This is the program from my reel. Anthropic runs Claude for Startups for young companies building with Claude, and the application takes about 10 minutes. Everything below comes from the official program page, linked at the bottom.
What approved companies get
- A free year of Claude Team for up to five Premium seats, if your company is new to Claude Team.
- $1,000 in Claude API credits. They expire six months after you get them, so plan to use them.
- Up to $45K in offers from partner tools in the Claude Startup Stack. A few examples from the list: ElevenLabs gives 12 months free plus 33M characters, Gamma gives 25% off your first year of Gamma Pro annual, and Firecrawl gives 2.5x your plan's monthly credits for a year.
- Higher API rate limits once you receive the credits.
- 45-minute office hours with Anthropic's Applied AI team, held every other week, plus invites to Claude Startup events.
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Step 1: Check that you qualify
You need all of these before you apply:
- Your company was founded in the last five years, or raised funding in the last two.
- You have an email address on your company's own domain, the same domain as your website. A Gmail or Outlook address won't get approved.
- You can describe what you're building in a couple of sentences.
You don't need investors. The program is open to bootstrapped, pre-seed and venture-backed companies.
If your company already pays for Claude Team, the free year doesn't apply to you. It's only for teams new to Claude Team.
Step 2: Apply in the Claude Console
- Open the Claude Startups application.
- Sign in, or create a Console account with your company email. The account is free.
- Fill in the application: your company, your website and what you're building.
- Submit it.
Most applications are decided within minutes. The rest go to a manual review, which usually takes two to three business days. You'll get an email either way.
Step 3: Claim everything once you're approved
- Open the approval email and follow the link to the Claude Startups page in the Console.
- Claim your free year of Claude Team there.
- Claim your $1,000 in API credits on the same page. The six-month clock starts when they're granted.
- Redeem the partner offers you want. Each one comes with a code in the Console.
- Register for office hours with the link in your email or the Startups portal.
The credits work on the Claude API through the Claude Console. They can't be used on AWS Bedrock or Google Cloud Vertex AI.
If you're backed by a VC
Founders backed by a VC in Anthropic's partner network can get up to $100K in extra API credits. You claim those through your VC, so ask them directly.
