What Claude Opus 5.5 on SwiftRelay actually costs
SwiftRelay is a pay-per-token API relay, and the whole idea fits in one sentence: you top up a balance, you make calls, and each call deducts only what it used. There is no monthly fee and nothing to subscribe to, so you never pay for a quiet week. If you have been keeping your own subscription or official account just to make a handful of calls, this is the shape of billing that suits a small, steady workload.
For Claude Opus 5.5 (claude-opus-5-5), the SwiftRelay pricing page shows input at $1.53 per 1M tokens, output at $7.27 per 1M tokens, and cache read at $0.0694 per 1M tokens. Those are the figures that land on your usage log, line by line. Nothing is bundled into a plan price, so what you see deducted is what the call cost.
Here is an example to make the arithmetic concrete: say you spend a day on Claude Opus 5.5 and send 400,000 input tokens, generate 60,000 output tokens, and read 200,000 cached tokens. Input works out to 400,000 divided by 1,000,000, times $1.53, which is $0.612. Output works out to 60,000 divided by 1,000,000, times $7.27, which is $0.4362. Cache read works out to 200,000 divided by 1,000,000, times $0.0694, which is $0.01388. Add those three together and the day totals $1.06208, which is comfortably inside one of the small top-ups.
Compare that with a subscription you pay whether or not you use it. With SwiftRelay the meter runs only while you run, and the usage page lists tokens and cost per call so you can check every deduction yourself.
Three lines to a running Claude Code session
The reason newcomers pick SwiftRelay first is the setup: copy three lines and run. No SDK install, no wrapper library, no build step. If you can paste into a terminal, you are already most of the way there.
Make sure you are using the official Claude Code client, or Claude Desktop at version 2.1.285 or later, because Claude models answer only through those clients. Then create a key in the SwiftRelay dashboard, which starts with swft_, and run these three lines in order.
01 export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=https://api.fastapirelay.com 02 export ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN=<your swft_ key>
claude
That is the whole pit stop. The first line points the client at the SwiftRelay API host, the second supplies your swft_ key, and the third starts the session. Your balance does the rest, deducting per call as you go.
Where the sign-up gift and referrals fit
Every new account starts with a sign-up gift credit of $0.22. That is enough to make a real first call and see the usage log fill in with tokens and cost before you commit anything else. It is a clean first run, paid for.
When you top up, the available amounts are $1.39, $6.94, $13.89, $27.78, $69.44, and $138.89. Pick the one that matches the work in front of you; you can always top up again later, and the balance simply carries forward.
SwiftRelay also pays you for bringing people in. You earn 14% of each top-up made by someone you invited, and 3% from the people they invite. Those rewards can be withdrawn once they reach the minimum of $4.86, or moved straight into your balance to fund more calls. Either way, the reward is yours to direct.
And if you top up more than you need, unused credit is refundable within 11 days of that top-up, minus what was used and the payment fee. That keeps the commitment short and the exit clean.
Keys, logs and getting help
Each SwiftRelay account can hold up to 20 live API keys at once. That is handy for separating a work project from a side experiment, or for rotating a key without breaking anything else. Revoke one, keep the rest, and the balance stays exactly where it is.
The usage list shows tokens and cost per call, so you can reconcile a busy afternoon against your balance without guessing. If something looks off, support runs through Messages in the dashboard, and you will need to be logged in to use it; there is no support email.
Keeping Claude Opus 5.5 in its lane
One habit worth building early: match the model to the client that speaks its protocol. Claude Opus 5.5 is a Claude model, so it runs in the official Claude Code or Claude Desktop client at version 2.1.285 or later, using the three lines shown above. That pairing is what keeps the connection clean.
For a sense of the wider board on the SwiftRelay pricing page, Claude Sonnet 5.5 (claude-sonnet-5-5) sits at $0.9792 input and $4.89 output per 1M tokens, while Claude Haiku 4.5 (claude-haiku-4-5-20251001) sits at $0.3542 input and $1.69 output per 1M tokens. Cache reads are $0.0861 and $0.0278 respectively. If your workload mixes long context with lighter tasks, those tiers give you room to steer spend without changing anything about how you pay.
Here is a second example for a lighter day on Claude Opus 5.5: say you send 100,000 input tokens and generate 10,000 output tokens with no cache reads. Input is 100,000 divided by 1,000,000, times $1.53, which is $0.153. Output is 10,000 divided by 1,000,000, times $7.27, which is $0.0727. The day comes to $0.2257, roughly the size of the sign-up gift credit, so you can rehearse the whole loop before spending anything at all.
That is the rhythm SwiftRelay is built for: start small, watch the numbers, scale the balance when the work earns it. Set up your swft_ key and sign up now to make Claude Opus 5.5 your first call.