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Deploying Claude Models in Microsoft Foundry

Overview

This guide provides comprehensive instructions for deploying and using Anthropic's Claude models in Microsoft Foundry. Claude models are frontier AI models useful for complex tasks such as coding, agents, financial analysis, research, and office tasks.

Microsoft Foundry supports the following Claude models through Global Standard deployment:

Model Description Context Window Max Output Input Types
Claude Opus 4.5 Most intelligent model, industry leader for coding, agents, and enterprise workflows 200K tokens 64K tokens Text, Image, Code
Claude Sonnet 4.5 Balanced performance and cost, ideal for production workflows 200K tokens 64K tokens Text, Image, Code
Claude Haiku 4.5 Speed and cost optimization, high-volume processing 200K tokens 64K tokens Text, Image
Claude Opus 4.1 Industry leader for coding, sustained performance on long-running tasks 200K tokens 32K tokens Text, Image, Code

Note: All Claude models support tool calling (file search and code execution) and return responses in Text or JSON formats.

Supported Languages: English (en), French (fr), Arabic (ar), Chinese (zh), Japanese (ja), Korean (ko), Spanish (es), Hindi (hi)

Prerequisites

1. Subscription Requirements

Eligible Subscription Types

⚠️ Important: Only Enterprise Agreement (EA) and Microsoft Customer Agreement - Enterprise (MCA-E) subscriptions are eligible for Claude model usage in Microsoft Foundry.

Restricted Subscription Types

The following subscription types cannot deploy Claude models:

  • Cloud Solution Providers (CSP)
  • Sponsored accounts with Azure credits
  • Enterprise accounts in Singapore and South Korea
  • Microsoft accounts (personal)
  • Standard Pay-As-You-Go (without EA/MCA-E)

Billing Account Country/Region

Your Azure subscription must have a billing account in a Microsoft Managed Country/Region, excluding Belarus and Russia.

2. Regional Availability

Claude models are available for deployment in the following regions:

Region Deployment Support Fine-tuning Support
East US 2 ✅ Yes ❌ Not available
Sweden Central ✅ Yes ❌ Not available

Important: Claude models use the Global Standard deployment type. Your Microsoft Foundry project or hub must be created in one of these supported regions to deploy the model. However, once deployed, you can consume the endpoint from infrastructure in other regions.

For alternatives if your infrastructure is in a different region, see Consume serverless APIs from a different hub or project.

3. Azure Marketplace Access

Claude models are partner models that require Azure Marketplace access. You must:

  1. Have Azure Marketplace purchases enabled at the billing level
  2. Have proper permissions to subscribe to marketplace offerings

4. Required Permissions (RBAC)

Your user account must have one of the following roles:

  • Owner
  • Contributor
  • Azure AI Developer

Or a custom role with these specific permissions:

Subscription-level permissions (for Marketplace subscription):

Microsoft.MarketplaceOrdering/agreements/offers/plans/read
Microsoft.MarketplaceOrdering/agreements/offers/plans/sign/action
Microsoft.MarketplaceOrdering/offerTypes/publishers/offers/plans/agreements/read
Microsoft.Marketplace/offerTypes/publishers/offers/plans/agreements/read
Microsoft.SaaS/register/action

Resource Group-level permissions (for SaaS resource):

Microsoft.SaaS/resources/read
Microsoft.SaaS/resources/write

Workspace-level permissions (for deployment):

Microsoft.MachineLearningServices/workspaces/marketplaceModelSubscriptions/*
Microsoft.MachineLearningServices/workspaces/serverlessEndpoints/*

Step 1: Enable Azure Marketplace Purchases

For Enterprise Agreement (EA) Subscriptions

  1. Sign in to the Azure Portal
  2. Navigate to Cost Management + Billing
  3. Select Billing scopes in the left menu
  4. Select your billing account scope
  5. Select Policies in the left menu
  6. Under Azure Marketplace, set the policy to On
  7. Click Save

Note: Only an Enterprise Administrator can enable this setting. Read-only Enterprise Administrators cannot modify this policy.

For MCA-E Subscriptions

  1. Sign in to the Azure Portal
  2. Navigate to Cost Management + Billing
  3. Select Billing scopes in the left menu
  4. Select the appropriate billing account scope
  5. Select Billing profile in the left menu
  6. Select Policies in the left menu
  7. Set the Azure Marketplace policy to On (Free + Paid)
  8. Click Save

Note: Billing Account Owner/Contributor or Billing Profile Owner/Contributor can enable this setting.

Step 2: Register Marketplace Resource Providers

Ensure your subscription has the required resource providers registered:

  1. Go to Subscriptions in the Azure Portal
  2. Select your subscription
  3. Select Resource providers in the left menu
  4. Filter by "marketplace"
  5. Ensure the following providers are Registered:
  6. Microsoft.Marketplace
  7. Microsoft.MarketplaceOrdering
  8. Microsoft.SaaS

If any are not registered, select them and click Register.

Step 3: Create a Microsoft Foundry Project

  1. Navigate to Microsoft Foundry Portal
  2. Create a new project in one of the supported regions:
  3. East US 2
  4. Sweden Central
  5. Ensure the project has appropriate permissions configured

Step 4: Deploy a Claude Model

Using the Foundry Portal

  1. Navigate to your Microsoft Foundry project
  2. Go to Model catalog or Deployments
  3. Search for Claude models (e.g., "Claude Sonnet 4.5")
  4. Select the model you want to deploy
  5. Click Deploy
  6. Choose Global Standard deployment type
  7. Provide a deployment name
  8. Review and confirm the deployment

Deployment Types

Claude models use Global Standard deployment, which: - Provides serverless API access - Uses pay-as-you-go billing - Does not require dedicated compute resources - Routes requests globally for optimal performance

Step 5: Verify Quota Allocation

Default Quota Limits

Model Default RPM Default TPM EA/MCA-E RPM EA/MCA-E TPM
claude-haiku-4-5 0 0 4,000 4,000,000
claude-opus-4-1 0 0 2,000 2,000,000
claude-sonnet-4-5 0 0 4,000 2,000,000
claude-opus-4-5 0 0 2,000 2,000,000

Note: Non-EA/MCA-E subscriptions receive 0 quota by default.

Viewing Quota

  1. Go to Microsoft Foundry Portal
  2. Navigate to Management > Quota
  3. Select your subscription and region
  4. View available quota for Claude models

Requesting Quota Increase

If you need additional quota beyond default limits:

  1. Submit a request through the Quota Increase Request Form
  2. Provide your subscription ID, region, and requested quota
  3. Wait for approval (priority given to customers with existing usage)

Working with Claude Models

Authentication Methods

Claude models support two authentication methods:

  1. Microsoft Entra ID (Recommended) - Keyless authentication
  2. API Key - Traditional key-based authentication

Endpoint Format

Base URL: https://<resource-name>.services.ai.azure.com/anthropic
Messages API: https://<resource-name>.services.ai.azure.com/anthropic/v1/messages

Python SDK Example (Entra ID Authentication)

from anthropic import AnthropicFoundry
from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential, get_bearer_token_provider

# Configuration
base_url = "https://<resource-name>.services.ai.azure.com/anthropic"
deployment_name = "claude-sonnet-4-5"

# Create token provider for Entra ID authentication
token_provider = get_bearer_token_provider(
    DefaultAzureCredential(), 
    "https://cognitiveservices.azure.com/.default"
)

# Create client
client = AnthropicFoundry(
    azure_ad_token_provider=token_provider,
    base_url=base_url
)

# Send request
message = client.messages.create(
    model=deployment_name,
    messages=[
        {"role": "user", "content": "What is the capital of France?"}
    ],
    max_tokens=1024,
)

print(message.content)

Python SDK Example (API Key Authentication)

from anthropic import AnthropicFoundry

# Configuration
base_url = "https://<resource-name>.services.ai.azure.com/anthropic"
deployment_name = "claude-sonnet-4-5"
api_key = "YOUR_API_KEY"

# Create client
client = AnthropicFoundry(
    api_key=api_key,
    base_url=base_url
)

# Send request
message = client.messages.create(
    model=deployment_name,
    messages=[
        {"role": "user", "content": "What is the capital of France?"}
    ],
    max_tokens=1024,
)

print(message.content)

JavaScript SDK Example

import AnthropicFoundry from '@anthropic-ai/foundry-sdk';
import { getBearerTokenProvider, DefaultAzureCredential } from "@azure/identity";

const baseURL = "https://<resource-name>.services.ai.azure.com/anthropic";
const deploymentName = "claude-sonnet-4-5";

// Create token provider for Entra ID authentication
const tokenProvider = getBearerTokenProvider(
    new DefaultAzureCredential(),
    'https://cognitiveservices.azure.com/.default'
);

// Create client
const client = new AnthropicFoundry({
    azureADTokenProvider: tokenProvider,
    baseURL: baseURL,
    apiVersion: "2023-06-01"
});

// Send request
const message = await client.messages.create({
    model: deploymentName,
    messages: [{ role: "user", content: "What is the capital of France?" }],
    max_tokens: 1024,
});

console.log(message);

REST API Example (cURL)

# Set environment variables
export AZURE_API_KEY="<your-api-key>"
export RESOURCE_NAME="<your-resource-name>"

# Make request
curl -X POST "https://${RESOURCE_NAME}.services.ai.azure.com/anthropic/v1/messages" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-api-key: ${AZURE_API_KEY}" \
  -H "anthropic-version: 2023-06-01" \
  -d '{
    "messages": [
      {"role": "user", "content": "What is the capital of France?"}
    ],
    "max_tokens": 1024,
    "model": "claude-sonnet-4-5"
  }'

Claude Model Capabilities

Core Capabilities

Capability Description
Extended Thinking Enhanced reasoning for complex tasks
Image & Text Input Process images and return text outputs (vision capabilities for charts, graphs, diagrams)
Code Generation Analysis, generation, and debugging (Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Claude Opus models)
Extended Context Window Up to 1 million tokens available as an advanced capability (standard is 200K)
PDF Support Process and analyze text and visual content from PDF documents
Prompt Caching Reduce costs and latency with explicit prompt caching
Citations Ground responses in source documents
Context Editing Automatically manage conversation context with configurable strategies
Agent Skills Extend Claude's capabilities with custom Skills

Tools Support

Tool Description
MCP Connector Connect to remote MCP servers directly from the Messages API without a separate MCP client
Memory Store and retrieve information across conversations; build knowledge bases over time, maintain project context, and learn from past interactions
Web Fetch Retrieve full content from specified web pages and PDF documents for in-depth analysis
File Search Search through uploaded files and documents
Code Execution Execute code as part of tool calling workflows

Note: For a full list of supported capabilities and tools, see Claude's features overview.

Troubleshooting

Common Issues and Solutions

Issue Cause Solution
0 quota allocated Non-EA/MCA-E subscription Verify subscription type is EA or MCA-E
Marketplace subscription failed Marketplace not enabled Enable Azure Marketplace at billing level
Permission denied Missing RBAC permissions Assign Owner/Contributor/Azure AI Developer role
Region not available Project in unsupported region Create project in East US 2 or Sweden Central
429 Rate Limit Exceeded TPM/RPM limits Implement retry logic with exponential backoff
Resource providers not registered Missing Marketplace providers Register Microsoft.Marketplace, Microsoft.MarketplaceOrdering, Microsoft.SaaS
Cannot access model catalog Project not in supported region Create a new project in East US 2 or Sweden Central

Verifying Subscription Type

  1. Go to Azure Portal > Cost Management + Billing
  2. Select Billing scopes
  3. Review your billing account type:
  4. Enterprise Agreement = EA
  5. Microsoft Customer Agreement = Check if MCA-E

Common Error Messages

For subscription-related errors, see Common error messages and solutions.

Best Practices

Model Selection

Use Case Recommended Model Key Strengths
Complex coding, agents, computer use, enterprise workflows Claude Opus 4.5 Most intelligent, 64K output
Production workflows, real-world agents, balanced performance/cost Claude Sonnet 4.5 Best balance of capability and speed
High-volume processing, cost optimization, scaled sub-agents Claude Haiku 4.5 Near-frontier performance, best speed/cost
Long-running coding tasks, complex reasoning Claude Opus 4.1 Sustained performance, thousands of steps

Rate Limit Best Practices

  1. Implement retry logic: Handle 429 responses with exponential backoff
  2. Batch requests: Combine multiple prompts when possible
  3. Monitor usage: Track token consumption and request patterns
  4. Use prompt caching: Enable explicit prompt caching for repeated contexts

Security Best Practices

  1. Use Entra ID authentication over API keys when possible
  2. Store API keys securely in Azure Key Vault
  3. Implement proper RBAC with least privilege
  4. Enable diagnostic logging for monitoring

Cost Optimization

  1. Choose appropriate models: Use Haiku for simple tasks, Opus for complex ones
  2. Monitor token usage: Track input/output tokens
  3. Use prompt caching: Reduce costs for repeated contexts
  4. Batch requests: Combine when possible

Responsible AI Considerations

When using Claude models:

  1. Content Filtering: Microsoft Foundry does not provide built-in content filtering for Claude models at deployment time. Configure AI content safety during model inference.

  2. Acceptable Use: Ensure applications comply with Anthropic's Acceptable Use Policy.

  3. Safety Evaluations: Review model safety cards:

  4. Claude Opus 4.5 System Card
  5. Claude Sonnet 4.5 System Card
  6. Claude Haiku 4.5 System Card
  7. Claude Opus 4.1 System Card

Agent Integration

Microsoft Agent Framework

The Microsoft Agent Framework supports creating agents that use Claude models.

# Python example
pip install agent-framework-anthropic --pre

from agent_framework.anthropic import AnthropicClient

Claude Agent SDK

Build custom AI agents with the Claude Agent SDK.

References

Official Microsoft Documentation

  1. Deploy and use Claude models in Microsoft Foundry

  2. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-foundry/foundry-models/how-to/use-foundry-models-claude?view=foundry-classic

  3. Region availability for models in serverless APIs

  4. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-foundry/how-to/deploy-models-serverless-availability?view=foundry-classic

  5. Deploy models as serverless API deployments

  6. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-foundry/how-to/deploy-models-serverless?view=foundry-classic

  7. Configure Marketplace access for model deployments

  8. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-foundry/foundry-models/how-to/configure-marketplace?view=foundry-classic

  9. Azure OpenAI in Microsoft Foundry Models quotas and limits

  10. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-foundry/openai/quotas-limits?view=foundry-classic

  11. Manage Azure OpenAI quota

  12. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-foundry/openai/how-to/quota?view=foundry-classic

  13. Enable marketplace purchases in Azure

  14. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/manage/enable-marketplace-purchases

  15. Purchase control options in Microsoft Marketplace

  16. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/purchase-control-options

  17. Role-based access control in Foundry portal

  18. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-foundry/concepts/rbac-foundry?view=foundry-classic

  19. Microsoft Managed Countries/Regions for Marketplace

    • https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/partner-center/marketplace/tax-details-marketplace#microsoft-managed-countriesregions

Anthropic Documentation

  1. Claude API Documentation

    • https://docs.claude.com/en/api/messages

  2. Anthropic SDK (Python)

    • https://github.com/anthropics/anthropic-sdk-python

  3. Anthropic SDK (TypeScript)

    • https://github.com/anthropics/anthropic-sdk-typescript

  4. Claude Agent SDK

    • https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/agent-sdk/overview

  5. Anthropic Acceptable Use Policy

    • https://www.anthropic.com/legal/aup

Additional Resources

  1. Quota Increase Request Form

    • https://aka.ms/oai/stuquotarequest

  2. Microsoft Foundry Portal

    • https://ai.azure.com

  3. Common Marketplace error messages and solutions

    • https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/purchase-saas-offer-in-azure-portal#common-error-messages-and-solutions

  4. Microsoft Agent Framework - Anthropic Agents

    • https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/agent-framework/user-guide/agents/agent-types/anthropic-agent

  5. Foundry Models from partners and community (Claude capabilities)

    • https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-foundry/foundry-models/concepts/models-from-partners?view=foundry-classic#anthropic

  6. Microsoft Foundry feature availability across cloud regions

    • https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-foundry/reference/region-support?view=foundry-classic

  7. Consume serverless APIs from a different hub or project

    • https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-foundry/how-to/deploy-models-serverless-connect?view=foundry-classic

  8. Claude's features overview (Anthropic)

    • https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/overview

  9. Prompt Caching documentation (Anthropic)

    • https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/build-with-claude/prompt-caching

Document Information

Field Value
Last Updated January 2026
Applies To Microsoft Foundry (Classic and New portals)
Models Covered Claude Opus 4.5, Claude Sonnet 4.5, Claude Haiku 4.5, Claude Opus 4.1

Changelog

Date Change
January 2026 Initial documentation created