Anthropic's Claude sold at 90% off in China may not be Claude

Okay so in early October 2026, The Information reported on Beijing resellers called transfer stations that sell access to Anthropic's Claude for 70 to 90% less than Anthropic charges, and some of them aren't even giving you Claude.

What are Claude transfer stations?

Claude transfer stations are proxy services that take a prompt from a developer in China, forward it to Claude through an overseas account, and collect payment in RMB through WeChat or Alipay. AI Weekly reports six of about 30 tenants in one Beijing office building, in the Haidian district, run this business.

How cheap is gray market Claude?

Gray market Claude from transfer stations sells for 70 to 90% below Anthropic's official API prices. The resellers advertise openly on GitHub, Taobao and Telegram.

How they do it, according to AI Weekly:

• bulk account sign-ups and farming free API credits
• exploiting corporate discounts
• accounts bought with stolen card details
• splitting one $200 Max plan across dozens of users

Is cheap Claude API access safe?

No, discounted Claude from a reseller is not safe to rely on. Some transfer stations swap in cheaper models, including domestic models like Qwen, and relabel them as Claude. Some also keep your prompts and outputs to resell as AI training data.

So you pay less... and you become the product.

Bro. I run a food content studio. I'd pay full price just to know who's reading my prompts.

Is this only a China problem?

The Claude gray market was reported in Beijing, but the lesson works anywhere. If an AI deal looks too good, ask where the access is actually coming from and who can see your data.

Real talk: through a middleman, you don't really know what model you're getting.

So don't chase the discount. Just get it from the source. Like, now.