The Vertex API for accessing Claude is nearly-identical to the Messages API and supports all of the same options, with two key differences:

  • In Vertex, model is not passed in the request body. Instead, it is specified in the Google Cloud endpoint URL.
  • In Vertex, anthropic_version is passed in the request body (rather than as a header), and must be set to the value vertex-2023-10-16.

Vertex is also supported by Anthropic’s official client SDKs. This guide will walk you through the process of making a request to Claude on Vertex AI in either Python or TypeScript.

Note that this guide assumes you have already have a GCP project that is able to use Vertex AI. See using the Claude 3 models from Anthropic for more information on the setup required, as well as a full walkthrough.

Install an SDK for accessing Vertex AI

First, install Anthropic’s client SDK for your language of choice.

Accessing Vertex AI

Model Availability

Note that Anthropic model availability varies by region. Search for “Claude” in the Vertex AI Model Garden or go to Use Claude 3 for the latest information.

API model names

ModelVertex AI API model name
Claude 3 Haikuclaude-3-haiku@20240307
Claude 3 Sonnetclaude-3-sonnet@20240229
Claude 3 Opus (Public Preview)claude-3-opus@20240229
Claude 3.5 Sonnetclaude-3-5-sonnet-v2@20241022

Making requests

Before running requests you may need to run gcloud auth application-default login to authenticate with GCP.

The following examples shows how to generate text from Claude 3 Haiku on Vertex AI:

See our client SDKs and the official Vertex AI docs for more details.