Claude Free vs Pro vs Max vs Team (2026): Which Plan Unlocks What
Every Claude plan compared as of September 2026: prices, usage tiers, and which plan unlocks Claude Code, Cowork, Design, Excel, Chrome, projects, and models.
As of September 2026: Free is $0, Pro is $20/month ($17 annual), Max is $100 (5x Pro) or $200 (20x), Team is $25 or $20 annual per Standard seat and $125 or $100 per Premium seat, Enterprise is $20 per seat plus API-rate usage. Every paid plan includes Claude Code, Cowork, Design, Chrome, and Excel; Free gets chat, skills, connectors, and memory.
Key takeaways
- Every paid tier unlocks the same products (Claude Code, Cowork, Design, Chrome, Microsoft 365); you pay more for usage, priority access, and admin features.
- Free includes web search, skills (with custom uploads), MCP connectors, memory, and file creation; it lacks Claude Code, Cowork, Design, unlimited Projects, and Opus.
- Usage is one shared pool on a rolling five-hour window, with weekly caps on paid plans; chat, Claude Code, Cowork, and Design all draw from it, Cowork hardest.
- Pro is $20/month or $17/month billed annually ($200 up front); Max is $100 for 5x Pro usage or $200 for 20x, monthly only, as of September 2026.
- Team seats: $25 or $20 annual (Standard), $125 or $100 annual (Premium, 5x usage), for 2 to 150 people; Enterprise is $20 per seat plus API-rate usage.
- Models by tier: Free gets Sonnet and Haiku, paid plans add Opus, and Fable is usage-credit-only on Pro, capped on Max, absent on Team, included on Enterprise.
As of September 2026, Claude's plans are Free ($0), Pro ($20 per month, or $17 per month billed annually), Max ($100 per month for 5x Pro usage, $200 for 20x), Team ($25 or $20 per Standard seat, $125 or $100 per Premium seat), and Enterprise ($20 per seat plus usage at API rates). Every paid plan includes Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Claude Design, Claude in Chrome, and the Microsoft 365 add-ins; Free gets chat, skills, connectors, and memory but none of those products. What separates the paid tiers is mostly usage.
Last verified: September 2026. Every figure below was read from claude.com/pricing and Anthropic's support articles on September 10, 2026. Prices exclude tax and, in Anthropic's words, "are subject to change at Anthropic's discretion." This is the one page on AgentsCamp that states consumer plan prices; other guides link here rather than repeating them. For per-token API costs, see LLM API pricing in 2026.
The plans at a glance
| Plan | Price (as of September 2026) | Built for |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Trying Claude; occasional questions |
| Pro | $20/month, or $17/month billed annually ($200 up front) | Everyday individual use |
| Max 5x | $100/month | Working with Claude through the day |
| Max 20x | $200/month | Heavy daily use and long sessions |
| Team, Standard seat | $25/seat/month, or $20 billed annually | Teams of 2 to 150 |
| Team, Premium seat | $125/seat/month, or $100 billed annually; 5x Standard usage | Power users inside a team |
| Enterprise | $20/seat/month plus usage at API rates; annual only | Large organizations |
Team lets you mix Standard and Premium seats. Enterprise can be bought self-serve (single seat type) or through sales, which adds invoicing, trials, and committed-spend incentives.
Feature matrix
Rows are the questions people actually ask: "which plan do I need for X?" Yes and No come from the comparison table on the pricing page; the notes come from the linked support articles.
| Feature | Free | Pro | Max | Team | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Usage | Limited | At least 5x Free per 5-hour session | 5x or 20x Pro | Standard: more than Pro; Premium: 5x Standard | Seat plus usage at API rates |
| Claude Code | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Claude Cowork | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes (owner can disable) |
| Claude Design (beta) | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes (off by default) |
| Claude for Excel and the Microsoft 365 add-ins | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Claude in Chrome | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Skills, including custom ZIP uploads | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes, plus org-wide deployment |
| Projects | Up to 5 per the help center (the pricing page lists Projects as paid) | Yes, unlimited | Yes | Yes, with sharing | Yes, with sharing |
| Connectors (Slack, Google Workspace, remote MCP) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes, plus admin controls | Yes, plus admin controls |
| Models | Sonnet, Haiku | Adds Opus; Fable via usage credits | Adds Opus; Fable up to 50% of weekly limits | Opus, Sonnet, Haiku; no Fable | Adds Fable |
| Context window | 200K | 200K | 200K | 200K | 500K on the default model |
| Memory | Yes, on by default | Yes, on by default | Yes, on by default | Yes, off by default for the org | Yes, off by default |
| Research | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Priority access at peak times | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SSO, central billing, no training on your content by default | No | No | No | Yes | Yes, plus SCIM, audit logs, role-based access, HIPAA-ready option |
Notes on the rows that trip people up:
- Usage is not a message count. Every plan has limits that reset on a rolling five-hour window, and paid plans add weekly caps. Chat, desktop, mobile, Claude Code, Cowork, and Design all draw from one pool, and Cowork tasks consume more than chat. When you hit a limit you can wait, upgrade, or (on paid plans) turn on usage credits billed at API rates. The pricing page also says Anthropic "may limit your usage in other ways" at its discretion.
- Claude Code is "included in all paid plans" and shares the plan's pool. Heavy coding sessions can switch to pay-as-you-go API credits through a Console account instead.
- Claude Design is in beta on Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise, counts against the same shared limits, and is off by default on Enterprise until an admin enables it.
- Claude for Excel is generally available on Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise; the Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook add-ins ship under the same "Claude for Microsoft 365" listing. Skills you enable in Claude settings apply inside the add-ins too.
- Skills work on the Free plan, including uploading your own as a ZIP. What Free lacks is Claude Code, Cowork, and Design, which is where skills do the most work. Start with What Are Claude Skills? and the agent skills glossary entry.
- Fable is Anthropic's top model. On Pro it is reachable only through usage credits; on Max it is capped at 50% of weekly limits; Team plans do not get it; Enterprise does. If a model's availability is unclear for your plan, check the plan page, then read Choosing the right Claude model for which one actually fits the task.
Which plan, by role
These are the plans we would pick for each role's typical workload. The Start here page has the full workflow for each.
Founder. Pro, until you hit limits. Cowork for the operational grind, Claude Code for the product, and the knowledge-work plugins for sales and finance. Move to Max 5x the first week you get rate-limited twice; move to Team the day you hire someone who needs a shared project and a single bill.
Marketer. Pro. The marketing plugin, Projects to hold brand guidelines and past campaigns, and Claude in Chrome for research on live pages. Max only if you run long Cowork campaign builds daily. Team once two people need the same project.
Designer. Pro for Claude Design, which is a paid-plan feature. Max if you iterate on prototypes all day, since Design draws from the same pool as everything else. Team when a design system should be shared across the org; on Enterprise, an admin has to turn Design on first.
Analyst. Pro, plus the Excel add-in and the data or finance plugin. If your warehouse is Snowflake, Databricks, or BigQuery, the plugin's connectors need credentials, and Team's admin controls for connectors make those easier to manage than personal accounts. Enterprise if you need the 500K context on the default model for very large documents.
Developer. Pro is enough to learn Claude Code; Max 5x is the realistic floor for daily agentic coding, and Max 20x if you run parallel sessions. Compare the monthly figure with what you would spend at API rates in LLM API pricing in 2026; usage credits let you top up without leaving the plan. Then install Claude Code.
Weighing Claude against the others
This page states Claude's prices only. If you are comparing against ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM), or Microsoft Copilot, each tool page describes that product's tiers and what they unlock. We do not restate their numbers here because they change on their own schedules, and a comparison table that is half stale is worse than none.
Before you pay
- Free is enough to test skills, connectors, memory, and how Claude reasons. It is not enough to test Cowork, Claude Code, or Design; none of those exist on Free.
- Annual Pro saves $40 a year against monthly. Annual billing is available for Pro and Team; Max is monthly only, and Enterprise is annual only.
- Upgrades apply immediately with unused time credited toward the new plan; downgrades take effect at the end of the billing period, and your chats, projects, and files stay with the account.
- Cancel at least 24 hours before renewal to avoid the next charge. Payments are generally non-refundable outside the consumer terms and local law, with a 14-day withdrawal window in the EEA and UK.
- If a feature is not in the table above, check the plan page. Anthropic's comparison table is long and changes without notice; this page is refreshed on a cadence, and the "Last verified" line at the top is the source of truth.
Sources and further reading
Primary documentation used to verify this guide.
- Claude pricing — Anthropic
- Choose a Claude plan — Anthropic
- Get started with Claude Cowork — Anthropic
- Get started with Claude Design — Anthropic
- Use Claude for Excel — Anthropic
- Get started with Claude in Chrome — Anthropic
- Use skills in Claude — Anthropic
- Claude release notes — Anthropic
Frequently asked questions
- How much does Claude Pro cost in 2026?
- As of September 2026, Claude Pro is $20 per month billed monthly, or $17 per month billed annually as a single $200 up-front payment. It includes everything in Free plus more usage, Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Claude Design, Claude Science, unlimited Projects, Research, access to more models, Claude in Chrome, and the Claude for Microsoft 365 add-ins.
- What is the difference between Claude Max 5x and Max 20x?
- Usage. Both cost more than Pro and are billed monthly: Max 5x is $100 per month for five times Pro's usage per five-hour session, and Max 20x is $200 per month for twenty times. Both add higher output limits, early access to advanced features, and priority access at high-traffic times. The products included are the same as Pro.
- Does the Free plan include Claude Code or Cowork?
- No. Claude Code is included in all paid plans and shares the plan's usage pool; Cowork is available on Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise. Free does include web search, file creation, skills, connectors, memory, and extended thinking, so it is a fair way to test how Claude reasons before paying.
- What do Claude Team seats cost and what is a Premium seat?
- As of September 2026, a Standard seat is $25 per month or $20 per month billed annually, and a Premium seat is $125 per month or $100 billed annually. Premium seats get five times the usage of Standard seats. Team is for 2 to 150 people, lets you mix seat types, and adds SSO, central billing, admin controls for connectors, project sharing, and no model training on your content by default.
- Which plan should I pick if I mostly use Claude Code?
- Pro is enough to learn it and for occasional sessions. For daily agentic coding, Max 5x is the realistic floor because Claude Code draws from the same pool as everything else, and Max 20x suits parallel sessions. Paid plans can also turn on usage credits at API rates, or you can pay as you go through a Console account for heavy runs.
Related
- ClaudeAnthropic's AI assistant app for web, desktop, and mobile, with Projects, connectors, Artifacts, skills, memory, and code execution.
- Anthropic's Knowledge-Work Plugins: Every Role Plugin, ExplainedEvery Anthropic knowledge-work plugin for Claude Cowork and Claude Code cataloged: what each role plugin bundles, the install commands, and how to fork one.
- Claude CoworkAnthropic's agent for knowledge work that completes multi-step tasks in your folders, connectors, and browser, on desktop, web, and mobile.
- Claude DesignAn Anthropic Labs tool for making prototypes, decks, and one-pagers with Claude, using your design system, with PPTX, PDF, HTML, and Canva export.
- What Is Claude Cowork? The Complete Guide for Non-DevelopersClaude Cowork explained for non-developers: what the desktop agent does with your files and apps, how it differs from chat and Claude Code, plans, and safety.
- Choosing the Right Model: Haiku vs Sonnet vs OpusHow to pick the right Claude model tier — Haiku, Sonnet, or Opus — for any Claude Code agent or task, with a clear decision rubric and per-agent examples.
- Claude For ExcelAnthropic's Excel add-in that explains, edits, debugs, and builds spreadsheet models in place, with cell-level citations, on paid Claude plans.
- Claude For ChromeAnthropic's Chrome extension that lets Claude read pages, click, fill forms, and run tasks in your signed-in browser, with site permissions and action checks.