Anthropic API Usage Policy

Anthropic's Usage Policy (effective September 15, 2025) governs all inputs submitted to Anthropic's products and services, including via authorized resellers and passthrough access, and is structured in three tiers: Universal Usage Standards applicable to all users, High-Risk Use Case Requirements for elevated-risk consumer-facing deployments, and Additional Use Case Guidelines covering chatbots, minors, agentic use, and Model Context Protocol servers. The agreement states that Anthropic's Safeguards Team will implement detection and monitoring to enforce the policy, and the terms authorize throttling, suspension, or termination of access for violations, as well as blocking or modifying model outputs. The policy's categorical prohibition on CSAM includes an explicit reporting commitment to authorities upon detection, and the children's safety provisions define a minor as any individual under 18 regardless of jurisdiction, which is operationally notable for international deployments; the governmental customer carve-out permitting tailored use restrictions where Anthropic judges contractual safeguards adequate is a relatively unusual provision that creates differentiated policy application across customer segments. The document engages COPPA, GDPR, EU AI Act, FTC Act consumer protection frameworks, and sector-specific considerations under HIPAA for health data use cases, with the agentic use and MCP server provisions likely requiring evaluation under emerging AI-specific regulatory guidance in the EU and potentially the UK; enforcement authority relevance varies by jurisdiction and specific use case.