Factory Droid on Claude — No Anthropic Account

People comparing Factory Droid and Claude Code often want to run Droid on Claude without onboarding through Anthropic. A bought key makes that direct: purchase from claudeapikey.dev, drop it into Droid's customModels, and the agent runs. WELCOME5 gives you five dollars of free credit to try first.

Buy the key, skip onboarding

You do not need an Anthropic account or an approval to run Droid on Claude.

The purchased key works wherever an Anthropic key would, so Droid treats it as a normal Claude key. There is no waitlist between you and a working agent.

If you came to Droid from comparing it against Claude Code, this is the quickest way to actually try it on Claude rather than reading about it. A bought key gets you to a running agent the same day, so the comparison is hands-on instead of theoretical. A same-day running agent turns a Droid-versus-Claude-Code comparison from reading into doing. You evaluate it hands-on rather than from other people's notes, which is the only way to really judge an agent.

Add it to customModels

Droid reads ~/.factory/settings.json. Add a customModels array with one entry: model set to a service id like claude-sonnet-4-5, baseUrl set to {SITE}, and provider set to anthropic for the native surface.

Use settings.json rather than the legacy config.json, since the newer file supports the full set of fields. This is the modern, supported way to bring your own key into Droid.

Reaching for settings.json from the start avoids a common trap, since older guides point at config.json where some fields and the variable syntax behave differently. If you have been following one of those and hit odd behaviour, moving the entry into settings.json usually clears it. Starting in settings.json sidesteps the config.json quirks that trip up older guides. The variable syntax in particular only works in the newer file, so following an out-of-date guide is a common source of frustration.

Reference the key safely

Put your bought key in apiKey, ideally as ${AIPRIME_API_KEY} so it stays in your environment instead of the file. ${VAR} expansion works in settings.json but not config.json, and apiKey must not be empty.

Set maxOutputTokens to a sensible value and you are done. The whole connection is the customModels entry plus the key — no Anthropic console step anywhere in the flow.

If you would rather not bother with an environment variable, you can paste the bought key directly into apiKey to get going, then switch to the ${VAR} form later. Just remember the field cannot be left empty, so a placeholder or a real value has to be there for Droid to accept the entry. A pasted key now and a ${VAR} later is a perfectly fine order to do things in. Just keep the field from being empty, since Droid rejects that.

Try it on the free credit

That is enough to confirm the key, baseUrl, and provider are all correct.

Top up only after you have seen Droid work on Claude. The bought-key model is pay-as-you-go, so there is no subscription to manage and nothing committed in advance.

A small first task — a single file edit or a quick question — is the ideal way to spend that credit, because it exercises the whole chain without burning much of it. Once you see the agent act correctly, you know the setup is sound and can decide how much further to take it. A tiny first task exercises the whole chain while barely touching the free credit. A single edit confirms the key, baseUrl, and provider together.

Switch models as you go

Add a claude-opus-4-8 entry alongside the Sonnet one and switch between them with /model in the CLI. Both run on the same purchased key, so picking the stronger model for a hard task is just a command.

Because you pay only for what the agent uses, you can reserve the heavier model for genuinely hard work and stay on the lighter one otherwise — no plan tier restricts which you may select.

That pay-as-you-go control fits Droid's agentic style nicely: you run cheaper, faster Sonnet for routine implementation and switch up to Opus only when a problem genuinely warrants it. Your spend tracks the difficulty of the work rather than a fixed subscription you may not fully use. Letting spend track task difficulty rather than a subscription is pay-as-you-go working as intended. Routine work stays cheap and hard work gets the strong model.

// ~/.factory/settings.json
{
  "customModels": [
    {
      "model": "claude-sonnet-4-5",
      "baseUrl": "https://claudeapikey.dev",
      "apiKey": "${AIPRIME_API_KEY}",
      "provider": "anthropic",
      "maxOutputTokens": 8192
    }
  ]
}
// export AIPRIME_API_KEY=<key>   (apiKey must NOT be empty)
// Switch models in the CLI with /model

Frequently asked questions

Do I need an Anthropic account to run Droid on Claude?
No. Buy a key from claudeapikey.dev and add it to customModels in ~/.factory/settings.json with provider anthropic and baseUrl {SITE}.

Can apiKey be empty?
No — Droid requires a value. Use a ${VAR} reference like ${AIPRIME_API_KEY}; expansion works in settings.json, not config.json.

How do I switch models?
Use /model in the Droid CLI to flip between your customModels entries — both run on the same bought key.

Claude API Key is an independent API gateway. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a reseller of Anthropic. Claude and related model names are trademarks of their respective owners.