Claude Code /passes: Gift 7-Day Claude Pro Trials and Earn Referral Credits

In December 2025, Claude Code quietly added a slash command called /passes that lets Claude Pro Max subscribers hand out three 7-day Claude Pro trial passes — friends can try the full Pro experience without paying anything up front. What makes it interesting is that the favor is reciprocal: every time a friend converts to a paid Pro plan after the trial, the sender earns a $10 Claude credit plus what Anthropic calls “extra usage.” If all three passes convert, that’s $30 in credits — roughly enough to cover a month of Pro on the sender’s side.

This post covers how /passes works, the conditions both sides need to meet, and how it compares to the claude.ai/gift gift subscription flow.

What the /passes command does

/passes is a built-in slash command in Claude Code, shipped by Anthropic in December 2025 alongside Claude Opus 4.5. It’s aimed at Max plan subscribers ($100 or $200 per month) who want to introduce Claude Pro to people they know. Running the command produces an invite link in the form https://claude.ai/referral/{code}; whoever clicks it can sign up and start a 7-day Pro trial.

The unusual part is that this command only exists in the Claude Code CLI — you won’t find it in Claude Desktop or on claude.ai. The Claude Code tab inside the web settings page does let you check remaining passes, but to actually trigger the flow you still need to drop into the CLI. The reasoning is presumably targeting: Anthropic wants the perk to land first with developers who live in their terminal, on the assumption they’ll pass it along to other developers — a more focused growth motion than blanket promotion.

What the sender gets

Three one-time passes

Every eligible Max subscriber account receives three passes, period. Once they’re used, there’s no documented refill or recurring grant. Each invite link is single-use, and the system explicitly blocks self-redemption — you can’t claim your own pass.

A $10 credit per conversion

If the recipient doesn’t cancel during the 7-day trial and rolls over into paid Pro, the sender gets a $10 Claude credit applied to their next billing cycle. With all three passes converting, that totals $30 — about the cost of a month of Pro.

Important: if the recipient cancels during the trial, or upgrades directly to Max instead of going through Pro, the $10 doesn’t trigger. So when picking who to send to, the sweet spot is someone genuinely on the fence about Pro — not someone who’ll definitely cancel and not someone already planning to jump straight to Max.

Extra Usage Credit

The /passes help text says “Share a free week of Claude Code with friends and earn extra usage” — meaning there’s something on top of the $10. Unfortunately, Anthropic hasn’t published how many tokens that “extra usage” amounts to, which product it applies to, or what triggers it. The community hasn’t reported clear empirical numbers either. Treat it as a bonus rather than a fixed amount you can plan around.

How to run /passes

As long as you’re a Max subscriber and signed into Claude Code, just type the command in the interactive prompt:

# In the Claude Code prompt
/passes

The output shows your remaining pass count plus a copyable invite link in the form https://claude.ai/referral/{unique-code}. Send that link to a friend — when they sign up through it, the trial activates. The Claude Code tab in the web settings UI also surfaces the same management view if you’d rather not remember the command, but the underlying eligibility is still tied to your Claude Code account.

Anthropic hasn’t published a full screenshot example of /passes, and some Max users have reported that the command is rolling out gradually. If you type it and get “command not found,” your account likely hasn’t received the rollout yet — try again in a few days, or update Claude Code to a newer version.

What invitees need to know

A credit card is required

Whoever clicks the invite link has to add a valid credit card during signup before the trial activates. There’s no charge during the 7 days, but the card-on-file step exists as Anthropic’s defense against bulk signups and abuse. If the friend you have in mind won’t add a card, the pass is unusable — better to ask first before sending.

Auto-converts to $20/month after 7 days

Important: if the recipient doesn’t cancel before the trial ends, the account auto-converts to paid Claude Pro at $20/month. That’s a trap for anyone still undecided, so when sharing the link, remind your friend to check around day 6 whether they actually want to keep the subscription — and to cancel from the dashboard if not.

Must be a new user

The pass is designed for first-time Claude Pro users. Existing Pro or Max subscribers can’t redeem one, and Max subscribers obviously have no use for it. There’s some flexibility at the edges: a few community reports suggest that previously-cancelled accounts can sometimes redeem a pass to come back, but that’s not an official guarantee — it’s hit or miss.

/passes vs claude.ai gift subscriptions

Anthropic also offers claude.ai/gift, a gift subscription flow. Both are ways to “give Claude to someone else,” but the positioning is different.

In other words: if you just want a friend to try Claude Pro, /passes is the zero-cost option. If you want to give a proper gift, or your friend explicitly doesn’t want to add a card or worry about cancelling before the trial ends, paying for a gift subscription is more straightforward.

A few details Anthropic hasn’t spelled out

While digging into this, a few things turned out to be undocumented — worth knowing before you start handing out passes:

• Pass expiration: Anthropic doesn’t publicly state whether passes themselves expire, or what happens to unused passes if your Max subscription ends.
• The exact size of “extra usage”: the command help text mentions extra usage, but the actual reward amount is undisclosed.
• Eligibility checks: based on Claude Code’s internal implementation, the system uses a function like getCachedReferrerReward to verify reward eligibility — implying not every Max subscriber will immediately receive the extra usage benefit.

So I wouldn’t recommend subscribing to Max purely to chase the referral rewards — they’re a bonus, not predictable income. The real reasons to be on Max are the core perks: Opus quota, larger Claude Code allowances, and so on. For people already on Max, /passes is a free way to bring three friends into the Claude ecosystem and reclaim a bit of credit along the way.