Claude Code Login vs API Key vs Bedrock: 7 Credentials, Ranked

Claude Code checks 7 credentials in a fixed order. Five of them bill a Console org or a cloud account, not your $20, $100 or $200 plan.

Photo by Nicolae Valera on Unsplash

If you pay $20, $100 or $200 a month for Claude, your plan is the seventh and last credential Claude Code checks before it sends a request, and the November 2026 releases (2.1.318 and 2.1.319) add the first warnings for the moment it loses. Anthropic's authentication page publishes the order. Six credentials outrank the subscription login; five of them bill a Console organization, a gateway owner or a cloud account per token, and only the CI token keeps your plan.

The plan-or-API arithmetic below fits on one free page: the AI Adoption ROI One-Pager.

In the order Claude Code checks them, with who pays:

1. Cloud provider credentials, when CLAUDE_CODE_USE_BEDROCK, CLAUDE_CODE_USE_VERTEX or CLAUDE_CODE_USE_FOUNDRY is set. Billed per token by your cloud account. No plan limits.
2. ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN, a bearer token, normally for an LLM gateway. Billed to the token's owner. No plan limits.
3. ANTHROPIC_API_KEY. Billed to the Console organization that issued the key, at API rates. Asked once in…