The part that would bother me most is not the ban itself, but having no idea what to change. “Policy violation” could mean VPN, billing risk, location, or actual usage.
Ask HN: Anthropic banned me from using Claude Code and I don't know what to do
11–20 of 105 posts
Re: Ask HN: Anthropic banned me from using Claude Code and I don't know what to do
#12Just generate a virtual credit card?
Re: Ask HN: Anthropic banned me from using Claude Code and I don't know what to do
#13Thy're probably using their own AI to find violations. Go figure.
Almost certainly. They banned me the instant I logged in successfully, possibly because the email contains "claude.ai@". My appeals via email were ignored. 9 months later I received this, but my account is still banned when trying to log in:
Earlier this week, your account was disabled by an automated system for being in violation of our Terms of Service or Acceptable Use Policy. Upon further investigation, we believe this was an error and your account has been reinstated. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.
Re: Ask HN: Anthropic banned me from using Claude Code and I don't know what to do
#14There's just a lot of fraud. My bank killed my debit card for "fraud" in my attempts to pay my anthropic bill which triggered fraud alerts, I confirmed the charge was legitimate and it got flagged again. Three times until they just deleted my card.
Re: Ask HN: Anthropic banned me from using Claude Code and I don't know what to do
#15I too was banned. Two key details: 1. I was unbanned via their appeal form, but 2. I had created a new account in the meantime which I’ve used since.
If you need a debit card, use Mercury https://www.mercury.com. You can create as many as you want. I use a unique card for each subscription. (If you’re thinking "oh, they’re like privacy.com," you’re mistaken. Privacy.com gets blocked by merchants; mercury works. No idea why.)
Since you’re already throwing around $120, I suspect Mercury’s sign up fee won’t be a problem. But if you want to bypass it, you can start an LLC and use your EIN during account setup for free Mercury access. I did it for about $20 total and have been using Mercury for about 5 years. Best bank ever, and I’ll happily shill them all day every day till more people try them out.
In short, just dodge the ban. I used the same name and address on both my accounts, so as long as you use a different card you have a decent chance of bypassing the ban.
Re: Ask HN: Anthropic banned me from using Claude Code and I don't know what to do
#16Thy're probably using their own AI to find violations. Go figure.
They do. It’s how I was banned for researching barbiturates.
Re: Ask HN: Anthropic banned me from using Claude Code and I don't know what to do
#17Strange, I managed to sign up with an email alias and pretty much always have my proton vpn turned on, never had any issues with Claude code or web - maybe I’m about to? :D
Been thinking of switching to a multi model harness anyway.
Re: Ask HN: Anthropic banned me from using Claude Code and I don't know what to do
#18Might not be a very popular advice or even what you're looking for, but I think Anthropic banning you (or any user for that matter) is a blessing in disguise. The sheer amount of compute resources consumed by their high reasoning "pondering..." and "bloviating..." tokens isn't sustainable at scale. Eventually, they must ban everyone but those with deep and infinite pockets in order for this model to be sustainable and turn revenues.
Computers and LLMs are great at automation of low-level human cognitive tasks like memory, decisions and loops, etc. but struggle enormously with high cognitive tasks like reasoning, deep logic, nuance, etc. Not that it can't be done (Claude platform is proof that it can) - but the cost and scaling advantage in this realm belongs to the human brain, not the LLM.
Re: Ask HN: Anthropic banned me from using Claude Code and I don't know what to do
#19Opencode, w. openrouter?
Kiro.dev, w. cerebras?
Aider, w. groq (with a Q)?
Re: Ask HN: Anthropic banned me from using Claude Code and I don't know what to do
#20Just use one of the alternatives, there are so many. I recommend DeepSeek, GLM/Z-AI or Qwen. They are cheaper and offer competitive performance to Anthropic.