers justify it.

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