Claude Startup Program: Claude Credits & Anthropic Grants for Startups

Anthropic expanded the program on October 6, 2026. The biggest change is who qualifies: any startup founded in the last five years or funded in the last two can join, including bootstrapped companies. The old institutional-funding requirement is gone. Here is what members get:

• One year of Claude Team, free. Up to five Premium seats for a year if you are new to Team. That covers the Claude app for your whole founding team, not just the API.
• $1,000 in Claude API credits. Applied to your Claude Console organization, with higher API rate limits switched on automatically. Credits expire six months after they are granted.
• The Claude Startup Stack, up to $45K in partner offers. Discounts and credits from AI-native tools, including 12 months of ElevenLabs free, six months of Hex Enterprise, three months of Granola Business, $5K in ClickHouse Cloud credits, 25% off Gamma Pro and more.
• Up to $100K more through a partner VC. If an Anthropic partner VC backs you, claim up to $100K in additional API credits through that investor. This is where the large allocations now live.
• Office hours and events. 45-minute office hours with Anthropic's Applied AI team every other week, plus Founder House, hackathons and community meetups.

Compare it with OpenAI's startup credits and see what Claude costs once the free year ends on our Claude pricing page.

Claude credits are a prepaid balance on your Claude Console organization at platform.claude.com. Startup credits land in that balance and draw down at standard per-token pricing on every current model, so your $1,000 program allocation (or up to $100K more through a partner VC) buys the same tokens whether you spend it on Haiku 4.5 or Fable 5.1. Full per-model rates are on our Claude API pricing page.

Four things trip founders up, so read these before you apply:

• Credits cover the first-party Claude API only. They work through the Claude Console and cannot be spent on AWS Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI or Microsoft Foundry. If your stack is locked to a cloud marketplace, use that cloud's own startup credits instead.
• Claude Code runs on the same balance. Claude Code billed through a Console API key draws from your credits. The Claude Pro and Max subscriptions are a separate product and are not covered.
• They expire after six months. Program credits expire six months after they are granted, so apply when you are ready to build, not months ahead. When they run out, standard API pricing kicks in automatically with no migration.
• You can buy more Claude credits at any time. Go to Billing in the Console and click Buy credits, or set auto-reload with a minimum balance. Purchased credits expire one year from the purchase date and are non-refundable.

To make the credits last, turn on prompt caching for any repeated system prompt or document, send non-urgent work through the Batch API at half price, and route bulk classification or extraction to Haiku or Sonnet rather than the largest model.

Anthropic does not run a cash grant program for companies. When founders search for an "Anthropic grant" they usually mean one of three things, and only the first is open to startups:

• Claude for Startups (this page). A free year of Claude Team, $1,000 in API credits and partner offers, nothing to repay. Most applications are decided within minutes. Third-party grant databases list it as the "Anthropic Startup Grant Program".
• AI for Science research credits. API credits for researchers at institutions, with a focus on biology and life sciences. The July 2026 rare disease call offered up to $50,000 in Claude credits over six months to clinical researchers, patient organizations and early-stage biotechs; that round closed August 2, 2026 and new calls open periodically.
• Gates Foundation partnership. Announced May 2026: $200 million over four years in grant funding, Claude usage credits and technical support for global health, life sciences, education and economic mobility programs. Funding is routed through Anthropic's Beneficial Deployments team and partner organizations; there is no open application for startups.

If you are a company building on Claude, apply to Claude for Startups below. If you are a lab or nonprofit, watch anthropic.com/research for the next AI for Science call, and compare it against OpenAI's startup credits and the grants available to nonprofit startups.