Claude project tags: Enterprise spend by cost code

On November 6, Anthropic added Claude project tags to Claude Enterprise (in beta). According to the Claude Release Notes, a company can attach a code it already uses in its accounting, such as a cost code or a client matter number, to a project, and then see its Claude spend grouped by that tag.

How do Claude project tags work?

The full details are in a Claude Help Center article. In short:

1. A tag is created by an organization Owner in Organization settings > Organization > Project tags. The tag name is lowercase with no spaces and can’t be changed later.
2. Values can be free-form or restricted to a list. We type the list in by hand or import it from a single-column CSV file with a value header.
3. A tag can be marked as required, which means it has to be set on every new project.
4. A project can have up to 16 tags, with one value per tag, e.g. cost_center and client_matter at the same time.
5. Anyone with “Can edit” permission on a project can add a tag.

There’s nothing to switch on: eligible organizations get the feature automatically, and nothing changes until an Owner creates the first tag. Tag names and values are visible to the whole organization, so don’t put anything confidential in them.

Which spend is attributed to a tag?

Tags cover chats in a project, a linked Cowork chat in a project, Cowork tasks on desktop (Claude Desktop 3.6556.1 or later, with a single project selected), and Claude Code in the terminal and in the desktop app.

Interestingly, Claude Code has no project picker in its interface. We set the project in the .claude/settings.json file in the repository (or in ~/.claude/settings.json for all repositories) by adding an "attributionProject" field with the project ID, which is the last part of the project’s URL. This requires Claude Code 2.1.305 or later. If no project is set, usage goes into the “Not in a project” bucket and no warning appears.

Quite a lot stays outside tags: Claude Code on the web, Claude for Office, Claude in Chrome, Claude Design, Claude in Slack and Teams, artifacts, voice mode, as well as the Claude API, the Console, and Claude Code through Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI, a gateway or an API key.

Where do we see the spend?

In Organization settings > Usage > Spend by project, we pick a tag in the “Group by” field, narrow down the period and product, and can download the result as CSV. Access is limited to the Primary Owner, Owners, and roles with the Analytics view and Billing view permissions. The data runs up to the end of the previous day (UTC).

For automation there are two beta APIs. The Admin API (header anthropic-beta: ce-project-tags-2026-10-09) lets us list tags, add values and set tags on projects, but it doesn’t create the tags themselves. Spend comes from GET /v1/organizations/analytics/cost, the same endpoint I covered in the post about the new Claude cost API, grouped by project tag, e.g. tags.claude_project[cost_code].

What should you watch out for?

First, seats. Usage covered by the plan’s seat fees isn’t counted, so a project used heavily within seats may show little spend or none at all.

Second, the amounts. They are after discounts but before credits, so they may differ from the invoice, and the latest numbers can still change for about a week after the month ends.

Third, history. A new tag starts working after about two hours and doesn’t cover earlier spend, and reports start from the day the feature reached the organization.

Fourth, availability. Tags won’t be available to organizations with a HIPAA configuration, customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK), zero data retention (including for Claude Code), minimum data retention, or data stored outside the US.

The beta also lacks tags on individual chats, splitting spend across tags, renaming, and per-tag spend limits. On top of that, anyone who edits a project can change or remove its tag (there’s no way to lock it yet). Still, for law firms or agencies that bill work per client, this is a clear step toward the reporting Anthropic is building into Enterprise.

FAQ

Are project tags available on the Pro or Team plan?

No. According to the Claude Help Center, project tags are in beta on Claude Enterprise plans only.

How do I attribute Claude Code to a project?

By adding "attributionProject" with the project ID to .claude/settings.json in the repository or to ~/.claude/settings.json. The folder has to be marked as trusted, and the file has to remain valid JSON.

Do tags cover the Claude API?

No. The Claude API and the Console, as well as Claude Code through an API key, Bedrock, Vertex AI or a gateway, aren’t tagged. API costs can be broken down instead with the Usage and Cost Analytics API.