Multiple Claude Accounts on Bitsy Wiki

Plans and Usage Limits

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A Pro, Max, Team or seat-based Enterprise subscription buys an allowance of usage that refills on two clocks: a session limit that resets every five hours, and a weekly limit that resets at a fixed time each week. Anthropic meters the allowance itself and publishes no token figure for it. Everything a subscriber does in Claude on the web, in the desktop and mobile apps, and in Claude Code draws on the same allowance. A Claude Console API key has no allowance: each request is billed per token, requests are throttled at the organization’s rate limits, and they stop when a prepaid balance runs out or a spend limit set by the owner is reached.

What the Terms Allow

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Three documents govern a Claude account. The Consumer Terms of Service cover the Free, Pro and Max plans; the Commercial Terms of Service cover Team, Enterprise and API accounts; and the Usage Policy applies to everyone under either. The legal and compliance page for Claude Code adds conditions on how its logins may be used. Read together, they let one person hold several accounts, forbid sharing a consumer account, restrict subscription logins to Anthropic’s own apps, and in one place name multiple accounts as a way of getting around usage limits. The quotations below are from the versions published on 26 October 2026.

Which Credential Claude Code Uses

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Claude Code can hold several credentials at once: the claude.ai login that /login saves, a Claude Console API key, a long-lived subscription token, a script that prints a key, and a cloud provider’s credentials. Each request carries one of them, chosen by a fixed order of precedence. Environment variables rank above the saved login, so an API key exported in a shell profile can decide which account pays while a subscription is signed in: an interactive session uses it once the user approves it, and claude -p, the non-interactive mode that runs one prompt and exits, uses it without asking.

One Config Directory per Account

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A Claude Code configuration directory holds one account’s login together with everything Claude Code keeps for that account: settings, personal instructions, skills, plugins, Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, prompt history and session transcripts. The default is ~/.claude, with a global config file beside it at ~/.claude.json. Setting the CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR environment variable before claude starts points all of it, global config file included, at another directory. Two directories behave as two independent installations of the same program, each signed in to its own account, and Anthropic’s documentation recommends this for staying signed in to a work account and a personal one at once.

The Cost of More Capacity

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

More Claude Code capacity can be bought in four ways: a larger plan, usage credits on the plan already held, an API key billed per token, or a second subscription. Each is priced in its own unit. Plans are sold as multiples of Pro’s allowance per five-hour session, while usage credits and API keys are charged in dollars per million tokens at Anthropic’s list prices, less a discount for credits bought in bundles. Comparing them needs one unit, and the one used here is the API-equivalent cost: what a piece of work would have cost on an API key at list price, computed from the token counts Claude Code records for every session.

Tools for Multiple Accounts

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Public tools for running Claude Code on more than one account come in four kinds. Usage trackers read Claude Code’s local transcripts and report usage per account. Account switchers store several logins and change which one Claude Code uses. Subscription-pooling proxies sit between Claude Code and Anthropic, hold several subscriptions, and send each request out on whichever one has room. Routers and gateways put a different credential, or a different model provider, behind Claude Code. Anthropic’s terms contain nothing that bears on the trackers, while a Usage Policy clause that takes effect on 12 November 2026 describes what the proxies do. Each project below was checked against its repository on 26 October 2026.

Account Layouts

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

An account layout is the set of accounts one person or one team runs Claude Code on, together with the rule that decides which account a session uses. Each layout below meets one of the needs listed in the section index: a boundary around code, a boundary around billing, a different kind of credential, or more capacity. The first, a single account, is the baseline the others add to, and each layout gives its setup, its cost and its risk.