Claude Code with an Anthropic API key — set up in 2 minutes

Claude Code is Anthropic's official CLI for agentic programming. Out of the box it connects to the Anthropic API using an sk-ant-… key, which has to be issued from your account and paid for in dollars. For developers outside the US this is friction: you can't issue the key without a foreign card, and the payment won't go through with most local BIN codes.

LiteAI solves this with no code changes: you paste our sk-bf-… key and route requests through our endpoint. The Anthropic SDK inside Claude Code sees an ordinary Anthropic API, the same Opus 4.8, Sonnet 4.6 and Haiku 4.5 models respond — but you pay with USDT, without a VPN, without anyone else's account.

What you'll need

• An installed Claude Code (Node.js 18+).
• A LiteAI API key in the sk-bf-… format — buy Claude API tokens at $1 per 1M.

Then you have two setup options: quick (per terminal session) and persistent (via settings.json).

Option 1: Quick — environment variables per session

export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL="https://api.liteai.tech/anthropic"
export ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN="sk-bf-..."
export ANTHROPIC_MODEL="claude-opus-4-8"
claude

After that claude launches as usual, but the requests flow through LiteAI. Good for one-off runs and experiments.

Option 2: Persistent — settings.json

If you don't want to export variables every time, write them into ~/.claude/settings.json:

{
  "env": {
    "ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL": "https://api.liteai.tech/anthropic",
    "ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN": "sk-bf-...",
    "ANTHROPIC_MODEL": "claude-opus-4-8"
  }
}

After saving, run claude from any terminal — the settings are picked up automatically.

Which endpoint to use

LiteAI exposes two base URLs:

Format	URL	When to use
Anthropic-compatible	https://api.liteai.tech/anthropic	Claude Code, the official Anthropic SDK, apps using x-api-key
OpenAI-compatible	https://api.liteai.tech/v1	Cursor, Zed, opencode, Cline, Kilo Code, the OpenAI SDK

Claude Code uses the first one — it returns the native Anthropic SSE events and supports tool use out of the box.

What models are available

Once connected, Claude Code pulls the model list through our endpoint automatically:

• claude-opus-4-8 — the flagship, 200K context. For hard tasks: refactoring a large codebase, system architecture design, long reasoning chains.
• claude-opus-4-8-1m — the same Opus with a 1M-token context. Useful for working with an entire repository: you can fit all project files in a single request.
• claude-sonnet-4-6 — the main model for most tasks. We recommend it as the default.
• claude-haiku-4-5 — the fastest. Good for simple operations: renames, formatting, template generation.

Switch between models with claude --model claude-opus-4-8 or interactively via /model.

How many tokens does Claude Code spend

A typical working session — 30 minutes of agentic work: reading files, searching the project, generating patches, validating. That's ~200K–500K tokens total (input + output).

At LiteAI's pricing:

• 200K → $0.20
• 500K → $0.50
• 1M → $1

For comparison: the same session on Claude Max 5x at $100 gives you 500 fixed message slots, not tokens. If an active agent makes dozens of calls per minute, Max runs out in 2 hours. With LiteAI you pay only for what you actually sent.

How to verify the key works

curl https://api.liteai.tech/anthropic/v1/messages \
  -H "x-api-key: sk-bf-..." \
  -H "anthropic-version: 2023-06-01" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "claude-haiku-4-5",
    "max_tokens": 256,
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Reply with the single word: hello"}]
  }'

If you get a response, the key is valid. If you get 401 Invalid API Key, double-check that you copied the key with no spaces or line breaks.

If Claude Code complains about region or VPN

It shouldn't: LiteAI keys aren't bound to an IP, and our infrastructure works from anywhere without a VPN. If the CLI does throw a region error, update Claude Code (npm i -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code@latest) and restart the terminal.

What else the same key plugs into

A single sk-bf-… key works across all of these tools:

• Cursor — provider OpenAI Compatible, base URL https://api.liteai.tech/v1, key sk-bf-….
• Zed — the api_url flag in language_models.anthropic.
• opencode — the liteai provider in ~/.config/opencode/opencode.jsonc.
• Cline / Kilo Code / Continue — OpenAI Compatible with the same base URL.
• Python / Node SDKs — anthropic.Anthropic(api_key="sk-bf-…", base_url="https://api.liteai.tech/anthropic") or openai.OpenAI(api_key="sk-bf-…", base_url="https://api.liteai.tech/v1").

The full set of configs lives on the Documentation page.

Bottom line

Connecting Claude Code to an Anthropic API key through LiteAI takes about 2 minutes:

1. Buy Claude API tokens at $1 per 1M.
2. Copy the sk-bf-… key from the @liteaitech_bot.
3. Set the two env variables or add the block in ~/.claude/settings.json.
4. Run claude — it works with the same Opus 4.8, Sonnet 4.6 and Haiku 4.5 models.

No VPN, no foreign card, no waiting for account approval.