How to Use Claude Haiku 5.5 for Free ?

Yes, you can use Claude Haiku 5.5 for free—but only in chat. Anthropic says Free plan users can select Haiku 5.5 on Claude.ai, including web, iOS, and Android. The Claude API has no ongoing free tier: new users receive only a small test credit, Claude Code is not included with Free, and a free chat account does not provide an API key. To call claude-haiku-5-5 from code, you pay per token, starting at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens for prompts up to 100K tokens.

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Haiku 5.5 shipped on October 7, 2026. This guide shows the free chat option, explains why there is no permanently free Haiku 5.5 API, clarifies paid-plan credits, and identifies offers that do not apply. For model details, read what Claude Haiku 5.5 is. For Claude generally, see the free Claude guide. When you move to the API, Apidog lets you send and inspect a Haiku 5.5 request before wiring it into your application.

Every route at a glance

Route 1: Use the Claude.ai Free plan

This is the simplest free route. Sign up at claude.ai or install the iOS or Android app. Then open the model picker and select Haiku 5.5. Anthropic’s pricing page lists Haiku as included with Free; Opus is not.

Free users can select Haiku 5.5. Anthropic does not state that it is the default Free-plan model, so verify the selected model before starting a long conversation.

Anthropic’s Claude.ai system prompt describes Haiku 5.5 as “the fastest model for quick questions.” Use it for:

• Short, repeatable tasks: summaries, rewrites, classification, and quick lookups.
• Long content, cautiously: the API supports a 1M-token context window, but Anthropic has not published a Free-plan chat context limit.
• Complex work elsewhere: Anthropic positions Sonnet 5.5 and Opus 5.5 for more complex agentic coding. See the free Sonnet 5.5 guide.

A Claude.ai chat entitlement cannot run Claude Code, create an API key, power a script, or run in CI.

Is there a free Claude Haiku 5.5 API?

Not on an ongoing basis. Anthropic says new users receive “a small amount of free credits to test the API,” but there is no permanent free tier or official free Haiku 5.5 API offer.

Every claude-haiku-5-5 API request is billed by token.

Max and Team monthly API credits: paid, not free

Anthropic introduced monthly API credits for Max and Team subscribers. These are subscription benefits, not free API access.

The credits apply to models on the Claude Platform, including Haiku 5.5, across:

• Messages API
• Message Batches
• Managed Agents
• Agent SDK
• Console Playground

They do not cover interactive Claude Code, additional Claude app usage, or Claude through Bedrock, Google Cloud, Microsoft Foundry, or Claude Platform on AWS.

Credits expire at the end of each billing cycle and do not roll over. New subscribers can claim them after seven days. Link one Console organization from Claude.ai billing settings; you cannot change that organization yourself. When credits are exhausted and no other balance exists, API requests stop until the next billing period. Review the Help Center claim instructions for the exact process.

Vercel AI Gateway: unconfirmed

Vercel lists Haiku 5.5 as anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5. Its model page says that users who have not made a payment receive $5 in credits every 30 days.

However, Vercel does not explicitly confirm that this credit applies to Haiku 5.5. Treat it as unconfirmed until you successfully send a request from an account that has never paid.

At the up-to-100K pricing tier, $5 would cover approximately:

• 50M input tokens, or
• 10M output tokens

The cheapest paid path

Without Max or Team credits, create a Console key and pay list prices. The Anthropic API key guide walks through key creation.

For example, a request with 2,000 input tokens and 500 output tokens costs approximately:

Input:  2,000 × $0.10 / 1,000,000 = $0.00020
Output:   500 × $0.50 / 1,000,000 = $0.00025
Total:                               $0.00045

Two cost caveats apply:

1. The new tokenizer produces about 30% more tokens for the same text than Haiku 4.5.
2. A prompt over 100,000 tokens uses the higher price tier.

See the Haiku 5.5 pricing breakdown for more examples.

To stretch a small API budget:

• Set lower effort. output_config.effort accepts low, medium (default), high, xhigh, and max. Anthropic describes low as the fastest and cheapest option.
• Disable thinking when you do not need it. Use thinking: {"type": "disabled"} with high effort or lower. Thinking tokens count toward max_tokens.
• Cache repeated prompt prefixes. Haiku 5.5 requires at least 512 tokens for a cacheable prompt. At the lower tier, cache reads cost $0.01 per million tokens. See the prompt caching explainer.
• Use batches for non-interactive jobs. The Batch API halves input and output prices.

What is not free

These options often appear in searches for “free Haiku 5.5,” but they do not provide free access.

Claude Code on Free. Claude Code is not available on Free, and Max and Team API credits do not pay for it. Haiku 5.5 requires version 2.1.293 or later. See the Haiku 5.5 Claude Code guide.

API access through Pro. Pro is not eligible for the monthly API credit. Pro subscribers pay per token for API requests.

Google Cloud’s $300 trial. Google states that trial credits cannot be used for generative AI partner models delivered as managed APIs. Free-trial accounts also cannot use third-party generative AI models until upgraded.

Azure’s $200 credit. Microsoft’s offer terms exclude third-party branded products and Azure Marketplace products. Claude is a third-party branded model.

AWS Free Tier. AWS offers eligible new accounts up to $200 in credits, but Bedrock bills Haiku 5.5 through AWS Marketplace. No AWS documentation confirms that Free Tier credits apply, so assume they do not.

OpenRouter. As of October 8, 2026, OpenRouter has no Haiku 5.5 entry. It lists Haiku 4.5 at $1/$5 and no :free variant.

GitHub Copilot. GitHub has not announced Haiku 5.5. Its supported-models page lists Haiku 4.5 only.

Cursor Hobby. Haiku 5.5 is billed from Cursor’s “Other Models” pool, which is included with Pro, Pro Plus, and Ultra. There is no official confirmation that Hobby users can access it.

Third-party “Haiku 5.5” chatbots. One chatbot aggregator listing was created by an unrelated user and ran on a different company’s model. Use Claude.ai and official Anthropic apps instead.

Test your first Haiku 5.5 request in Apidog

Once you have an API key, validate the request before adding it to your application. In Apidog, store ANTHROPIC_API_KEY as an environment variable so the secret never appears in a shared request.

Import this cURL command into Apidog, then replace $ANTHROPIC_API_KEY with {{ANTHROPIC_API_KEY}}:

curl https://api.anthropic.com/v1/messages \
  -H "x-api-key: $ANTHROPIC_API_KEY" \
  -H "anthropic-version: 2023-06-01" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "claude-haiku-5-5",
    "max_tokens": 1024,
    "thinking": {"type": "disabled"},
    "output_config": {"effort": "low"},
    "messages": [
      {
        "role": "user",
        "content": "Classify this ticket as billing, bug, or feature request: The export button returns a 500 error."
      }
    ]
  }'

After sending the request, inspect the usage object to confirm billed token counts. Save the request with assertions for:

• stop_reason, not just HTTP status. Haiku 5.5 can decline a request with stop_reason: "refusal" because it runs safety classifiers. This behavior is new for developers coming from Haiku 4.5.
• usage within budget. Rerun the request after changing the prompt or effort setting and compare token usage.

If you are migrating an old Haiku 4.5 request, remove:

temperature
top_p
top_k
budget_tokens
assistant prefill

Each can cause a 400 response with Haiku 5.5. See the Haiku 5.5 vs Haiku 4.5 guide for breaking changes, and the Haiku 5.5 API guide for effort, thinking, and caching details.

FAQ

Is Claude Haiku 5.5 free?

Yes, in chat. Free-plan users can select Haiku 5.5 on Claude.ai, including web, iOS, and Android. The API and Claude Code are paid.

Is Haiku 5.5 the default model on Claude’s Free plan?

Anthropic has not said that it is. It only states that Free users can select Haiku 5.5, so check the model picker.

Can I get a free Claude Haiku 5.5 API key?

Not permanently. New API users receive only a small test credit, and a chat plan does not include an API key. Max and Team subscribers receive monthly API credits, but those credits are part of paid plans.

Do Max and Team API credits work in Claude Code?

No. They apply to the Claude API, Message Batches, Managed Agents, Agent SDK, and Console Playground—not interactive Claude Code or cloud platforms.

Is GPT-6 Luna a free alternative?

GPT-6 Luna has the same $0.10/$0.50 list price for short prompts, and OpenAI lets Free and Go users access it in the desktop app, not in Chat. See the GPT-6 Luna free guide and the Haiku 5.5 vs GPT-6 Luna comparison.

Start in chat, then pay pennies for the API

Start with claude.ai or the mobile app and select Haiku 5.5 for quick, repeatable work. When you need the model in a script, CI job, or agent, first check whether you have Max or Team API credits. Otherwise, a small Console balance can go far at $0.10/$0.50 per million tokens for prompts up to 100K tokens.

Download Apidog to send your first claude-haiku-5-5 request, assert on stop_reason and usage, and keep API keys in environment variables from day one.