Claude not available in your country: 185 places qualify, and 3 checks decide

Why does Claude say it is not available in your country?

Claude says it isn't available in your country because Anthropic's location check put you outside its list. The error page says little more than "Claude is only available in certain regions right now." It asks you to contact support if that looks wrong. Do these three things first, in this order:

1. Open the policy list, not the help center list. The Supported Regions Policy is the one Anthropic's terms point to. The help center page "Where can I access Claude?", last updated 16 March 2026, still lacks all ten places added since, from Ethiopia to DR Congo.
2. If your country is listed, turn off whatever routes you abroad. A VPN left on, a work proxy or a hotel network in another country hands Anthropic a different country than the one you live in.
3. If your country is not listed, stop troubleshooting. No browser, reinstall or cache clear changes the answer. The legitimate options are in the last section.

We counted the same page in Wayback Machine snapshots. The Claude.ai list held 97 places on 10 May 2024 and 172 on 16 May, two days after Anthropic opened Claude.ai in Europe on 14 May 2024. It reached 175 by August 2024. It stayed there for 20 months. Then nine places (Central African Republic, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya, Mali, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan) appeared between the 22 April and 1 May 2026 snapshots. DR Congo followed between 21 and 22 September 2026, and the chart plots it on 22 September, the first snapshot that shows it. A refusal from last year says little about this year.

Which countries is Claude not available in?

Claude isn't available in 11 of the 193 UN member states, plus Hong Kong, Macau and five regions of Ukraine, going by Anthropic's list as of October 2026. The API list and the Claude.ai list match entry for entry. A developer and a chat user in the same country get the same answer. The second column says whether US law forbids the export outright. The third says whether OpenAI's API country list, 208 entries when we counted it on 3 October 2026, takes you instead.

Only Cuba, Iran, North Korea and three of the Ukrainian regions sit under a full US embargo. Anthropic's Consumer Terms bar access from "U.S. embargoed countries" in a separate clause. Syria shows how slowly the list follows the law. The US revoked its Syria program with Executive Order 14312 on 30 June 2025, and Syria was still absent 15 months later. Ukraine's exclusion grew instead. Snapshots through September 2025 name Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk. By 16 December 2025 Anthropic had added Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

The other seven are Anthropic's own call. The company has spelled out one part. Since 4 September 2025 Anthropic also refuses "entities that are more than 50% owned, directly or indirectly, by companies headquartered in unsupported regions." Under that rule a Singapore subsidiary of a Chinese parent is refused even though Singapore is on the list.

Claude checks three things: your location, your phone number, then your card

Claude checks where you're physically located. Then it reads the country and line type of the phone number you verify with. On a paid plan it also checks the billing address of your payment method. Anthropic's phone verification article puts the first rule plainly: "Only users physically located in one of our supported locations can create and use Claude accounts."

The phone row carries the strictest limits: three accounts per number, no way to skip the step, and no way to change the number once verified. If checkout is the step that fails, the cause is often your bank, not your country. The guide on why AI subscription cards get declined sorts the decline codes into the ones you can fix.

Two other products hit the same list with their own error text. Claude Code prints a note that it might not be available in your country. It links to the same policy page, because it runs on a Claude plan or the API. On Amazon Bedrock, AWS runs its own check. The top result for this query on 3 October 2026 was an AWS re:Post thread titled with the error "This offer is not available to accept in this country or it is not targeted to the caller account."

Can you use a VPN to get Claude?

Using a VPN to reach Claude from an unlisted country breaks Anthropic's terms, so we won't walk you through it. Section 3 of the Consumer Terms, effective 8 October 2025, lets you use the services "only in compliance with our Terms", and names the Supported Regions Policy as part of those terms. In an embargoed country it stops being a contract question. The same terms forbid providing access into "U.S. embargoed countries", and that's export law.

The terms also close the side door. Anthropic's Commercial Terms, effective 17 June 2025, say in section D.2 that a customer "and its Users may only use the Services in compliance with these Terms", including the Supported Regions Policy. Apps that reach Claude through Anthropic's API, or through a reseller such as OpenRouter, sit under the same Commercial Terms. Their users are held to the same 185 entries. A third party app changes the checkout. The rulebook stays Anthropic's.

The practical case is weak too. A Claude account still needs a number from a listed country that can receive texts. That number stays tied to the account for good. A number rented for one code can be reissued to a stranger. The stranger then holds the number your account trusts.

My country is on the list, so why is Claude still blocked?

If your country is on the list and Claude still refuses you, the cause is almost always your network, your phone number or an outdated copy of the list. Autocomplete for this query suggests Japan, Pakistan and the Philippines as blocked countries. All three are on Anthropic's list as of October 2026.

• Your network exits somewhere else. A VPN or a company proxy can present an address in another country. Because the rule is where you are physically located, a trip matters too: under that rule an account made in London is not for use in Hong Kong.
• Your number fails the phone rules. "Error sending code. Double check your phone number." means Anthropic could not text that number, and its help center says to try a different one. A number already tied to three Claude accounts is refused as well.
• You read the help center list. If you are in Ethiopia, Sudan, Libya or DR Congo, the 16 March 2026 help page says no while the policy page says yes. The policy page governs.

If all three check out, follow the error page's own advice. Contact support from a listed country and say which step failed.

What still works when Claude is not available where you are?

Three options are legitimate: another assistant whose country list includes you, a model you run on your own hardware, or waiting for Anthropic's list to grow. In Afghanistan, Myanmar and Yemen, OpenAI's list includes you as of October 2026 and Anthropic's doesn't. That makes ChatGPT the nearest substitute, and ChatGPT not available in your country covers OpenAI's rules and Google's Gemini list. In China, Hong Kong, Macau, Russia and Belarus, OpenAI is absent too. There, assistants built by Chinese companies such as DeepSeek, Qwen and Kimi set their own rules, and Claude vs DeepSeek compares the closest one to Claude. Open weight models you download and run locally have no country check at all. They do need a capable GPU.

Waiting is a real strategy in the eight unlisted countries with no full US embargo, Syria included. Ten places were added in 2026 alone, and none of them made the help center page.

Whizi isn't one of the workarounds. A message sent to Claude in Whizi goes through OpenRouter and reaches Anthropic. Anthropic's Commercial Terms hold apps that resell Claude, and their users, to the same list. Whizi fits inside a listed country, for someone who wants Claude Sonnet next to GPT and Gemini on one Pro plan instead of three subscriptions, as set out in using Claude in Whizi.

Listed and blocked? Fix your network or your number. Not listed? Pick the assistant whose list includes you.