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Overview

Using Multiple Claude Accounts in Claude Code

One laptop, two Claude accounts. Point Claude Code at separate config directories so your work seat and personal subscription never collide, and stay inside Anthropic's policy while you do it.

If you have a Claude account through work and your own personal subscription, you've probably hit the annoying part: Claude Code stores one login at a time. Switching means logging out of one account and back into the other, which also throws away that account's history, project memory, and settings. Do it twice a day and it gets old fast.

There's a clean fix that needs no extra tooling. Claude Code keeps each account's state (login, history, project data, and settings) tied to a single config directory, and you can change which directory it uses with the CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR environment variable. Give each account its own directory and the two installs stop knowing about each other entirely.

The mechanism

By default Claude Code keeps everything under ~/.claude. Set CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR to a different path and it reads and writes there instead:

  • separate credentials, so each account stays logged in independently
  • separate history.jsonl, so your work and personal conversations don't mix
  • separate projects/, sessions/, settings.json, and plugins

Two directories, two fully isolated accounts, one machine.

One nuance on storage: on macOS the login itself lives in the encrypted Keychain rather than inside the config directory, while on Linux and Windows it sits in a .credentials.json file within the directory. Either way, each CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR keeps its own login, so the accounts stay isolated.

The setup

Add two aliases to your shell config. On zsh that's ~/.zshrc:

alias claude-personal="CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR=~/.claude-personal claude"
alias claude-work="CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR=~/.claude-work claude"

On bash, put the same two lines in ~/.bashrc. Reload your shell (source ~/.zshrc) and the commands are ready.

The config directories don't need to exist beforehand; Claude Code creates them on first run. The first time you launch each alias, run /login and sign in with the matching account:

claude-work      # then /login with your work account
claude-personal  # then /login with your personal account

After that, each alias remembers its own login.

On Windows

The syntax above is zsh/bash, so it works as-is in Git Bash or WSL. In native PowerShell, use functions instead and add them to your profile ($PROFILE):

function claude-personal { $env:CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR = "$HOME\.claude-personal"; claude @args }
function claude-work     { $env:CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR = "$HOME\.claude-work";     claude @args }

Reload with . $PROFILE, then run /login once per command, just like above.

Daily use

Use the alias that matches the repo you're in:

cd ~/work/some-service && claude-work
cd ~/projects/side-thing && claude-personal

Each keeps its own authentication, history, and project memory, so context never leaks across the boundary. If you want it automatic, you can even wrap these in a directory-aware shell function, but the two aliases cover the common case.

Further reading

That's the whole technique: one environment variable, two aliases, two accounts that never step on each other.