Y'AKASHA · Getting started

Y'AKASHA Getting Started Guide

Everything you need to go from sign-up to your first translation. The step that takes the longest is getting your Anthropic API key, so we've broken it down into small steps.

Time needed: about 15–20 minutes

The four steps

  1. Create your Y'AKASHA account
  2. Get an Anthropic API key (the main step)
  3. Register the key in Y'AKASHA
  4. Start translating
STEP 1

Create your Y'AKASHA account

This works like signing up for any other web service.

  1. Go to app.y-akasha.com/signup
  2. Sign up with your email address and a password, or click Sign up with Google
  3. Your free trial starts as soon as you sign up: 30 days if you sign up by December 31, 2026 (Japan time), or 14 days if you sign up on or after January 1, 2027
Good to know: Even during the free trial, the AI processing for each translation is billed to your own Anthropic account (Step 2), so you'll need an API key before your first translation.
STEP 2

Get an Anthropic API key

Y'AKASHA uses a "BYOK" (Bring Your Own Key) model. The translation itself is done by Claude, an AI made by Anthropic. Anthropic bills that usage directly to your own Anthropic account, separately from Y'AKASHA's $10/month fee (see How much does it cost?). It takes a few minutes to set up, but you only need to do it once.

A Claude Pro or Max subscription is not the same thing. Paid Claude plans (claude.ai) and the API (Claude Console) are separate products with separate billing. Even if you already pay for Claude Pro or Max, you still need to buy API credits in the Claude Console. Your subscription can't be used in Y'AKASHA.

2-1. Create a Claude Console account

  1. Go to platform.claude.com. This is Anthropic's developer site, called the Claude Console. The old address, console.anthropic.com, redirects here.
  2. Click Continue with Google, or enter your email address and click Continue with email
  3. Follow the on-screen prompts to verify your email and enter your name and a few details about your organization and how you plan to use the API. You can sign up as an individual.
Claude Console sign-in screen with Continue with Google and Continue with email buttons
The Claude Console sign-in screen (platform.claude.com)

The Anthropic API is available in both Taiwan and Singapore (Anthropic's supported regions list).

2-2. Buy credits (prepaid)

API usage is paid for from a prepaid credit balance. Once your balance runs out, translations stop until you add more.

  1. Open Billing in Settings (direct link: platform.claude.com/settings/billing)
  2. Click Buy credits
  3. Choose an amount. The minimum is $5 ($5 / $20 / $100 presets, or Other). For a first purchase, the Recommended $20 is plenty for trying Y'AKASHA.
  4. Enter your credit card and click Buy $20 of credits (the button shows the amount you chose). Credits are available right away.
  • Prices are in US dollars. Depending on your billing address, an Estimated tax line may be added to the total.
  • Credits expire one year after purchase and are non-refundable, so start small.
  • Manage auto-reload lets you top up automatically when your balance falls below a set amount. It's convenient, but we recommend leaving it off until you know your usual monthly spend.
  • If you pay with a card issued outside the US, your card company may charge a foreign transaction fee.

2-3. Set a monthly spend limit (recommended)

  1. On the same Billing page, find Spend limits and click Adjust limit
  2. Enter a monthly amount you're comfortable with (for example, $30–$50 to start) and click Update limit
  3. Under Email notifications, click Edit to get an email when your spending gets close to the limit
Double protection: Y'AKASHA also has its own safety cap that stops a single job if its cost runs unusually high. A limit on the Anthropic side protects everything else that uses your key. If you reach the limit, translations stop until the next month (resets at 00:00 UTC on the 1st) or until you raise the limit.

2-4. Create an API key

  1. Open API keys in Settings (platform.claude.com/settings/keys) and click Create key
  2. On the first screen, click Continue with an API key
  3. Name: anything you'll recognize, such as y-akasha
  4. Expires: set it to Never. The default is 30 days, and translation stops when the key expires. The spend limit from 2-3 keeps your costs under control.
    If you do set an expiry date, enter that date when you register the key in Y'AKASHA, and Y'AKASHA will remind you before the key expires.
  5. Linked account: leave it set to yourself
  6. Scope: choose Default workspace (not Organization)
  7. Click Create key and copy the key that appears. It starts with sk-ant-.
Important: The full key is shown only once. Copy it before you close the window. If you lose it, you can't view it again; you'll need to create a new one.
Keep your key private. Anyone who has your key can use your credits. Don't paste it into email, chat, or shared documents, and don't send it to Y'AKASHA support either. If you think it has leaked, delete it right away from the API keys page (⋯ menu next to the key) and create a new one.
STEP 3

Register the key in Y'AKASHA

Paste the key you copied into Y'AKASHA and you're done.

  1. Log in to Y'AKASHA and open Account Settings in the left menu (also available from your avatar in the top right). The Account & Billing Settings page opens.
  2. In the Anthropic API Key section, click Register API Key
  3. Paste your key (sk-ant-...) into the Anthropic API Key field and click Save
  4. When you see Registered and the last four characters of your key, you're all set
The Anthropic API Key section with the Register API Key button
The Anthropic API Key section on the Account & Billing Settings page
Register API Key dialog with the Anthropic API Key field and Cancel and Save buttons
The key entry dialog (it's titled "Change API Key" if you're replacing an existing key)
How your key is protected: When you save, Y'AKASHA first checks with Anthropic that the key is valid. It's then encrypted using Google Cloud Key Management Service (KMS) before it's stored. Y'AKASHA staff can't read the full key from the database, and the screen only ever shows the last four characters. The key is decrypted only at the moment a translation runs.
STEP 4

Start translating

You're ready. Click New Job, upload a file (DOCX / XLSX / PPTX), choose the source and target languages, and click Start Translation. The rest of the app should feel straightforward.

COST

How much does it cost?

There are two separate charges: Y'AKASHA's flat fee, and the Anthropic API usage billed to your own Anthropic account.

Y'AKASHA
$10/month

Flat fee after the free trial. Unlimited translation; no per-word charges from Y'AKASHA.

Anthropic API (estimate)
≈ $2/1,000 words

Around $2 per 1,000 words (varies depending on the document and how much terminology research is needed). Measured median: $2.04; middle 50% of jobs: $1.77–$2.85.

Where the estimate comes from

  • Measured from Y'AKASHA translation jobs completed in September–October 2026: 8 English source documents of 300–850 words each (mostly English to Japanese). Each of these cost between $0.63 and $2.67 in API usage, with a median of $1.47 per document.
  • Example: translating 10,000 English words a month would cost roughly $18–$29 in API usage, plus $10 for Y'AKASHA.
  • For Chinese or Japanese source documents, we don't have enough measured data yet to give a separate figure. Please check your actual spending in the Anthropic Console (see "How do I check my costs?" below).

What makes it cost more or less

  • Document length: Every job has a fixed setup cost, so very short documents cost more per word. In our data, a slide deck of about 50 words cost $0.19–$0.33.
  • Terminology research: Y'AKASHA looks up and verifies specialized terms on the web. Documents full of technical or industry terms cost more; in our sample, web searches made up about 19% of the cost.
  • Language pair: The figures above are mostly English to Japanese. Other pairs may differ.

Anthropic's per-token prices are listed on its pricing page. To see what you've actually spent, see "How do I check my costs?" below.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

I lost my API key. What should I do?

Anthropic can't show a key again after it's created. Create a new key (Step 2-4), then in Y'AKASHA open Account & Billing Settings, click Change in the Anthropic API Key section, and save the new key. Finally, delete the old key on the Claude Console API keys page if nothing else uses it.

My translation failed with a credit balance error.

Your Anthropic credit balance has run out. When that happens, Anthropic stops accepting requests, and Y'AKASHA marks the job as failed and emails you. Go to Billing → Buy credits in the Claude Console to add credits (or turn on auto-reload), then upload the file again and create a new job.

The same thing happens if you hit the monthly spend limit you set in 2-3. In that case, raise the limit with Adjust limit.

How do I check my costs?

In the Claude Console:

  • Cost (under Analytics in the left menu): spending by day and by model
  • API keys: the Cost column shows how much each key has used, which is handy if you use a separate key for Y'AKASHA
  • Billing: your current credit balance and invoice history
Can I use the same key in other tools?

Technically yes, but we recommend creating a separate key for each tool. Then you can see each tool's spending in the key's Cost column, and if one key leaks you can delete just that key without breaking your other tools. All keys draw on the same credit balance and spend limit.

Will my documents be used to train AI models?

No, not by default. According to Anthropic, "By default, we will not use your inputs or outputs from our commercial products (e.g. Claude for Work, Anthropic API, Claude Gov, etc.) to train our models." Y'AKASHA uses the Anthropic API. Anthropic also deletes API inputs and outputs on its backend within 30 days by default.

Sources: Is my data used for model training? / How long do you store my organization's data? (Anthropic Privacy Center). For how Y'AKASHA itself handles your files, see our Privacy Policy.

Can several people in our company share one key?

Anthropic advises against sharing a key between people. The cleaner setup is to have your company's Claude Console admin invite each translator to the same Anthropic organization, so each person creates their own key. Billing stays in one place, and the API keys page shows each person's spending.

On the Y'AKASHA side, a key that's already registered to another Y'AKASHA account can't be registered to an account that's still in its free trial (the free trial is one per person); it can be used once that account is on the paid plan. For team use or invoice billing, please contact us.