Best Practices
Claude API best practices — optimize costs, reduce latency, handle errors, and build reliable AI applications.
Error Handling
- Implement exponential backoff for 429 and 5xx errors
- Set reasonable timeouts (30-120s depending on model and max_tokens)
- Parse error responses and handle specific error types
- Log request IDs for debugging
Performance
- Use streaming for better perceived latency in user-facing applications
- Choose the right model tier for your use case — Haiku for speed, Opus for quality
- Set
max_tokensappropriately — lower values reduce response time and cost - Use system prompts efficiently — keep them concise
Cost Optimization
- Monitor usage through the dashboard
- Set per-key credit limits
- Use smaller models (Haiku) for simple tasks
- Leverage prompt caching for repeated prompts
- Minimize unnecessary context in messages
Streaming is billed the same as non-streaming requests — there's no cost penalty for enabling it.
Security
- Store API keys in environment variables, never in source code
- Use separate keys for different environments
- Implement server-side proxying for client applications
- Regularly audit key usage in the dashboard