How to Use Multiple Claude Code Accounts (Work & Personal)

• LLMs
• AI
• Setup

At work, we were provided with a generous Anthropic plan to use, it was my first experience with Claude Code, and it was terrific. So I had to get my own account for my projects.

Switching between the accounts was not only tedious, I also lost the entire conversation history between sessions which was frustrating.

Digging online, I found that Claude Code uses the default directory ~/.claude for configuration, where conversation history is stored, which is naturally cleared on log out.

I also found out the flag CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR that we can use to change the default directory. Documentation explains it as:

Customize where Claude Code stores its configuration and data files

The Setup

I tested the setup below on Ubuntu and macOS, and it worked just fine on both. Windows users, you’re on your own.

Create a directory for each account, in my case I needed two:

mkdir ~/.claude-work ~/.claude-personal

Add these aliases to your shell configuration (.bashrc or .zshrc, etc.):

# Claude Code
alias cc-work='CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR=$HOME/.claude-work claude'
alias cc-personal='CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR=$HOME/.claude-personal claude'

Authenticate each account and follow through the steps:

cc-work

cc-personal

And voilà, the setup is complete.