How to pay for Claude with UPI in India: Claude Pro, the API and Claude Code

There are two possible ways to pay for Claude with UPI, and neither goes through the claude.ai website. Claude Pro and Max bought on claude.ai on the web take credit or debit cards only, even though press reports say rupee prices began appearing for some users in India in July 2026. Claude Pro bought inside the Claude Android or iOS app is billed by Google Play or the App Store, and both list UPI as a payment method in India; whether the Claude app's own purchase screen offers it is something to check in the store before you subscribe. The Claude API and Claude Code on an API key are a separate, per-token product, and Anthropic's Console sells them as prepaid credits bought with a card. Kunavo, an independent API gateway, sells the same Claude models from a prepaid balance, and its Stripe checkout offers UPI when it shows the amount in rupees. The minimum top-up is $10 (roughly ₹982–₹1,002 at checkout), and the balance never expires. UPI here does not pay for Claude Pro or Max, and it does not add credit to Anthropic's Console. Prices and payment methods were checked on October 3, 2026.

Short answer: can you pay for Claude with UPI?

It depends on which Claude you are paying for. They are billed separately:

• Claude Pro or Max on claude.ai (web): no. Anthropic's paid-plan billing FAQ says that for subscriptions purchased on the web it only accepts credit or debit cards (read October 3, 2026). TechCrunch reported on July 13, 2026 that rupee prices had begun to appear for some users in India, and that UPI had not been enabled.
• Claude Pro or Max in the Claude app: through the store. The same FAQ says in-app subscriptions are paid with whatever methods the Apple App Store or Google Play offers. In India, Apple lists UPI among Apple Account payment methods, and Google Play has supported UPI Autopay for subscriptions since November 15, 2022 (both read October 3, 2026). Neither page says whether the Claude app's purchase screen shows UPI, and Apple's page does not say whether UPI covers subscriptions, so check the options the store shows before you subscribe. Kunavo is not part of this route.
• Claude API and Claude Code on an API key: yes, through Kunavo. Anthropic's Console bills the API through prepaid credits added with a card (read October 3, 2026). Kunavo's checkout offers UPI when Stripe shows the amount in rupees, and the balance pays for the Claude API and Claude Code per token. That route is the rest of this page.

Claude Pro or an API key: which one are you paying for?

Claude Pro is a subscription to Claude's own apps, with usage limits. An API key is billed per token and is what developers, scripts and Claude Code in API mode use. One does not top up the other.

The rupee plan prices are from TechCrunch (July 13, 2026): Claude Pro at ₹2,000 a month billed annually and Max from ₹11,999 a month. BusinessToday (July 14, 2026) reported that those prices include GST. When we read claude.com/pricing from outside India on October 3, 2026, it showed US dollars only, so we could not check the rupee page ourselves. The Console terms are from Anthropic's API billing article.

What it costs in rupees

Kunavo prices are set in US dollars. When Stripe locates you in India it shows the checkout in rupees, and its exchange rate includes a 2–4% conversion fee that the buyer pays. The rate is guaranteed for 24 hours (Stripe Adaptive Pricing, read October 3, 2026). The figures below assume ₹96.32 per US dollar, the ECB reference rate for October 2, 2026, plus that fee. The number Stripe shows at checkout is the one you pay.

A Claude Code session, priced in rupees

Anthropic's Claude Code cost docs (read October 3, 2026) show an example /usage readout of 1.2k input, 5.3k output, 940k cache-read and 50k cache-write tokens. Here is that session priced on Claude Sonnet 5 at Kunavo's rates: $1.40 per 1M input tokens and $7.00 per 1M output tokens, with cache reads at 10% of the input rate and cache writes at 1.25× it.

• The example session costs $0.26, about ₹24.8 at the reference rate, or ₹25.3–₹25.8 with Stripe's fee. Reading the cached context back is 51% of that.
• One uncached step that sends 25,000 tokens and gets 1,200 back costs $0.043, about ₹4.2.
• A $10 top-up covers about 38 sessions of that size.

This is illustrative token arithmetic, not a quote: a long refactor with a large codebase in context costs far more than this example. For scale, the same Anthropic docs report that across enterprise deployments Claude Code averages around $13 per developer per active day and $150–250 per developer per month. Run /usage in Claude Code to see your own counts, and price them with the Claude token cost calculator. Every Claude model's rate is in the Claude API pricing guide and on the pricing page.

How to pay with UPI, step by step

1. Create an account

Sign up with email or a Google account. No card is asked for at signup.

2. Open Billing and choose an amount

In the dashboard, go to Billing and pick a top-up. Amounts are listed in US dollars because per-token rates are in US dollars. The rupee figure appears on the next screen, before you pay.

3. On the Stripe checkout, choose UPI

The button opens a checkout hosted by Stripe. When the amount is shown in rupees, UPI is offered alongside cards and Link, plus Apple Pay in Safari or on an iPhone and Google Pay in Chrome or on Android where Google Pay is set up. Check the rupee total before you continue.

One thing that trips people up in India: the Google Pay button at checkout is Google's card wallet, which pays with a saved card. To pay from the GPay UPI app, choose UPI instead and approve the payment in GPay.

4. Approve the payment in your UPI app

On a computer, scan the QR code with your UPI app (GPay, PhonePe, Paytm, BHIM or your bank's app). On a phone, Stripe sends you to your UPI app to approve the payment (Stripe's UPI docs, read October 3, 2026). Confirm the amount in the app.

5. Wait for the balance to be credited

Stripe classifies UPI as a real-time payment method (Stripe's UPI docs). The balance is credited when Stripe confirms the payment to Kunavo. If you do not see it, refresh Billing before paying again: each top-up is recorded once, so a second payment becomes extra balance rather than a correction.

6. Create a key and make a first call

Create a key at /app/keys. It starts with sk-kn- and is shown once, so copy it before closing the dialog. Then:

# After the top-up is credited, this is the first call.
curl https://api.kunavo.com/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $KUNAVO_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "claude-sonnet-5",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "One line: did the UPI top-up work?"}]
  }'

The API also speaks the OpenAI format at https://api.kunavo.com/v1, so an existing OpenAI SDK project only needs a new base_url and key.

7. Point Claude Code at the key

# Claude Code on the same key (Anthropic Messages format)
export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=https://api.kunavo.com   # the origin, no /v1
export ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN=sk-kn-...
export ANTHROPIC_MODEL=claude-sonnet-5
export ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL=claude-opus-5
export ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_HAIKU_MODEL=claude-haiku-4-5
claude

ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL is the origin with no /v1, and the model variables pin Claude Code to models the key serves. Calls draw from the same balance. The full setup, including a settings file instead of environment variables, is in the Claude Code integration docs.

If UPI does not appear at checkout

UPI is offered only when the checkout is shown in rupees, to buyers Stripe places in India. If the checkout opens in US dollars, Stripe did not place you in India when the page loaded. The usual cause is a VPN or proxy. Turn it off and reopen the checkout from Billing on the connection you will pay from.

The other methods an Indian buyer sees are cards (Visa, Mastercard, American Express, JCB, UnionPay), Apple Pay, Google Pay and Link. Not offered: PayPal, and any Indian bank-transfer or wallet method other than UPI. Stripe's checkout also lets you choose to pay in US dollars, which avoids its conversion fee (Stripe Adaptive Pricing), but UPI is offered only in rupees, and a US-dollar card charge may carry your bank's own foreign-exchange markup, so check your card's rate first. If a card is declined, check that international transactions are enabled for it in your bank's app: the merchant is outside India, even when the checkout shows rupees.

Limits to know before you pay

• ₹1,00,000 per UPI payment. Stripe accepts UPI payments between ₹1 and ₹1,00,000 (Stripe, read October 3, 2026). A $100 top-up fits inside that. A $1,000 top-up can cross it once the fee is added, and larger top-ups are over it, so pay those by card or split them into smaller top-ups. Smaller top-ups earn their own, smaller bonuses.
• No auto-recharge on UPI. Auto-recharge charges only a saved card or Link, so every UPI top-up is made by hand.
• No GST invoice. Kunavo does not issue GST invoices or any other tax invoice. Billing lists each top-up with its date, amount and status, and bookkeeping questions go to contact@kunavo.com. If your company's books require a GST invoice, an India-registered reseller may be the better fit.
• It is an API, not Claude Pro. The balance pays per token for API calls and Claude Code on a key. It does not unlock claude.ai chat features or a Pro or Max plan.
• Refunds. Kunavo refunds case by case under its billing policy, for example an accidental double top-up. Stripe can refund a UPI payment up to 60 days after it was made, and the refund can take up to 7 business days to arrive (Stripe).

The rest of the terms: the balance never expires, there is no monthly fee, and failed requests (4xx/5xx) are not billed. Anthropic's Console credits, by contrast, expire one year after purchase.

Related

Paying for GPT instead? The same UPI checkout and balance cover it: see paying for the OpenAI API with UPI. For every method Kunavo takes, country by country, see paying for the Claude API without a credit card.

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