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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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']"
  }
}

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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.

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Next steps