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Claude pricing: what each plan costs in November 2026
Claude pricing runs from $0 to $200 a month: Pro costs $17 a month on annual billing ($200 up front) or $20 monthly, Max costs $100 and Ultra costs $200, per Anthropic's pricing page checked on 2 November 2026. Claude Code is not on the free tier, so Pro is the real entry price for the coding agent.
What matters
- Annual Pro is $200 up front, which is $16.67 a month and beats $20 monthly once you pass ten months of use.
- Max at $100 a month includes $100 a month in Claude Platform API credits, and Ultra at $200 includes $200, both marked new on the pricing page.
- The free plan has no Opus, no Fable and no Claude Code; Sonnet and Haiku are the models it serves.
- Team seats run $20 (Standard) or $100 (Premium) per seat per month on annual billing, against $25 and $125 billed monthly.
- Ultra drops the 5-hour limit for verified accounts and sets the weekly allowance at 10x Pro, but Max and Ultra are billed monthly only.
Every Claude plan at a glance
Anthropic sells six things under the Claude name: four individual plans, a Team plan with two seat types, and Enterprise. The table below covers the individual tiers, because those are the ones a person buys without talking to sales.
The ladder is built on usage multipliers rather than features. Every paid tier includes Claude Code, Projects, Research, web search, connectors and Claude in Chrome, so the only thing that separates Pro from Max from Ultra is how much you can run in a five-hour window and a week, plus the API credits that arrive with the two top tiers.
Free: what $0 actually gets you
The free tier is a real product, not a trial. It includes chat on web, iOS, Android and desktop, web search, file creation and code execution, memory across conversations, connectors, Artifacts, Projects (up to five), Skills, voice mode and incognito chats.
What it excludes matters more. The plan comparison marks Opus and Fable as unavailable on Free, and Claude Code as a paid feature. Research, Dashboards, task hand-off, Microsoft 365 and Claude in Chrome are also off. Usage is listed as limited every five hours and every week, with no published multiplier.
For a buyer, the practical line is this: Free is a capable chat product and a dead end for coding work. Anything that needs the terminal or the IDE starts at Pro.
Pro at $17 or $20: the plan most people should buy first
Pro is the first tier with Opus and Claude Code, and it adds Projects beyond five, Research, Dashboards, task hand-off, Microsoft 365, Claude in Chrome and Claude Science. Fable is available but metered through usage credits rather than the plan allowance.
Billing is where the arithmetic hides. Anthropic lists $17 a month with the annual discount, $200 billed up front, or $20 if billed monthly. Run the two against each other: $200 divided by $20 is ten months, so annual starts saving in month eleven and finishes the year $40 ahead. If you expect to cancel inside ten months, monthly is cheaper, and that is the only case where it is.
Pro's allowance is 1x on both the five-hour and the weekly clock. That is the baseline every other tier is priced against, and it is why the upgrade question is always about hitting a limit rather than missing a feature.
Max at $100: five times the usage plus $100 of API credits
Max is Pro at 5x usage, on both the five-hour and weekly limits, with Fable included up to half the weekly allowance instead of billed through credits. It also adds priority access at high-traffic times and early access to new features.
The line that changes the maths is the API credit: Anthropic now lists $100 a month in Claude Platform credits on Max, flagged as new. If you already spend around $100 a month on the API, Max is close to a wash against paying for Pro plus API usage, and the chat and Claude Code allowance comes along with it. If you spend $20 a month on the API and rarely hit a five-hour limit, Max is $100 for something you are not using.
Billing is monthly only. There is no annual Max price on the page, so the $1,200 a year figure is twelve monthly charges, not a discounted commitment.
Ultra at $200: what the extra $100 buys
Ultra is Max with three changes. The weekly allowance doubles from 5x Pro to 10x Pro. The five-hour limit disappears for verified accounts, which is the part that matters if your work comes in bursts rather than a steady drip. And the monthly API credit doubles from $100 to $200.
Read as a price, Ultra is $100 more than Max for double the weekly allowance, no five-hour ceiling and another $100 of platform credits. For someone who treats the API credit as cash, that framing puts the real premium for the usage increase at zero: you pay $100 more and receive $100 more in credits. For someone who never touches the API, Ultra is $200 a month for throughput alone, and Max is the better buy until the weekly limit actually bites.
Ultra is monthly only as well, and Anthropic notes the no-five-hour-limit rule applies to verified accounts.
Team and Enterprise: the per-seat maths
Team covers 2 to 150 people and comes in two seat types. A Standard seat is $20 per seat per month billed annually, or $25 monthly, and is described as all Claude features with more usage than Pro. A Premium seat is $100 per seat per month annually, or $125 monthly, at 5x the usage of a Standard seat, and its card names Claude Code, Cowork, Design, Slides, Docs, Science and Microsoft 365 explicitly.
Five Premium seats work out to $500 a month on annual billing, which is exactly what five individual Max plans cost. The difference is what comes with the seats: central billing and administration, SSO, admin controls for remote and local connectors, a desktop app deployment path, no model training on your content by default, and up to $500 a month in pooled API credits. For a company already paying for five Max plans, Team Premium is the same money with governance attached, and it is the clearest upgrade on the page.
Five Standard seats cost $100 a month annually, the same as one Max plan. That buys five people Pro-level access plus admin, which is the cheapest way to put a small team on Claude.
Enterprise is $20 per seat per month billed annually with a 20-seat minimum, and usage is billed at API rates on top. At the minimum that is $400 a month before a single token, so the plan only makes sense when you need SCIM, audit logs, role-based access, IP allowlisting, custom retention or the HIPAA-ready option.
One gap to check before committing: the Standard seat card says all Claude features, while the Premium card names Claude Code specifically. If Claude Code on Standard seats decides the purchase, confirm it with sales in writing rather than reading it off the page.
Claude Code is what most buyers are actually paying for
Anthropic describes Claude Code as an agentic coding tool that reads your codebase, edits files, runs commands and integrates with your development tools, available in the terminal, IDE, desktop app and browser. Most surfaces need a Claude subscription or an Anthropic Console account, and the terminal CLI, VS Code and JetBrains also accept third-party providers.
That makes the plan choice simple for a developer: the cheapest path to Claude Code is Pro at $17 a month annual, and the question is only how much usage you need. Two people sharing one Pro login is not a plan Anthropic sells, which is why Team Standard at $20 a seat is the honest comparison for a pair of developers.
There is a maintenance detail worth knowing if you use the editor extension. Anthropic's VS Code documentation states the extension's version number is the Claude Code version it bundles, so a feature that needs Claude Code 2.1.286 requires extension 2.1.286 or later, and the Extensions view shows that number. The same docs say extension marketplaces are third-party software that Anthropic does not endorse, maintain or audit, and that Anthropic submits the extension to the Visual Studio Marketplace and the Open VSX Registry.
That disclaimer stopped being theoretical on 30 October, when Phorion published an advisory describing a backdoored bundle of the official Claude Code for VS Code extension on the Cursor Marketplace, versions 2.1.312 and 2.1.313, carrying an SSH backdoor that writes an attacker key into authorized_keys. Cursor removed both versions, and Phorion's revision history records a correction to the affected marketplace plus a version-scope update adding 2.1.312 per Cursor's revised notice. If you run the extension inside Cursor, open the Extensions view and check the version number before your next session.
Which plan to buy
- Chat only, light use: stay on Free. You lose Opus, Claude Code and Research, and you keep the rest.
- One developer who wants Claude Code: Pro annual at $17 a month. Set a calendar reminder at month ten, which is where the annual discount stops being a bet.
- Daily Claude Code user hitting limits: Max at $100. The 5x allowance is the point; the $100 of API credits is the reason the price is defensible.
- Burst-heavy work or an API budget above $100 a month: Ultra at $200, where the extra $100 comes back as credits.
- Two to 150 people: Team. Standard seats at $20 for Pro-level usage with admin, Premium seats at $100 when the team needs Max-level throughput.
- 20 seats or more with compliance requirements: Enterprise at $20 a seat plus API-rate usage.
Two costs sit outside the plan page. Tax is not included in any listed price, and the API credits on Max and Ultra are for the Claude Platform, so they do not extend the chat or Claude Code allowance in your subscription. Budget them as two separate lines.
At a glance
| Plan | Price | Usage allowance | Claude Code | Monthly API credits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Limited every 5 hours and every week | No | No |
| Pro | $17/mo annual ($200 up front) or $20 monthly | 1x on both clocks | Yes | No |
| Max | $100/mo, monthly billing only | 5x Pro every 5 hours and weekly | Yes | $100 |
| Ultra | $200/mo, monthly billing only | 10x Pro weekly, no 5-hour limit for verified accounts | Yes | $200 |
FAQ
Is Claude free?
Yes, there is a $0 plan with chat, web search, file creation, memory, connectors, Artifacts and up to five Projects. It excludes Opus, Fable and Claude Code, and its usage is capped as limited every five hours and every week. The cheapest paid tier is Pro at $17 a month billed annually.
Does Claude Pro include Claude Code?
Yes. Claude Code appears on Pro, Max, Ultra and Team Premium, and is marked unavailable on Free. Pro carries the base 1x usage allowance, so the upgrade question is whether you hit the five-hour or weekly limit, not whether the coding agent is included.
Is Claude Max worth $100 more than Pro?
It depends on two numbers: how often you hit Pro's limits, and how much you spend on the Claude API. Max gives 5x Pro usage plus $100 a month in platform credits, so if your API bill is near $100 the plan absorbs it. If neither applies, Pro annual at $17 a month is the cheaper correct answer.
Related reading
Claude Code pricing and credits, Claude Pro vs Max, Claude API pricing, Claude tool profile