Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop ↗ can send third-party inference requests to a custom gateway. This configuration sends those requests to AI Gateway's Anthropic endpoint, authenticated with your Cloudflare gateway token. AI Gateway can supply the Anthropic credentials for you through Unified Billing or a stored provider key (BYOK).

Prerequisites

Before you start, you need:

• An authenticated gateway and its gateway token. The gateway token must have Run permissions.
• Your Cloudflare account ID. To find it, refer to Find your account and zone IDs.
• Credentials for Anthropic requests. Use either Unified Billing credits or an Anthropic API key stored in AI Gateway as a provider key (BYOK).
• Claude Desktop installed and updated to the latest version.

Note

For the simplest setup, set Claude Desktop's gateway API key to your Cloudflare gateway token. If you set the gateway API key to your own Anthropic API key instead, add cf-aig-authorization: Bearer <CF_AIG_TOKEN> as a custom inference header so AI Gateway can authenticate the request.

1. In Claude Desktop, select Help > Troubleshooting > Enable Developer Mode.

2. Select Developer > Configure Third-Party Inference.

3. In Connection, set the connection type to Gateway.

4. In Gateway credentials, set Credential kind to Static API key.

5. Set Gateway API key to your Cloudflare gateway token.

   Replace <CF_AIG_TOKEN> with your gateway token.

   <CF_AIG_TOKEN>

6. Set Gateway auth scheme to Bearer.

7. Set the gateway base URL to your gateway's Anthropic endpoint.

   Replace <ACCOUNT_ID> and <GATEWAY_ID> with your values.

   https://gateway.ai.cloudflare.com/v1/<ACCOUNT_ID>/<GATEWAY_ID>/anthropic

8. In Models, add the Claude model you want to use.

   Field	Value
   Model ID	claude-sonnet-4-5
   Display name	Claude Sonnet 4.5
   Tier alias	sonnet

9. In Gateway credentials, select Test connection.

10. Start a Claude Desktop conversation. Requests now route through AI Gateway.

To confirm traffic reaches AI Gateway, refer to Verify it works.