Claude Partner Network: who is a partner, what the tiers require and which certifications count

A firm becomes a Claude partner, and three numbers set its tier: certified people, customers in production and public customer stories. I passed Claude Certified Architect Foundations and I hold the Claude Partner Badge Claude Code. Neither makes me a Claude partner. Below I explain how the program works, how to check a firm that calls itself a partner, and what counts toward its tier. I checked every rule on Anthropic's pages on 3 November 2026.

What the Claude Partner Network is

Anthropic launched the network on 12 March 2026 for organizations that help large companies deploy Claude. It put an initial $100 million behind it for 2026. That money pays for partner training, technical support and joint marketing. Membership is free.

The member is always a firm. In the Partner Portal it finds training material, sales playbooks and co-marketing material, and its people can register for exams on Anthropic Partner Academy. The certification, though, belongs to the person who passed it.

On 3 June 2026 Anthropic added the Services Track and the Claude Partner Hub. The Services Track is the ladder of tiers. The Partner Hub is the portal where a firm sees its own numbers and a customer looks for a supplier. By that date, Anthropic says, more than 40,000 firms had applied to join.

What "official Claude partner" means and how to check one

Anthropic answers in one sentence: "Partnership begins at Select." A new firm starts at Registered. That is the entry level. At it, the firm commits to certifying at least 10 people. It becomes a partner in the program's sense at Select, Preferred or Global Premier.

The certification FAQ uses looser language and writes about "Registered-tier partners". So ask a firm for its tier, not just whether it is a member. Being in the network says nothing about what the firm has delivered.

The public partner directory is on claude.com, under Service partners. Its tier filter has three options: Global Premier, Preferred and Select. Registered is not one of them. On 3 November 2026 the directory showed 16 Global Premier firms, 40 Preferred and 257 Select. That is a small share of the more than 40,000 firms that had applied by June. The full list is labelled 331 partners, 18 more than the three tier groups. Not every listed firm shows a tier.

The region filter has 16 entries and none of them is Central and Eastern Europe. If you are looking for a supplier in Poland, filter by services and industry, or choose Global (any region).

The Services Track: three tiers and their thresholds

The thresholds are public and the same for every firm. Anthropic writes that size does not lower the bar: a smaller firm climbs by certifying more of its people.

Global Premier also needs a joint business plan with Anthropic and named executive sponsors. The thresholds come from the announcement of 3 June 2026. Whether firms hire because of them is a separate question, and I took it up in what the tier thresholds do and do not mean for hiring.

Anthropic promotes firms on 1 January and 1 July, and in 2026 it added a review on 1 October. A firm can lose its tier only at the annual review on 31 December. Before that it gets 90 days' notice and a chance to close the gap. Anthropic's Program Guide lists narrow exceptions. The firm follows its own numbers in the Partner Hub. Anthropic verifies them every quarter.

Bringing new business to Anthropic earns a separate reward: referral credit and deal protection. That part does not change the tier. Today Anthropic describes one tiered track, the Services Track. It has announced specializations for industries and use cases for later.

Who counts as active, and which certifications count

An active person holds a current Anthropic certification and has used Claude in the past 90 days. A certification expires after 12 months. Anyone who does not renew it, or does not use Claude for 90 days, stops counting.

Three of the four exams count. Associate does not. The certification FAQ puts it on the list headed "Exams that do not count towards Claude Partner Network eligibility". Partner Academy carries a note next to that exam: "The new Claude Certified Associate certification does not count towards Claude Partner Network tier eligibility."

Associate is meant for people who use Claude as a productivity tool in their daily work, not for developers who build on the API. It will not help a firm move up, though. If your team is choosing between the two Foundations exams that do count, read the CCDV-F and CCAR-F comparison by the tasks each one tests.

The email domain matters too. A certification earned on a domain missing from the partner's record does not credit to the firm. That includes subsidiary and regional domains. Adding a domain through partner-support@anthropic.com takes 7 to 10 days.

Learning paths in Partner Academy

A learning path is a set of courses in Anthropic Partner Academy, arranged for one role. The learning paths page lists, among others, Claude Associate, Claude Developer, Claude Architect, Claude Forward Deployed Engineer and Claude Administrator. The paths are "Free for Claude Partner Network members". Registering records your progress, and each course opens when you start it.

A path prepares you for an exam, but it is not a certification itself. Only a passed exam counts toward tier. The Architect path ends with a note that its exam counts toward partner tier. The Associate path says plainly that its exam does not.

Roles without a path of their own get guides: for consultants, adoption and change leads, practice leads and technical pre-sales. Claude Forward Deployed Engineer is also a course path, not a certification. If you do not work at a partner, there is the public Claude Academy. Its courses end with a quiz and a certificate of completion, which is not a certification.

A personal badge is not a firm's partnership

Anthropic states that certifications belong to individual people, not firms. When you pass an exam, you get a badge on Credly. Anthropic calls these partner badges. The word "partner" in a badge's name gives a firm no tier.

The Claude Partner Badge Claude Code is a personal badge too. It takes eight courses, a scenario-based capstone and an assessment. It is not on the FAQ's list of certifications that count toward tier. I described what that path covers and what it does not prove.

My company, Beta Impact Szymon Paluch, holds OpenAI Select Partner status in the OpenAI Partner Network. That is a company tier in OpenAI's program and has nothing to do with Anthropic. OpenAI also has three tiers: Select, Advanced and Elite. It describes each as a high bar in sales, technical capability, co-selling and deployment, but publishes no numeric thresholds. So "Select" means different things in the two programs. I also wrote up how my company's admission to OpenAI's program went.

What partners get and how a firm joins

Anthropic's announcements list what a firm in the network gets:

• The Partner Portal, with training material, sales playbooks and co-marketing material.
• Free learning paths and prep courses on Anthropic Partner Academy, and exam registration.
• Applied AI engineers on live customer deals, and technical architects to scope more complex implementations.
• Priority access to new certifications.
• A listing in the public directory once the firm qualifies.

The exam discount depends on the tier. Registered firms pay full price, and firms at Select, Preferred or Global Premier pay half. Global Premier pays nothing until 31 December 2026. I worked out the amounts in the table of exam prices for each partner tier.

A firm applies through the form at claude.com/partners, and the form lists three criteria. The firm should be a registered business with 10 or more employees. It should operate in a supported region and offer customers consulting, implementation or managed services. A firm building its own product on Claude is sent to the Claude API instead.

In March Anthropic wrote that any organization bringing Claude to market could join. I read the 10-employee condition on the form on 3 November 2026. Applying costs nothing, and a new firm starts at Registered.

You can register for an exam only with an email on a partner firm's domain. A personal address will not work. Do you work at a firm outside the network? I collected the ways into an exam for people whose firm is not a member.

Before you sign with a firm that calls itself a Claude partner, open the Service partners directory. Find its name and read its tier. Then ask for the list of its certified people with their Credly links.

Frequently asked questions