Skip to content

Max plan API credits: how they are used

Decided 2026-10-08 (owner: Angel). One home for this rule; SOP-025 links here.

  • The Max 5x plan includes $100/month of Claude API credits (support.claude.com article 17154008). No rollover; unused credit expires at the end of the billing cycle. Covers the Messages and Batches API, Managed Agents and the Agent SDK / headless claude -p run with an API key. Interactive Claude Code is not covered.
  • Never over $100. Console org linked to the plan, auto-reload off, no purchased credits, and workspace Server automations capped at $100/month. When credit runs out, requests stop; nothing is billed.
  • Key: ~/.config/anthropic/env (0600, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY) + Vaultwarden "Anthropic API – server (Max credits)". Verified 2026-10-08 (models list 200, one Haiku call).
  • Spend order: (1) unattended content jobs (writer, reviewer, revise) move off the Max subscription onto the API, Batches where not urgent, ~40%; (2) failed-job fixer as a Managed Agent that opens PRs for approval, ~25%; (3) off-box watchdog for the store and server heartbeat, ~$3; (4) bulk sales copy via Batches (Cricket ads, store and Etsy listings, site SEO), ~20%; (5) the remainder spent in the last week of the cycle on backlog (ERP datasheets, extra notes) so nothing expires unused.
  • Free OpenRouter models still take bulk public text when good enough; customer data never goes to them.

  • Pacing, 2026-10-16: $47.76 spent in the first 8 days (content $30.70, fixer $16.65), which hits the $90 guard around 10-23, two weeks before the cycle ends. The content job's claude-sonnet-5 runs come from ~/assistant/daily_review.py: the Agent SDK (0.2.152) uses its bundled CLI 2.1.259, whose sonnet alias is still Sonnet 5 (fix: cli_path to ~/.local/bin/claude, via the sandbox branch). Its $0.22/run is a different, image-heavy job, so it is not a like-for-like price comparison with the $0.06 revise runs. The fixer's 26 Opus escalations ($10.62) record no passes yet, so its $/pass is unmeasured. Routing between all pools: SOP-025 "Three pools".

  • 2026-11-04 owner approval: transfer $10 from unused sales-copy to content for the current cycle only (cycle starting 2026-10-08). Effective limits: content $50, sales-copy $10; total guard remains $90. budgets.json stores dated cycle_jobs; api-credits e7cc8d0 ignores that allocation after November 8, automatically restoring content $40 / sales-copy $20. Regression checks cover expiry and the unchanged total cap.