How much is the Claude API costing me this month?

Last updated: 30 September 2026 · Deutsch

Sign in to the Claude Console and open the Cost page: pick the month, and it shows what your organisation has spent, by model and workspace. What is left of your credit is under Settings → Billing. Outside the browser, the Cost API returns the same figures, but only to an admin credential such as an Admin API key. A Claude plan such as Pro or Max is billed apart and is not part of that sum.

Where the number is

Sign in to the Claude Console and open the Cost page. Pick the workspace, the model and the month; it shows a daily cost chart and the total, web search and code execution included.

Cost page (platform.claude.com/cost) — dollars spent. Choose one workspace or “All Workspaces”, one model or “All Models”. You can export the data as CSV.
Usage page (platform.claude.com/usage) — tokens, not dollars: input and output by model and API key, requests stopped by rate limits, and your cache rate. Also with CSV export.
Billing page (Settings → Billing) — your credit balance, your credit use, and your spend limit.

You need the Developer, Billing or Admin role to see the reports. Neither page splits costs by person; Anthropic says so plainly. For Claude Code there is a separate analytics API with estimated costs per user.

Credits, auto-reload and what happens at zero

By default you pay in advance. You buy credits under Settings → Billing → Buy credits, and each request draws them down at current prices. Claude Code, when you sign in with a Console account, draws on the same credits.

At zero you can no longer call the API or use the playground until you add more.
Auto-reload buys credits for you. You set the balance that triggers a purchase and the amount to reload to.
Credits expire one year after purchase. The date can’t be extended, and purchases are not refunded.
Only successful calls are billed; failed requests cost nothing.

Some organisations with a sales contract get a monthly invoice instead. For them, the Cost page is the running total until the invoice comes.

Keep two numbers apart. The balance is what is left of the credits you bought. The cost is what you spent. Buy credits mid-month and the balance jumps while the cost does not: for this month’s spend, look at the Cost page.

Spend limits and alerts

Each usage tier carries a monthly cap: Anthropic lists $500 for Start, $1,000 for Build and $200,000 for Scale. Reach it and the API pauses until 00:00 UTC on the first day of the next month, with HTTP 429 and the error code enforced_spend_limit_reached, unless you move to a higher tier first.

Your own limit for the organisation: Settings → Billing → Spend limits → Adjust limit (or Set limit). It cannot exceed your tier’s cap. Once reached, requests return HTTP 400 with a message that begins “You have reached your specified API usage limits”.
Per workspace: Settings → Workspaces, then the workspace’s Spend limits tab. The limit must be lower than the organisation’s; without one, the organisation’s applies. The Default Workspace can’t take a limit.
Alerts: on the same tab, “Add notification” sends an email when the workspace’s spend reaches an amount you set. Only organisation admins can change these settings.

The Claude Code workspace, which the Console creates on the first Claude Code sign-in, is the only one that takes monthly spend limits per user.

Why the figure lags

Anthropic says usage and cost data typically appears within five minutes of a request, though the delay may now and then be longer.

The Cost API counts in whole days in UTC. In Switzerland a new month starts at 01:00 or 02:00 local time, not at midnight. And today’s figure keeps growing until the day closes.

Asking the API yourself

The Cost API is part of the Admin API. A normal API key won’t do. The cost report needs an Admin API key, which starts with sk-ant-admin01- and only organisation admins can create. Individual accounts have no access to the Admin API.

You create the key under Settings → Admin keys (platform.claude.com/settings/admin-keys). It is shown only once. A key scoped to a workspace gets turned away. If your Console account has no organisation yet, set one up under Settings → Organization first.

curl "https://api.anthropic.com/v1/organizations/cost_report?\
starting_at=2026-09-01T00:00:00Z&\
limit=31&\
group_by[]=description" \
  -H "anthropic-version: 2023-06-01" \
  -H "x-api-key: $ANTHROPIC_ADMIN_KEY"

Buckets are always one day wide. Without limit you get seven days; the most is 31.
Add up amount over all results in data. Careful: the amount is a decimal string in cents. "123.45" in USD means $1.23, so divide by 100.
group_by[]=description adds the model and token type to each line; workspace_id splits by workspace. The Default Workspace shows as null.
If has_more is true, ask again with page set to next_page.

Priority Tier costs are billed another way and are not in this report. Token counts come from /v1/organizations/usage_report/messages, in buckets of a minute, an hour or a day. Anthropic allows polling once a minute.

Does a Claude plan cover API costs?

No. A paid Claude plan does not include the API or the Console. The API is billed on its own, through credits you buy in the Console.

That holds for Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise alike. Want both? Then you pay for a plan on claude.ai and set up billing in the Console as well. How the plan’s own limits work is in Monitoring Claude usage limits. The same question for OpenAI is answered in How much is the OpenAI API costing me this month?

In AI Cockpit

The Anthropic API card reads the cost report named above, with an Admin API key you enter, and only reads. Without such a key it stays empty; with a key the report turns away, it says it needs an admin key from an organisation. It is a card for API spend, not for the Claude plan.

Mac menu bar: today, the current month and the total since the first day with costs. Below that, the five largest cost lines with month and total, a curve of the last 30 days (on by default), and a note when today runs at 1.8 times or more your median day.
iPhone and iPad: today, the current month and the total. The month also counts toward the total-cost line above the cards.
Apple Watch (via the iPhone app): one line with today and the month.

It refreshes every 15 minutes by default; you can pick 5 to 60 minutes. What it does not do: show your credit balance, your spend limits or tokens, or buy credits. Since the card has no cap to measure against, it has no warning thresholds in per cent. For a cap of your own, Mac 6.8 and iOS 2.9 add a monthly budget for all API costs together, with a warning at 75 and 100 per cent. From Mac 6.8 and iOS 2.8 the card converts the cents in the report to dollars correctly.

Which services the app reads and why each needs its key: AI API costs at a glance. Short answers on admin keys and empty cards are on the FAQ page.