Error messages

Credit balance is too low

Credit balance is too low

Claude has two ways to pay for it, and they don't share money. A subscription (Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise) buys usage through claude.ai. The API is prepaid: you put credit on a Console organization and each request draws it down. This error comes from the second one. Claude Code stores it as:

Credit balance is too low

and in the terminal it shows the fix alongside:

Credit balance too low · Add funds: https://platform.claude.com/settings/billing

The API itself says it at more length, as a 400 with the type invalid_request_error:

Your credit balance is too low to access the Anthropic API. Please go to Plans & Billing to upgrade or purchase credits.

We read the strings out of Claude Code 2.1.280, checked Anthropic's own error reference, and went through the GitHub reports. Between the two wordings, the Claude Code repo has about a hundred issues quoting it as of September 23, 2026.

On a Pro or Max plan, it's the wrong key

Rule this one out first. If you pay for a subscription and still see a credit error, the likely reason is that Claude Code is sending your requests with an API key instead of your login. Anthropic's error reference says it outright: an ANTHROPIC_API_KEY in your environment "routes requests through that key instead of your subscription."

Run /status and look at the API key row. If something's there, unset the variable in your shell, remove it from your shell profile so it doesn't come back tomorrow, relaunch claude and run /login with your subscription. A 2025 report titled "PRO account shows - Credit balance is too low" is this exact situation. That user's own workaround was to delete ~/.claude* and sign in again, and they warned that the sign-in screen offers two choices and they'd picked the wrong one first.

On the API, top up and check your caps

If you meant to use the API, add credit at the billing page the error links to. Anthropic also suggests turning on auto-reload there so the balance refills before it hits zero, and setting spend caps per workspace so one project can't drain everything.

Those caps can cause the error on their own. One user who had plenty of credit found they'd reached a spending limit on the account, and it blocked the credit they'd just bought. Raising the limit to match the balance fixed it straight away.

When you've topped up and it still says it

The busiest recent thread (issue #31537, opened in March 2026 and still open) is full of people who paid, saw the invoice marked Paid, and kept getting refused. Nobody from Anthropic had replied there when we read it. What people report working, in the order we'd try them:

• Run /login again. One user wrote that they "just had to type /login" and saw the top-up immediately, with no logout needed.
• Make a new API key. Two people found the old key stayed refused after the top-up while a key created afterwards worked.

Failing both, waiting has worked too: one commenter said it sorted itself out after "around 90 mins". A report from September 13 shows it's still happening on recent versions, with $94.97 sitting in the account.

For the sign-in side of the same mix-up, see “Not logged in · Please run /login”.