Set up the Compliance API

The Compliance API uses two key types, and which one you create depends on which Claude product your organization uses. Primary owners and organization owners create Compliance Access Keys in claude.ai; these keys unlock the full Compliance API. A primary owner's key can cover every organization under the parent organization; an organization owner's key covers their own organization only. Organization admins create Admin API keys in Claude Console; these keys unlock the Activity Feed only.

Which key do you need?

A Claude Enterprise tenant has one parent organization that centralizes identity, SSO, and SCIM for every workload organization beneath it. These workload organizations are the parent's linked organizations.

Set up the Compliance API

Setup is one flow: enable the Compliance API for your organization, then create a Compliance Access Key in claude.ai. A Claude Console organization instead creates an Admin API key after enablement; Admin API keys reach the Activity Feed only.

1. 1

   Enable the Compliance API

   Where you enable the Compliance API depends on how your organization is set up:

   • Claude Enterprise organizations: The primary owner enables the Compliance API at claude.ai > Organization settings > API. Enablement happens at the parent organization level and cascades to every linked organization, both claude.ai and Claude Console.
   • Standalone Claude Console organizations: An organization admin turns on the Compliance API toggle at Claude Console > Settings > Security. Enablement is self-service for eligible organizations, and the change takes effect immediately. If the Compliance API section is not visible, you do not have the admin role, your organization is linked to a parent organization (the Compliance API is enabled from the parent organization instead), or your organization is not eligible for self-service enablement; contact your account team or Anthropic support if you are not sure which applies.
   • Claude Console organizations linked to a parent organization: There is nothing to turn on in Claude Console. Ask the primary owner of your parent organization to enable the Compliance API in claude.ai, or contact your account team.

   A standalone Claude Console organization uses Admin API keys rather than Compliance Access Keys: after enablement, skip the remaining steps and create a new Admin API key instead. The remaining steps provision Compliance Access Keys, which are available only to organizations that are part of a Claude Enterprise tenant.

2. 2

   Decide the key's scope

   A key's access is set when it is created. Decide which organizations the key covers:

   • A key for the parent organization can access every organization under the parent organization.
   • A key for a single organization can access that organization only.
3. 3

   Sign in with the matching role

   Sign in to claude.ai. The primary owner of the parent organization can create a key with either scope. An organization owner can create a key restricted to their own organization only.

   If the API page described in the next step is not visible, or compliance scopes are unavailable when creating a key, either your role cannot create Compliance Access Keys, or the Compliance API has not been enabled for your organization yet (return to the first step).

4. 4

   Open API settings

   Go to claude.ai > Organization settings > API and find the Keys section.

5. 5

   Create the key

   Click Create key, name the key, and select one or more scopes from the following table. Click Create.

   Scope	Grants
   read:compliance_activities	Read the Activity Feed. A key covering the parent organization reads events for the parent organization and all linked organizations.
   read:compliance_user_data	Read user chats, messages, files, projects, session metadata and transcripts, organization users, and group members
   delete:compliance_user_data	Delete user chats, files, and projects
   read:compliance_org_data	Read organization metadata (names, types, roles, and groups) and the effective settings in force for organizations under the parent organization. User listings and group membership require read:compliance_user_data.

   Choose the smallest scope set that your integration needs:

   • An audit pipeline that reads the Activity Feed only needs read:compliance_activities.
   • An eDiscovery tool that reads chats and files but never deletes them does not need delete:compliance_user_data.
   • If your workflow both reads and deletes, use two keys with separate scopes so a leaked read key cannot delete data.

   Compliance Access Key scopes are immutable after creation. To change scopes, create a new key with the scopes you want, then delete the old one.

6. 6

   Copy and store the secret

   Copy the displayed secret key (starting with sk-ant-api01-) and store it in your secrets manager. The full secret is displayed only once.

7. 7

   Export the key for the examples in this guide

   Set the key as an environment variable so the shell samples in this guide can read it:

   export ANTHROPIC_COMPLIANCE_ACCESS_KEY=sk-ant-api01-...

   

Create an Admin API key

Follow the steps in Create an Admin API key, then set the key as an environment variable:

export ANTHROPIC_ADMIN_KEY=sk-ant-admin01-...

The distinct variable name keeps the Admin API key from overwriting a Compliance Access Key if you provision both. The cURL examples in this guide read the key from $ANTHROPIC_COMPLIANCE_ACCESS_KEY; substitute $ANTHROPIC_ADMIN_KEY when calling the Activity Feed with an Admin API key.

Admin API keys carry the read:compliance_activities scope only if the Compliance API was enabled for the organization at the time the key was created; see Set up the Compliance API. They cannot be granted any other Compliance API scope, so calls to any endpoint other than the Activity Feed return 403 Forbidden.

For the same key's role in managing your Claude Console organization, see Admin API.

Check your key's scopes

To inspect the scopes on a key you already have, use one of the following signals.

• Key prefix. sk-ant-admin01- is an Admin API key (carries read:compliance_activities only, subject to the enablement timing in the preceding section). sk-ant-api01- is a Compliance Access Key; its scopes are the subset you selected at creation.
• Settings UI. Open the Keys section in claude.ai > Organization settings > API, or the Admin keys section in Claude Console > Settings > Admin keys, and read the Scopes column for the key.
• Error responses. A call that exceeds the key's scopes returns a 403 with a message in the format Missing required scopes. Got: [<scopes the key carries>] Needed: [<scopes the endpoint requires>]. See Handle Compliance API errors for the full error catalog.

{
  "error": {
    "type": "permission_error",
    "message": "Missing required scopes. Got: ['read:compliance_activities'] Needed: ['read:compliance_user_data']"
  }
}

Manage and rotate keys

Delete a Compliance Access Key from the same Keys table where you created it: go to claude.ai > Organization settings > API. Delete an Admin API key from Claude Console > Settings > Admin keys.

Deleting a key takes effect on the next request: there is no grace period. Compliance Access Keys do not expire on their own.

To rotate a key without an outage:

1. Create a new key with the same scopes.
2. Update your integration to use the new key.
3. Verify the integration succeeds with the new key.
4. Delete the old key.

Pagination cursors stored before a rotation remain valid: cursors are scoped to the organization, not the key.

If a Compliance Access Key leaks, delete it immediately, audit the Activity Feed for compliance_api_accessed activities by the compromised key, and rotate any downstream credentials that the leaked key could reach. Pass activity_types[]=compliance_api_accessed to scope the query, then in your client, keep the activities whose actor.type is api_actor and whose actor.api_key_id matches the compromised key; see Understand the Activity object for the actor schema.

Next steps