What is the Claude Partner Network?

The Claude Partner Network is Anthropic's official partner program, launched March 12, 2026 with a $100 million commitment for 2026. It trains, certifies, and tiers the consultancies and systems integrators that deploy Claude for businesses, and lists them in a public directory at partnerhub.claude.com.

How do I become a Claude partner?

Apply at claude.com/partners; membership is free. Firms enter at the Registered level with a commitment to certify at least 10 practitioners, and reach Select once they have 10 active certified individuals, 2 production customer deployments, and 1 public customer story.

What are the Anthropic Partner Network tiers?

Services partners are tiered as Registered, Select, Preferred, and Global Premier. Select requires 10 certified people, 2 production deployments, and 1 public story; Preferred requires 100, 15, and 3; Global Premier requires 1,000 certified people, 100 customers across 3+ regions, 15 stories, and a joint business plan with Anthropic.

How much is the Claude certification?

Anthropic offers four proctored exams through Pearson VUE: Claude Certified Associate Foundations ($99), Developer Foundations ($125), Architect Foundations ($125), and Architect Professional ($175). Each is 120 minutes, passes at 720 on a 1,000-point scale, is valid for 12 months, and is open only to people at Claude Partner Network organizations.

How do I verify a Claude partner?

Search the firm at partnerhub.claude.com/directory to confirm its tier badge, then ask each person who will staff your project for their Credly badge link and check that the credential is current. The directory lists Select and above, so an unlisted firm should be asked to prove its membership.

Is there a Claude Code or Cowork certification?

No. As of September 2026 there is no standalone Claude Code or Cowork certification; Claude Code and MCP are covered inside the Claude Certified Developer Foundations exam, and Anthropic has said industry and use-case specializations are coming.

Guides|September 4, 20269 min read

The Anthropic Partner Network, Explained: Tiers, Certifications, and How to Verify a Partner

Officially the Anthropic Partner Network, widely miscalled the Claude Partner Network. Four tiers, four proctored exams ($99 to $175), a public directory — and how to verify any partner's claim.

The OneWave Team

AI Consulting

What the Anthropic Partner Network Is

First, the name. The program is the Anthropic Partner Network. It is very widely called the “Claude Partner Network” instead — including in places you would expect to be authoritative — because Claude is the product most people meet first. If you have been searching the wrong one, you are in the right place: both names refer to the same program, and we use the official one throughout.

The Anthropic Partner Network is Anthropic's official partner program: the global ecosystem of consultancies, systems integrators, and service firms that Anthropic trains, certifies, and tiers to deploy Claude inside businesses. Anthropic launched it on March 12, 2026, backed by a $100 million commitment for 2026 covering partner training, certification, technical support, and shared go-to-market. Membership is free. Firms apply at claude.com/partners.

Why build it? Anthropic's enterprise business was growing faster than Anthropic could service it. Most companies do not have in-house teams that can design agent architectures, wire up MCP servers, or run a Claude rollout across departments. Partners close that gap. The network is Anthropic's way of scaling deployment expertise without hiring it all directly, and of putting a verifiable credential behind the phrase "Claude expert."

If you are a buyer evaluating AI consultancies, this matters for one simple reason: there is now an official, Anthropic-defined standard you can check a vendor against, and a public directory where you can check it. This post explains exactly what that standard is, how to verify it, and what it does and does not tell you.

What changed since July 2026

We first published this explainer in July 2026 and have updated it as of September 4, 2026. Three things moved. Certification testing moved to Pearson VUE on June 30, and the catalog grew from a single architect exam to four proctored exams spanning Associate, Developer, and Architect roles. The services partner directory moved to the Partner Hub and now filters by tier, budget, industry, and deployment surface. And the first off-cycle tier review is scheduled for October 1, 2026, so expect a wave of firms announcing new tier standing in the fourth quarter.

The Numbers

Demand outran expectations quickly. Anthropic's June 3, 2026 announcement put the figures on the record:

40,000+ firms had applied to join the network in its first three months
10,000+ consultants had earned a Claude certification
Members span boutique consultancies to the largest global systems integrators

Anthropic has not published updated totals since June, so treat both figures as a floor. They cut both ways. Tens of thousands of applicants is a real signal of where the market is going, and also a reminder that "partner" alone is a wide bucket. That is why Anthropic added tiers.

The Services Track Tiers, Explained

The Services Track sorts services partners into tiers based on three things a firm cannot fake: certified headcount, live customer deployments, and public proof. The requirements are published in the announcement and enforced in the Partner Hub, where every firm sees its own standing against the bar, refreshed daily. An "active certified individual" is a person who holds a current Anthropic certification and has used Claude in the past 90 days, so a firm cannot stockpile dormant credentials.

Registered

The entry level. A firm that has been accepted into the network and committed to certifying at least 10 practitioners, but has not yet met the Select bar. Registered firms are not shown in the public directory.

Select

10+ active certified individuals on staff
2 joint customers deployed in production in the trailing 12 months
1 public customer story

Select is where Anthropic says partnership formally begins: a certified core team and at least two real deployments in production, not just a signed agreement.

Preferred

100+ active certified individuals
15 deployed joint customers
3 public customer stories

Preferred partners have institutionalized Claude delivery: a certified bench in the hundreds and a repeatable deployment practice. Caylent, for example, holds Preferred standing with a bench of more than 700 Claude engineers, per Channel Dive.

Global Premier

1,000+ active certified individuals
100 deployed joint customers across 3+ regions
15 public customer stories
A joint business plan with named executive sponsors at Anthropic

Global Premier is reserved for firms operating at global-SI scale, with delivery capacity on multiple continents and a formal, co-planned relationship with Anthropic itself.

Promotions are processed twice a year, on January 1 and July 1, with the extra October 1, 2026 review in this first year. Anthropic verifies standing every quarter. Read the criteria carefully and you will notice what they measure: scale. Certified headcount, customer count, regional coverage. Useful signals, but none of them measure whether a firm is the right size, speed, or price for you.

The Certifications: Four Exams, One Passing Score

The unit the tiers count is the individual certification. Anthropic's partner certification program started in March 2026 with a single architect exam and, per the official certification FAQ, now offers four:

Claude Certified Associate, Foundations (CCAO-F): $99. For consultants, sellers, and delivery leads who guide customers to the right Claude use cases.
Claude Certified Developer, Foundations (CCDV-F): $125. For engineers who build with the Claude API, Claude Code, and MCP.
Claude Certified Architect, Foundations (CCAR-F): $125. For partners who design Claude solutions end to end. This is the original March 2026 exam.
Claude Certified Architect, Professional (CCAR-P): $175. The advanced architecture credential.

The mechanics are the same across all four. Each exam runs 120 minutes, is proctored by Pearson VUE online or at a test center, is closed book, and is scored on a 100 to 1,000 scale with a passing score of 720. Candidates get four attempts per exam in any rolling 12-month period. A credential is valid for 12 months and renews through a free, non-proctored assessment; let it lapse and you retake the full exam.

Two details matter for buyers. First, the exams are only open to people at Anthropic Partner Network organizations. Registration requires a work email on a partner company's domain, so an individual's certification is itself evidence that their firm is in the network. Second, every credential is issued as a Credly digital badge with a public verification link. There is no separate Claude Code or Cowork certification; Claude Code is covered inside the Developer exam. Partner tiers earn discounts on exam fees, which is one reason certified headcount climbs fast once a firm reaches Select.

How to Verify a Claude Partner

Anyone can now check a vendor's claims in about five minutes. Here is the procedure we would use, and the one we expect prospects to run on us:

Look the firm up in the directory. Go to partnerhub.claude.com/directory and search the company name. The listing shows the firm's tier badge (Select, Preferred, or Global Premier), its description, and filterable facts such as services offered, industry expertise, customer size served, budget range, deployment surface, and on-site locations. A firm claiming a tier that does not appear on its listing is misrepresenting itself.
Understand what absence means. The directory lists firms at Select and above. A firm that is not listed may still be a Registered member building toward the 10-certified-person threshold, or it may not be a member at all. Ask which, and ask for proof.
Verify the individuals. Ask each person who will staff your engagement for their Credly badge link and check that the credential is current (12-month validity) and names one of the four exams above. A screenshot is not verification. A completion certificate from a free Anthropic Academy course is real, but it is not a proctored certification and does not count toward tier standing.
Match the badge to the team. A firm-level tier tells you about the whole firm. Your project is staffed by specific people. Ask how many of them hold a certification, and which one.
Check the public proof. Every tier requires named customer stories. Ask for the ones that most resemble your company and call the reference.

The directory verifies the firm. The Credly badge verifies the person. Neither verifies fit. You need all three.

Who the Big Members Are

The top of the network reads like the global consulting league table, and the commitments are concrete:

Accenture is training 30,000 professionals on Claude
Deloitte made Claude available to its 470,000-person global network and is certifying 15,000 professionals
Cognizant is supporting roughly 350,000 associates with Claude access
PwC runs a joint Center of Excellence with Anthropic and is training and certifying 30,000 professionals, with Claude Code and Cowork rolling out from its U.S. teams first
KPMG is "powered by Claude" across the 138 countries where it operates, per Fortune
DXC lists as Global Premier in the public directory; Infosys, Boston Consulting Group, Bain, Slalom, Tribe AI, and Caylent round out the marquee services roster

The takeaway for buyers is less about any one logo and more about the pattern: the firms that serve the world's largest enterprises have standardized on Claude at workforce scale. That is a strong signal about the platform. It is a weaker signal about which firm should run your project.

What This Means If You Are Buying, Not Joining

Most coverage of the Anthropic Partner Network is written for firms that want to join it. You are probably reading this because you are hiring one. Different question. Here is how to use the network as a buyer:

Treat the badge as a floor, not a ceiling. Membership and tiers screen out pretenders. They do not rank who will do the best work for you.
Certifications verify individuals. A CCAR-F or CCAR-P tells you a specific person passed a proctored systems-design exam. Ask how many certified people will actually staff your engagement, not how many the firm employs.
Tiers verify scale. Global Premier means 1,000+ certified staff and 100+ customers. If you are a 40-person company, that scale can work against you: you may get the B-team while the A-team serves the Fortune 500.
Neither verifies fit. No tier requirement measures whether a firm has deployed Claude in your industry, on your stack, at your budget. That diligence is still on you.

So verify the things the badge cannot. Ask for a live demo of something the firm built, not a slide about it. Ask who exactly will be in the room. Ask what they shipped last month. We wrote a full companion checklist for this in How to Choose a Claude Partner.

Where We Fit

Full transparency on our own position. OneWave AI is an official member of the Anthropic Partner Network, headquartered in Delray Beach, Florida, and every member of our team holds an Anthropic certification on top of that. Those are two different things and most firms blur them: the network membership is the firm, the certifications are the people. Ask any consultancy for both. Run step three on us — we will send the Credly badge for every person who would touch your project before the first call ends.

We build with Claude daily, with dozens of client deployments behind us, for companies from SMB to enterprise. We are not a global systems integrator, and we will not pretend to be. If you need Claude rolled out to 470,000 people, hire Deloitte. If you need certified people who personally build, train, and ship, and who you can get on a call this week, that is what a Claude implementation partner does, and it is what we do. If your team needs to get certified itself, our Claude bootcamp is built around the same material the exams test.

For one example of that work in production, see how Nationwide Haul replaced three CRMs with software they own.

Evaluating consultancies right now? Use the directory to build your shortlist, use the badge check to cut it down, and use working software to make the call. If you want to see ours, talk to us.

Sources

Claude Partner NetworkClaude Partner Network tiersClaude Certified ArchitectCCA-F examAnthropic partnersClaude certificationAI consulting

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