Anthropic credit-purchase delays caused erroneous Claude API balance errors
Anthropic reported that users who reached zero usage credits experienced delayed availability of newly purchased credits, causing some Claude API requests to fail with erroneous low-balance messages for more than nine hours.
- First observed
- Sep 1, 2026, 2:10:00 PM
- Disclosed
- Sep 2, 2026, 1:26:48 AM
- Status
- Resolved
- Confidence
- 99%
- Organization
- Anthropic
- Last reviewed
- Sep 4, 2026
Observed
Facts supported by sources
- Anthropic reported delays in making newly purchased usage credits available to users whose balance had reached zero, causing some Claude API requests to receive erroneous low-balance errors.
- Anthropic stated that purchases were affected from 12:10 UTC to 21:35 UTC on September 1 and marked the issue resolved on September 2.
Assessment
Interpretation, not observation
- Impact was limited to customers reaching a zero credit balance and buying additional credits during the affected interval.
Impact
Impact
Erroneously rejected Claude API requests and delayed restoration of paid usage capacity for affected customers.
Response
Response
Anthropic restored the availability of newly purchased credits and worked to resolve remaining impact after the primary issue was fixed.