From Anthropic Direct to ClaudeAPI.cheap.
Same SDK. 70-80% off the bill.
You're already on the real thing. We sit in front of the same Claude models you call today — Opus, Sonnet, Haiku — at 70-80% below Anthropic list. Migration is one environment variable. No SDK swap, no model-ID rewrite, no rate-limit downgrade.
Real pricing math
Per 1M tokens, USD. Anthropic prices reflect their public list as of 2026-05.
Pro tier is $19 lifetime — paid once, never again. At this volume Pro pays back on the first day of use.
Why teams leave Anthropic Direct for a proxy
Anthropic prices retail to cover product, sales, marketing, and brand premium. Inference at scale costs a fraction of list. We negotiate volume rates and pass them on — 70-80% off at the Pro tier.
Every request hits the actual Claude weights — Opus, Sonnet, Haiku. We do not quantize, distill, or substitute. Run a side-by-side and you'll get the same outputs. We publish weekly parity benchmarks to keep ourselves honest.
Anthropic auto-charges as you go. We require you to top up first (USDT / BTC / ETH / 100+ coins). A runaway loop hits a hard balance ceiling, not a credit card limit at 3am. Many scaling teams treat us as cost insurance even before the discount.
Cache writes (~1.25× input) and cache reads (~0.1× input) pass through. If your Anthropic Direct workload leans heavily on caching, you keep that 10-90% read discount on top of our 70-80% off list. Cache hits compound.
99.5% rolling-90-day uptime tracked on Instatus. If we drop below in a calendar month, every Pro user gets 1% of net monthly spend back automatically. See the full SLA →
Migration in 3 steps
Get an API key (30 seconds)
Sign up at claudeapi.cheap/signup — email + crypto, no card. Generate an sk-cc-... key from the dashboard.
Change two environment variables
If you set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY in env, your code already reads from env. Two lines change:
Both the Anthropic Python and Node SDKs read ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL automatically — no application code changes. The same env vars work for Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, Aider, and every other Anthropic-SDK consumer.
Verify with one curl
Hit /v1/messages against the proxy with your new key. Same payload as Anthropic Direct.
The first response shows up at /dashboard/usage with exact token count and cost. From this point on, your existing Anthropic-SDK code Just Works.
Model IDs are identical
We use the canonical Anthropic model names — no remapping, no version suffixes to learn.
Full catalog including GPT-5 and Gemini 3 at /models. New model IDs ship the same week Anthropic publishes them.
FAQ
Is this an affiliate program or a real proxy?
It's a real proxy. Every request hits the actual Claude model and returns the actual response. We aggregate developer demand to negotiate volume rates, then pass the discount through. No affiliate cookies, no redirects, no scraping — your request never leaves our infrastructure until it hits the model endpoint.
How is the discount possible if Anthropic prices are fixed?
Public Anthropic prices are retail. Volume buyers — large platforms, enterprise customers — pay much less. We aggregate hundreds of small developers into one volume buyer and share the savings. The fundamental compute cost is well below list; the gap is where the discount comes from.
Does streaming, prompt caching, and tool use work?
Yes to all three. SSE streaming preserves the full event sequence (message_start, content_block deltas, message_stop). Prompt caching write/read mechanics work — though cache metadata forwarding from upstream is intermittent in 2026, so don't assume 100% passthrough. Tool/function use round-trips exactly as on direct.
What about rate limits and TPM caps?
Pro plan: 500 RPM / 2M TPM global. Basic plan: 200 RPM / 1M TPM. These are flat, posted limits — not tier 1/2/3/4 ramps that you have to grow into. If you were on Anthropic Direct's lower tiers, you actually get more headroom here. See status.claudeapi.cheap for live availability.
Can I keep my Anthropic Direct account as a fallback?
Many teams do — instantiate two clients with different base URLs, route 99% to us, 1% to direct as a heartbeat. If you ever want to switch back, just unset ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL and the SDK resumes calling api.anthropic.com.
What if I'm not satisfied after migrating?
Email support@claudeapi.cheap within 7 days for a full refund of remaining balance and the $19 Pro upgrade. Crypto refunds return to the originating wallet within 24 hours. See /trust for the full policy.
No card, crypto only. Basic free forever; $19 lifetime Pro. Read our SLA →