China's Gray Market Sells Claude Tokens at 10% of the Price — Through a Network of "Transfer Stations"

Anthropic's strict access controls for China, from geoblocking to selfie verification, are being systematically bypassed through a thriving network of middlemen known as "transfer stations." Chinese developers buy Claude tokens at prices starting from ten percent of the official price list, The Decoder reports.

How the "transfer stations" work

The scheme is mundane: a middleman registers Claude access from a permitted jurisdiction, either directly or through cloud resellers, then resells that access to Chinese customers through its own proxy servers. To the end developer, it looks like an ordinary API endpoint, just an order of magnitude cheaper and with no questions about citizenship.

The dumping down to 10% of the official price comes down to where the goods originate. The stations aggregate discounted corporate quotas, stolen and rented accounts, and resell access obtained through promotional rates. Entry points are blocked constantly and replaced just as constantly with new ones.

• Claude tokens on the gray market cost from 10% of the official price
• Both Anthropic's geoblocking and its selfie verification are bypassed
• The middlemen's infrastructure runs like a well-oiled business, with customer support and pricing tiers

Why this is about more than lost revenue

Analyst Ziyan Qian, cited by The Decoder, describes a systemic risk: the workaround infrastructure weakens two layers of control at once. The first is US government export controls, which limit China's access to advanced AI capabilities; the gray market makes those restrictions decorative. The second is Anthropic's own safety systems: abuse that is tracked at the account level dissolves into the middlemen's anonymized traffic, and usage policies stop working.

There is also an ironic detail in the context: officially, Claude is not only unavailable in China from Anthropic's side, but Chinese corporations themselves restrict its use by their employees. Demand squeezed from both sides is what created the market for middlemen.

What this means

The story of the "transfer stations" is a vivid lesson in the limits of technology sanctions on software: chips can be stopped at customs, but API access leaks out through any intermediary country. For Anthropic, this is an unpleasant fork in the road: tightening verification hits legitimate users, while the gray market will keep existing as long as the price and regulatory gap persists. For the industry, it is a signal that the real distribution of frontier models has long been wider than any official geography.

Frequently asked questions

Why is Claude officially unavailable in China?

Anthropic restricts access from China, citing US export restrictions and its own safety policies: the company blocks sign-ups by geolocation and requires identity verification.

What is a "transfer station"?

A middleman that legally or semi-legally obtains access to Western models' APIs and resells it through its own proxy servers to customers in blocked regions, at a discount and without verification.