claude-swap

Multi-account switcher for Claude Code. Easily switch between multiple Claude accounts without logging out, or let it switch for you before you hit a rate limit. Track usage for every account in a live dashboard, and run accounts in parallel. Works with both the Claude Code CLI and the VS Code extension.

Installation

Using uv (recommended)

uv tool install claude-swap

Using pipx

pipx install claude-swap

From source

git clone https://github.com/realiti4/claude-swap.git
cd claude-swap
uv sync
uv run cswap help

Updating

cswap upgrade          # uv/pipx installs on macOS/Linux: auto-detects and upgrades
or run your installer directly:
uv tool upgrade claude-swap
pipx upgrade claude-swap

Usage

Add your first account

Log into Claude Code with your first account, then:

cswap add

Add more accounts

cswap add

Do not run /logout first: current Claude Code may revoke the refresh token stored for the account you are leaving.

Switch accounts

Rotate to the next account:

cswap switch

Or switch to a specific account:

cswap switch 2
cswap switch [email protected]
cswap switch dev                # or by alias, once set with cswap alias 2 dev

Not sure which one? cswap list is the dashboard — every account's plan, 5-hour and 7-day usage and reset times at a glance:

cswap list

Or let claude-swap auto-pick by remaining quota — cswap switch --strategy best (most quota left) or --strategy next-available (skip rate-limited accounts).

Note: You usually don't need to restart — on Linux/Windows the new account is picked up automatically, and on macOS after the Keychain cache expires. To apply it instantly, restart Claude Code or reopen the VS Code extension tab. See Tips for the per-platform details.

Automatic switching

Let claude-swap watch your usage and switch for you. When the active account's 5-hour or 7-day window reaches the threshold (default 90%), it switches to the account with the most quota left — before you hit the limit, and safe to run while Claude Code is working:

cswap auto                     # foreground loop, polls every 60s
cswap auto --threshold 80      # switch earlier
cswap auto --weekly-threshold 97   # let the weekly window run higher before switching
cswap auto --model Fable       # also switch when the Fable weekly limit is hit
cswap auto --strategy weekly-first   # spend the soonest-expiring weekly quota first (more strategies below)
cswap auto --once              # single check-and-switch, for cron/scripts
cswap auto --dry-run           # log what it would do, never switch

Strategies, per-account controls & behavior

Strategies (--strategy, or cswap config set autoswitch.strategy):

| Strategy | Switches | Lands on | |---|---|---| | best (default) | when the active account reaches its threshold | the account with the most quota left | | weekly-first | same as best | the account whose weekly window resets soonest | | consume-first | at the threshold, and earlier whenever an account that resets sooner has room | the account whose weekly window resets soonest | | priority-consume-first | whenever a higher-tier account is usable | your highest tier (cswap priority), then the soonest weekly reset |

The weekly ones exist because weekly quota left unused at its reset is lost.

Per-account controls

cswap disable holds an account out of rotation: auto-switch, bare cswap switch, and the best / next-available strategies skip it until cswap enable puts it back. It keeps its login and is still a valid explicit cswap switch target.
cswap threshold gives one account its own switch-away line (50–99.9) in place of the global one.
cswap priority ranks accounts for priority-consume-first: higher tiers (0–1000, default 0) are used first. The other strategies ignore tiers.

Good to know

Thresholds are switch-away lines, not hard caps. With nothing under its line, or the active account at its limit, auto-switch still lands somewhere rather than stall. priority-consume-first is the exception: it never lands on an account at or over its line, so it holds and keeps polling.
A cooldown (default 5 min) and a hysteresis margin stop it flip-flopping between accounts near the threshold.
--weekly-threshold 97 gives the 7-day and per-model windows their own line, so the weekly budget can run higher than the 5-hour window. --threshold, and any per-account threshold, then governs the 5-hour window only.
--model Fable folds that model's weekly limit into the decision, for when you hit a per-model limit before the account-wide ones. Names are the per-model rows in cswap list (e.g. Fable: 100%), matched case-insensitively.
Accounts with no 5-hour window (Ultra) are judged on their 7-day and --model windows alone.
If a usage check fails it keeps using the last-known numbers for a limited time while it retries, and an expired token on an idle machine makes it hold rather than fail over.
An account whose refresh token has died is quarantined and reported until you re-add it.
API-key accounts are never rotated onto unless you pass --include-api-key-accounts.

For cron/systemd timers, --once reports the outcome in its exit code (0 switched, 1 error, 2 nothing to do, 3 blocked — no viable target), and --json emits one JSON event per line:

/5    * cswap auto --once --json >> ~/.cswap-auto.log 2>&1

Defaults like the threshold and cooldown are configurable with cswap config set autoswitch.threshold 80 — flags override them (see Configuration).

The exact rules (margins, landing, polling cadence, tier handling) are in docs/auto-switch.md.

Run multiple accounts at the same time (session mode)

Launch Claude Code as a specific account in the current terminal only — every other terminal and the VS Code extension stay on your default account, so two accounts can work in parallel.

cswap run 2                     # launch Claude Code as account 2, here only
cswap run [email protected]      # by email
cswap run 2 -- --resume         # everything after '--' is forwarded to claude
cswap run 2 --no-share-history  # keep this account's chat history to itself

Sessions use your normal ~/.claude setup (settings, CLAUDE.md, skills, MCP servers, etc.) and share its chat history, so a conversation started under one account shows up in --resume under the others.

How it behaves — chat history, MCP servers, tokens

Chat history. Shared by default: every account reads and writes the history in ~/.claude. History an account kept on its own before is merged in on its next launch, and nothing already saved is lost (a file that differs on both sides is kept aside in history-conflicts/ in the backup directory). cswap config set run.shareHistory false gives each account its own history; --no-share-history does it for one launch. On Windows, conversations are shared through a directory junction, which needs no special rights; the prompt-history file (history.jsonl) is shared only when Windows lets cswap create a symlink (Developer Mode, or an elevated terminal) and otherwise stays per-account.
MCP servers. User-scope MCP servers (claude mcp add -s user) are mirrored from your default profile on every launch — manage them there; changes made inside a session don't persist. Definitions are copied as-is (including inline env/headers values), but MCP OAuth logins are not — HTTP servers may ask you to authenticate once per profile via /mcp.
--no-share stops sharing your ~/.claude setup (settings, skills, etc.) and removes the mirrored MCP config (profiles that never mirrored are left alone). Chat history is separate: it stays shared unless you also pass --no-share-history.
Your default account. Running the account that is already your default login launches plain claude on that login instead of a session (a second copy of the active credential would go stale). Scripts that need the isolation guaranteed can pass --require-session, which refuses instead.
Tokens. A session refreshes its own copy of the account's token; once it exits, the credential it rotated is captured back into the account's stored backup before a switch, swap, move, or usage check uses it. While the session is still running, cswap switch refuses to move the default login onto its account if the stored backup has already fallen behind (activating it could only fail) — exit the session first, or pick another account.
Usage. While a session runs, its account's usage is read with the session's own credential, which cswap never refreshes. A read the server refuses shows as token expired, and isn't retried, until the session renews the credential on its next call.

Map accounts to directories — auto-pick per repo

Bind a directory to an account, and a bare cswap run there launches that account in session mode — e.g. work account in work repos, personal elsewhere:

cswap map 2 ~/work/client-app # map a directory to account 2 cswap map [email protected] # map the current directory cswap map # list mappings cswap unmap ~/work/client-app # remove one (defaults to current directory)

cd ~/work/client-app/src cswap run # → account 2, session mode

Subfolders inherit the nearest mapped ancestor. In an unmapped directory, cswap run just launches plain claude with your default login. Mappings are per-machine (not part of cswap export) and are cleaned up when their account is removed.

Interactive dashboard (TUI)

Run cswap on its own (or cswap tui) for the full-screen dashboard: live usage for every account, switching, and the auto-switcher, all keyboard-driven. cswap watch opens it straight to the live monitor. Works on macOS, Linux, and Windows.

cswap watch — live 5h/7d usage bars for every account, with reset times and the active account marked

Refresh expired tokens

If an account's token expires, log back into Claude Code with that account and re-run:

cswap add

This will update the stored credentials without creating a duplicate.

If the refresh token itself has died (auto-switch quarantines and reports such an account), log in with it and re-run cswap add --slot N, or replace its stored credentials from a known-good export: a plain cswap import backup.cswap replaces dead-token slots on its own (a stale export can carry an already-superseded token).

Other commands

cswap run 2                     # Run an account in this terminal only (session mode)
cswap auto                      # Auto-switch when nearing rate limits (see above)
cswap config                    # Show or edit settings (see Configuration below)
cswap list                      # Show all accounts with 5h/7d usage and reset times
cswap list --token-status       # Add source-labelled OAuth token diagnostics
cswap status                    # Show current account
cswap add --slot 3              # Add account to a specific slot (prompts before overwrite)
cswap add --alias dev           # Add account and give it a short alias
cswap remove 2                  # Remove an account
cswap disable 2                 # Hold an account out of auto-rotation (keeps its login)
cswap enable 2                  # Return a disabled account to rotation
cswap threshold 2 85            # Switch away from account 2 at 85%, not the global default
cswap threshold 2 --unset       # Return account 2 to the global default
cswap threshold                 # Show the global default and every per-account override
cswap priority 2 100            # Use account 2 before lower tiers (priority-consume-first strategy)
cswap priority 2 --unset        # Return account 2 to tier 0
cswap priority                  # Show every account's tier
cswap alias 2 dev               # Give an account a short alias (usable anywhere NUM|EMAIL is)
cswap alias 2 --unset           # Remove an account's alias
cswap alias                     # List all aliases
cswap move 2 1                  # Assign an account to a slot (relocates to an empty slot, swaps if taken)
cswap unclaimed                 # List stashed credential entries (slot + why they were stashed)
cswap unclaimed --purge ID      # Drop one (deletes its bytes; recover with /login + cswap add)
cswap tui                       # Interactive dashboard (also: bare cswap)
cswap watch                     # Dashboard, opened on the live watch page
cswap upgrade                   # Upgrade claude-swap to the latest version
cswap purge                     # Remove all claude-swap data

The original flag spellings (cswap --switch, cswap --list, ...) keep working.

Tips

Do you need to restart after switching? Usually not. On Linux and Windows, credentials are stored in a file and Claude Code re-reads them whenever that file changes, so the new account takes effect on your next message — no restart needed. On macOS, credentials live in the Keychain, which Claude Code caches for about 30 seconds; a running session picks up the switch once that cache expires. Restart Claude Code (or close and reopen the VS Code extension tab) only if you want the change to apply instantly.
Continuing sessions after switching: You can keep using the same Claude Code session after switching — run cswap switch in any terminal and carry on. If you'd prefer a clean start, close and reopen Claude Code (or the VS Code extension tab) and use --resume to pick your previous session. Either way, the first message on the new account may use extra usage as its conversation cache rebuilds.

How it works

Backs up OAuth tokens and config when you add an account
Swaps only the account-specific Claude login when you switch accounts;

live account-independent OAuth state (such as MCP server logins) is preserved instead of being overwritten by a slot's older snapshot

Account credentials stored securely using platform-appropriate methods
Switches (manual and automatic) hold Claude Code's own credential locks while writing, so a swap never interleaves with a token refresh
Auto-switch freshens a target's token before activating it, and quarantines accounts whose refresh token has died until you re-add them
Usage numbers refresh every few minutes — faster for an account being used or close to switching, slower for idle ones — keeping cswap comfortably inside Anthropic's rate limits however many dashboards you keep open on a machine. An age note like · 6m ago just means the next scheduled check hasn't come yet, not that something is stuck.
The plan shown after each slot (· Ultra, · Pro, · Team) comes from your account profile and refreshes every six hours, independently of usage; a subscription that has lapsed shows as a highlighted Free.

Data locations

| Platform | Credentials | Config backups | |----------|-------------|----------------| | Windows | File-based (inside the backup directory, under credentials/) | ~/.claude-swap-backup/ | | macOS | macOS Keychain | ~/.claude-swap-backup/ | | Linux / WSL | File-based (inside the backup directory, under credentials/) | ${XDG_DATA_HOME:-~/.local/share}/claude-swap/ |

Session-mode profiles (cswap run) live under the backup directory in sessions/. Tool preferences (settings.json) and auto-switch state (autoswitch_state.json — cooldown and quarantined accounts; delete it to reset) live in the backup directory root.

On Linux/WSL, set XDG_DATA_HOME to override the default location.

Menu bar (macOS)

Optional macOS menu bar app — usage at a glance, click to switch

Needs the menubar extra (macOS only):

uv tool install 'claude-swap[menubar]'   # or: pipx install 'claude-swap[menubar]'
cswap menubar

cswap menubar hands the menu bar to launchd and returns: it keeps running after you close the terminal, comes back at login and is restarted if it crashes. Running the command again only tells you it is already up. Quit in the menu stops it until the next login. Settings → Start at login turns the login start off, after which cswap menubar runs it for the current session only. cswap menubar --uninstall-service removes it altogether, and cswap menubar --foreground runs it attached to the terminal instead, for debugging.

Shows every account's 5h / 7d / spend usage and switches with a click (specific / rotate / best / next-available), plus the TUI's add / disable-enable / remove / refresh actions. Enable Settings → Auto-switch accounts to run the same engine as cswap auto in the background; it shares the autoswitch.* settings, so the menu bar and CLI stay in sync. Off until you turn it on: cswap menubar --auto-switch turns it on from the terminal (--no-auto-switch off), and both that command and --service-status say which it is. The menu's first row says whether auto-switch is running, off, or stopped (click it to restart) and when usage was last refreshed; the title carries a ⚠ while a stopped engine waits for that click.

cswap menubar runs from a small wrapper app, /Applications/claude-swap Menubar.app, that it builds (and refreshes after upgrades) on every start. The wrapper gives it the bundle identifier com.claude-swap.menubar, which menu bar managers (Dimble, Ice, Bartender, SaneBar) need to list, hide and order the icon. If /Applications is not writable the bundle lands in the data directory with a one-line warning; there, the first time a manager hides anything the icon goes down with it. Set CLAUDE_SWAP_NO_BUNDLE=1 to run in the plain interpreter instead.

cswap menubar --service-status      # running? pid? starts at login? auto-switch on?
cswap menubar --install-service     # register the login start again and restart it now
cswap menubar --uninstall-service   # stop it and remove the LaunchAgent

The plist lives at ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.cswap.menubar.plist while Start at login is on and in the data directory while it is off; logs go to ~/Library/Logs/com.cswap.menubar.{log,err}. cswap upgrade restarts a running menu bar when the build changed; after an upgrade made some other way, the next cswap menubar notices the old build and restarts it. The service follows the CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR, CLAUDE_SECURESTORAGE_CONFIG_DIR and XDG_DATA_HOME of the shell that set it up, and --install-service from a shell in another profile says what moved. If you switched it off under System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions → Allow in the Background, cswap menubar still starts it when you ask, but says that macOS will not start it at login until you turn that back on.

Advanced

Configuration

Tool preferences live in settings.json in the backup root; cswap config reads and edits it with validation, so you never have to find the file or guess valid ranges.

Commands & usage

cswap config                              # list effective settings ("(default)" = not set)
cswap config get autoswitch.threshold
cswap config set autoswitch.threshold 80  # validated: rejects out-of-range values loudly
cswap config set autoswitch.weeklyThreshold 97  # own switch line for the 7-day/per-model windows
cswap config set autoswitch.model Fable   # per-model switching (see "auto"); Fable,Opus for several
cswap config set run.shareHistory false   # each account keeps its own chat history (see "run")
cswap config set updates.check false      # no daily PyPI lookup for the "newer version" hint
cswap config set usage.headerProbe true   # opt in: setup-token usage via a 1-token request (see "add-token")
cswap config unset autoswitch.threshold   # back to the default
cswap config path                         # where settings.json lives

cswap config --help lists every key with its valid range and default. Hand-editing the file still works — cswap config is just a safer front door. list and get take --json for scripting.

Backup and migration

Move account data between machines or back it up:

cswap export backup.cswap                    # All accounts to a file
cswap export backup.cswap --account 2        # One account
cswap export backup.cswap --full             # Include full ~/.claude.json and credential object (same-PC backup)
cswap import backup.cswap                    # Skips accounts that already exist
cswap import backup.cswap --force            # Overwrite existing

The export file is plaintext JSON and, by default, carries only each account's own login — machine-shared MCP/plugin OAuth tokens and the device token stay on the source machine (--full keeps everything, for same-PC backups). If you need encryption, pipe through your tool of choice (e.g. cswap export - | gpg -c > backup.gpg).

If an imported account is the one you're currently logged in as, activate the imported credentials with cswap switch N --force (a plain switch to the current account is a safe no-op and won't touch the import).

Share usage readings between machines

Machines that hold the same accounts can end up sharing one usage-endpoint rate limit, so their polling adds up (this is the limit on how often usage can be read, not your subscription quota). import-usage lets one machine poll and hand its readings to the others:

cswap list --json | ssh laptop cswap import-usage - --hold 600

How it works — matching, holds & when a hold ends

Machines share that rate limit when they share a login (moved between them with export/import, so the same token is live on each), or when the account's usage requests are limited per account rather than per token.

The input is cswap list --json output. Each row with usageStatus: "ok" is matched to a local account by email and organization, and adopted when it is newer than the reading already stored. Its age comes from usageAgeSeconds, so the two machines' clocks never have to agree; a script that delays the hand-over should add the delay to that field. --hold SECONDS keeps every collector on the receiving machine (list, status, auto, the dashboard, the menu bar) from fetching those accounts for that long, and the held reading stays trusted for switch decisions meanwhile. A hold never runs past the reading's earliest window reset (per-model windows included), nor past an hour after the reading was taken. Renew it with each hand-over, or lift it early with --hold 0; when it lapses, the machine goes back to fetching for itself.

JSON output for scripting

Add --json to list, status, or switch to emit a single machine-readable JSON object on stdout (human-readable notices go to stderr). Useful for scripting auto-swap and quota tracking.

cswap list --json                   # all accounts with usage/quota
cswap status --json                 # current active account
cswap switch --strategy best --json # switch, then report the result
cswap switch 2 --json

Example output

{
  "schemaVersion": 1,
  "activeAccountNumber": 2,
  "accounts": [
    { "number": 2, "email": "[email protected]", "active": true, "usageStatus": "ok",
      "usage": { "fiveHour": { "pct": 25.0, "resetsAt": "2026-06-22T23:29:59Z" },
                 "sevenDay": { "pct": 16.0, "resetsAt": "2026-06-26T17:59:59Z" } } }
  ]
}

Every payload carries a schemaVersion (currently 1); on a handled error stdout is {"schemaVersion":1,"error":{...}} with a non-zero exit code. --switch/--switch-to report {"switched": true|false, "from": …, "to": …, "reason": …}.

cswap auto --json emits an event stream instead — one JSON object per line ({"schemaVersion":1,"event":"switch","ts":…, …} with kinds like poll, switch, no-switch, account-quarantined, all-exhausted, error). The contract is additive: new kinds and fields may appear, so scripts should ignore unknown ones.

Every optional field (usage age, last-known usage, fetch errors, pace, login expiry, …) is listed in docs/json-output.md.

Add an account from a raw token or API key

Register a long-lived setup-token (from claude setup-token) or a Console API key (sk-ant-api03-... workspace key, sk-ant-usr-... personal key, or a service-account key) directly, without the browser login — useful on headless servers or when receiving a token from another machine. The token type is auto-detected:

cswap add-token sk-ant-oat01-...             # OAuth setup-token
cswap add-token sk-ant-api03-...             # API key (any Console key family)
cswap add-token sk-ant-oat01-... --slot 3
cswap add-token - --slot 3                   # read token from stdin
cswap add-token --email [email protected]     # optional label override

--email is optional; omitted values use setup-token-{slot}@token.local (or api-key-{slot}@token.local for API keys). No Anthropic API calls are made.

Limits — setup-token usage & API-key accounts

Setup-tokens show usage unavailable by default, because the usage endpoint does not answer them (their scope is inference-only). With cswap config set usage.headerProbe true, cswap reads their 5h/7d utilization (and Fable's weekly window) from the rate-limit headers of a 1-output-token Haiku request instead, sent at the normal poll cadence. Each probe is a real (tiny) request on that account's subscription, which is why it is off by default.
What the probe can't do. Other per-model windows and extra-usage spend are not in those headers. A reading missing the 5h or 7d window (or a window autoswitch.model names) is shown but not used for auto-switching. An account the server rejects for quota is marked as at its limit, with no further probe, until the refusal's Retry-After passes.
API-key accounts. Any bare sk-ant-... value that is not an OAuth token (sk-ant-oat...) registers a managed API-key account (the kind Claude Code uses after /login with a key). It switches like any other account, but API keys have no subscription quota, so they show no usage and the usage-aware switch strategies never skip them as rate-limited. Use keys scoped to a single workspace: a multi-workspace key needs an anthropic-workspace-id header on every request, which Claude Code does not add for a stored key.

Note: Third-party providers configured through ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY or ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN are not managed or switched; those exported variables stay in effect after a switch, so unset them to use the swapped account.

Documentation

docs/auto-switch.md — the exact auto-switch rules: hysteresis margins, landing rules, per-account thresholds and tiers, polling cadence. Read it to find out why it did or didn't switch.
docs/json-output.md — every field in --json output, including the optional ones. Read it before writing a script against cswap list --json or cswap auto --json.

cswap --help and cswap --help document every flag.

Uninstall

Remove all data:

cswap purge

Then uninstall the tool:

uv tool uninstall claude-swap
or
pipx uninstall claude-swap

Requirements

Python 3.12+
Claude Code installed and logged in

License

MIT

realiti4/claude-swap: Switch between multiple Claude Code accounts, with automatic rate-limit rotation, usage dashboard, and parallel sessions