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Channel and billing highlights:
  • Default channel: AWS Claude (AWS Bedrock official) — high stability, strong cache hit rates.
  • Backup channel: Claude Official (direct Anthropic API with official keys) — auto-failover when the AWS channel has issues.
  • Both channels are pure official passthrough. Pay-as-you-go, no rate limiting, all-in cost ≈ 85% of list price (79%–86% range after stacking deposit bonuses).
We don’t do low-cost reverse-engineered access — only reliable, stable quality and service.The Claude-access market is a bit of a mess, and the cheaper the price, the murkier it usually gets: with those low-cost channels you have no idea what they’ve mixed in — reverse-engineered hacks, shared accounts, dumbed-down or silently swapped models. Worse, if your conversation data gets resold, you’d never know. APIYI does pure official passthrough only (AWS Bedrock + official Anthropic keys): traceable channels, no data retention. We’d rather cost a little more and stay stable and clean.

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Get an API Key

Create or manage tokens in the dashboard: https://api.apiyi.com/token
  • The default token works out of the box.
  • If you create a new token under the ClaudeCode group, you get 5% off (95% of list).
  • That group discount stacks with deposit bonuses of 10%–20%, bringing the all-in cost down to roughly 79%–86% of list (the ”≈ 85%” headline).
  • No rate limiting, cheaper than the official site, easy to use.
API is billed per usage (not a monthly subscription) — fees are deducted in real time from your prepaid balance.

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Endpoints

ItemValue
Base URLhttps://api.apiyi.com
Anthropic native endpointhttps://api.apiyi.com/v1/messages
OpenAI-compatible endpointhttps://api.apiyi.com/v1/chat/completions

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Available Models

These three are the latest in each family — recommended for direct use:
FamilyModelBest for
Opusclaude-opus-4-8Complex coding, deep reasoning
Sonnetclaude-sonnet-4-6General intelligence, daily code
Haikuclaude-haiku-4-5-20251001Fast responses, high concurrency

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Calling format: native vs OpenAI-compatible

We support both the Anthropic native format and the OpenAI-compatible format — but pick the right one for your case:

✅ Strongly recommended: Anthropic native

Endpoint: /v1/messagesIf you use Claude Code, Cline, Cursor, or any Claude-heavy client, you must use the native format.Only the native format properly triggers Prompt Cache (cached billing), which dramatically lowers cost for long context / repeated system prompts.

⚙️ Universal: OpenAI-compatible

Endpoint: /v1/chat/completionsIf your project is already on the OpenAI SDK and you don’t care about cache billing, you can switch to Claude with near-zero migration cost.Best for one-off scripts, light workloads, and legacy projects locked to the OpenAI SDK.
Cache billing only works in the Anthropic native format. In Claude Code-style high-frequency, long-context use, the OpenAI-compatible format can lead to materially higher bills — that’s an upstream protocol limitation, not an APIYI issue.
For details on how prompt caching works and how to verify it, see Claude Prompt Caching Guide.

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Examples

curl https://api.apiyi.com/v1/messages \
  -H "x-api-key: your-apiyi-key" \
  -H "anthropic-version: 2023-06-01" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "max_tokens": 1024,
    "messages": [
      {"role": "user", "content": "Hello, please introduce yourself."}
    ]
  }'

import anthropic

client = anthropic.Anthropic(
    api_key="your-apiyi-key",
    base_url="https://api.apiyi.com"
)

message = client.messages.create(
    model="claude-opus-4-8",
    max_tokens=1024,
    messages=[
        {"role": "user", "content": "Write a Python quicksort example."}
    ]
)

print(message.content[0].text)

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OpenAI-compatible format (for generic migrations)

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    api_key="your-apiyi-key",
    base_url="https://api.apiyi.com/v1"
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="claude-sonnet-4-6",
    messages=[
        {"role": "user", "content": "Hello, please introduce yourself."}
    ]
)

print(response.choices[0].message.content)

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A note on Opus pricing

Opus is comparatively expensive. Day-to-day chat usage is modest, but in coding scenarios with heavy token input/output, the bill adds up quickly. We suggest starting with a $10 test budget to gauge real-world consumption before committing.
Daily-use guidance:
  • Most scenarios: prefer claude-sonnet-4-6 — best price/performance.
  • Simple / high-volume tasks: use claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 — fast and cheap.
  • Hard coding / reasoning: escalate to claude-opus-4-8.

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FAQ

Because the real cost of “cheap” is the part you can’t see. Reverse-engineered hacks, shared accounts, dumbed-down or quietly swapped models can all push the price down — but you have no idea what’s been mixed into the channel. Output quality swings, the service can vanish overnight, and if your conversation data gets resold you’d never notice.We do pure official passthrough only: the default channel is AWS Bedrock official access, the backup is direct Anthropic with official keys — both traceable, pay-as-you-go, with no retention of your data. All-in cost lands at roughly 85% of list price, which we think is the right line to hold between “reliable and stable” and “fairly priced.” We’d rather cost a bit more than touch sketchy, untraceable cheap supply.