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SET A SPEND LIMIT.

know what it can cost.

When your site uses your own Anthropic key, every reply under a thought and every "say it in your own words" is a small charge to your account. It's fractions of a cent each, and your site already limits how many one person can ask for. A spend limit is the last line: a monthly number your site can't go past. It takes five minutes, and you do it once.

I give my site its own workspace. Its key, its spending and its limit stay separate from everything else I use Claude for, so I always know what the site costs.

1️⃣ Make a workspace for your site

  1. Sign in to the Claude Console at platform.claude.com
  2. Go to Settings → Workspaces
  3. Click Add Workspace, near the top right
  4. Name it after your site, pick a color, and click Create

Only an organization admin can create workspaces. If you made the account, that's you.

2️⃣ Make your site's key inside it

  1. Open your new workspace from the Workspaces list
  2. Click the API Keys tab
  3. Click Create Key, give it a name like "my site", and click Create Key again
  4. Copy the key now. It starts with sk-ant-, and you won't see it again

A key belongs to the workspace it was made in and can't move. That's what makes the limit work: the workspace's limit is this key's limit.

3️⃣ Set the monthly limit

  1. Still in your workspace, click the Limits tab
  2. Next to the spend limit, choose Change Limit
  3. Enter the most your site may spend in a month, and save
  • It has to be lower than your organization's limit. Until you set one, a workspace uses the organization's
  • Back to the organization's limit? Click the Refresh icon next to it
  • Both limits always apply. Anthropic checks the workspace's and the organization's on every request

4️⃣ Get an email before you reach it

On the same Limits tab, choose Add notification and pick an amount below your limit, like half of it. You'll get an email when your site gets there, while there's still room to decide.

5️⃣ Connect the key to your site

bash
# .env in your copy
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="sk-ant-..."

Then give Vercel its own copy, from your project folder. It asks you to paste the key, so it never lands in your terminal history. Redeploy afterwards so your live site picks it up:

bash
vercel env add ANTHROPIC_API_KEY production

Using a key you made before you had a workspace? Anthropic rejects it unless it names one. Add the workspace's ID (it starts with wrkspc_) as ANTHROPIC_WORKSPACE_ID in both places, or make a new key inside the workspace (step 2).

when your site reaches it

Anthropic stops answering your key's requests and says when access comes back. Your site keeps working: thoughts still post, and "where are you starting from?" still takes a pick. They just go without the model's part until the month turns or you raise the limit. Visitors who use their own key aren't affected; they never touch yours.

Back to GET YOUR CLAUDE., where this key turns on replies in your site.

sources.