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Claude Pricing

Facts verified AUGUST 2026

Claude pricing starts at $17 a month, which is $204 over twelve months. There is a free plan. Every figure below was read from the vendor's pricing page on 19 August 2026, and one charge that the headline price does not include is set out below.

See Claude pricing ↗

Opens the vendor's own pricing page. Figures here were read from it on 19 August 2026.

Claude pricing page, showing the published plans and prices recorded on this page
The Claude pricing page as captured on 19 August 2026. Captured from a US vantage point, so the currency matches the figures recorded here.

Claude ranking and coverage

In AI
#6 of 9
Overall
#70 of 122 tied
Terms score
5.3 /10
Referenced here
6 pages

Cost position 3.8 · Portability 5 · Subscription flexibility 7 - Ranked on published terms only: entry price against category peers, portability and subscription flexibility, equally weighted. This is not a quality score.How the rank is calculated.

Claude pricing at a glance

Claude pricing facts, verified August 2026
Entry price Free; Pro from $17/month billed annually ($20 monthly)
Smallest invoice $17 a month, or $204 a year
How that is reached Pro at $17 a month
Seat minimum None on the entry plan
Free plan Yes
Free trial No trial offered
How it charges freemium
Priced plans published 5 rows on the vendor's page
Affiliate programme No
Prices read from The vendor's own pricing page
Last checked 19 August 2026

Every Claude plan and what it costs

Read from the vendor's own pricing page on 19 August 2026. Charged as freemium. No free trial is offered.

Claude plans and prices, verified 19 August 2026
Plan Price Billing What it is
Free $0 per month Daily usage limits
Pro $17 per month 1 user - Billed annually at $200 up front; $20 if billed monthly
Max From $100 per month Choose 5x or 20x more usage than Pro
Team From $25 per month per seat
Enterprise $20 per month per seat, billed annually - Plus usage billed at API rates

What Claude costs beyond the advertised price

Each of these is a figure you can check on the vendor's own page. The arithmetic is shown so you can redo it rather than take our word for it.

  1. Monthly billing costs more$36 a year

    The advertised $17 on Pro is the annual-payment rate. Paying monthly is $20, so the commitment is worth $36 a year.

    Working$20 - $17 = $3 a month, x 12 = $36 a year.

    Computed from the plan table on Claude pricing page , read 19 August 2026

What Claude actually costs over a year

A monthly price is not the same thing as a monthly contract. These are the plans above resolved both ways, per seat or unit where the plan is charged that way. Where a vendor quotes only a yearly figure it is divided by twelve rather than left out, and the Quoted column says which figure the vendor actually publishes.

Claude annual cost by plan
PlanQuotedMonthlyOver 12 months
Pro1 userper month$17$204
Maxper month$100$1,200
Teamper seatper month$25$300
Enterpriseper seat, billed annuallyper month$20$240

Claude pricing over time

Read from 19 archived captures of the vendor's pricing page , spanning September 2025 to September 2026. Every figure below links to the capture it came from, so you can check it against the page as it stood on the day.

  • Max has been published at $100 in every capture we read, from 17 September 2025 to 1 September 2026.
  • Pro has been published at $17 in every capture we read, from 17 September 2025 to 1 September 2026.

Enterprise

Archived prices for the Claude Enterprise plan
Published price Charged Seen from Last seen Capture
$20 per seat 1 May 2026 Single capture Archive

Max

Archived prices for the Claude Max plan
Published price Charged Seen from Last seen Capture
$100 Not stated 17 September 2025 1 September 2026 Archive

Pro

Archived prices for the Claude Pro plan
Published price Charged Seen from Last seen Capture
$17 Not stated 17 September 2025 1 September 2026 Archive

Compiled 18 September 2026 from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Plan names were matched against the archived page text and the first currency-anchored figure within 160 characters was recorded, rejecting any figure with a competing plan name standing between it and the name it was matched to. The currency and the unit were read from each capture rather than assumed: captures served in a currency other than $, and captures where no plan name sat beside a figure, are listed as unread rather than dropped. 1 plan series was read from these captures and then discarded, because the most recent capture did not reproduce the price we verified on the live page. Only plans the extraction demonstrably reads correctly are published here. Archived pages show the price as served to the archive's crawler, which may differ by region from the price you are shown.

Claude pricing against its competitors

Compared on the smallest invoice each vendor will accept, not on the advertised per-seat rate. Where a product has a seat minimum, the figure below is the minimum times the rate, because that is the cheque you would actually write.

Entry price for Claude and its competitors, verified 19 August 2026
ProductCheapest paid entryFree planAgainst Claude
ChatGPT$8 a monthYes−$9 a month (−53%)
Claude$17 a monthYesThis product

Which Claude plan should you buy?

Recommended Claude plan by situation
Your situationRecommendedWhy
You want to test it against your own workFreeDaily limits, but enough to judge whether the long-context advantage matters to you.
You write, edit or analyse documents most daysPro$17 a month billed annually, or $20 monthly. The standard working tier.
You run the coding agent for hours at a timeMaxFrom $100, choosing 5x or 20x Pro usage. Heavy Claude Code users meet the Pro ceiling, and this is what the extra money buys.
Your team needs shared administrationTeamFrom $25 per seat, with workspace management rather than individual subscriptions.
You want image generationDo not rely on ClaudeThere is none. Pair it with a dedicated image model or Canva.
You want the largest plugin ecosystemConsider ChatGPT insteadMore third-party integrations and a more polished consumer app.

Verdict by who you are

  • Software engineerYes

    Strongest of the assistants on code and long files, and Claude Code is included in Pro and Max rather than sold separately.

  • Anyone working with long documentsYes

    Contracts, research sets and large codebases stay coherent where smaller effective context loses the middle.

  • Writer or editorYes

    Follows detailed instructions on tone and structure more reliably than the alternatives.

  • Designer needing generated imagesNo

    No image generation at any tier. This is a hard limitation, not a weakness.

  • Heavy all-day agent userCompare first

    Model your real daily volume before assuming $20 covers it. The gap to Max is usage, not capability.

Should you buy Claude?

Buy Claude if…

  • Long-document analysis and editing
  • Software engineering and codebase work
  • Writing where tone and instruction-following matter

Do not buy Claude if…

  • Image generation
  • Users wanting the largest third-party plugin ecosystem
  • Anything needing guaranteed factual accuracy unchecked

What leaving Claude would cost

5/10 Lock-in

moderate lock-in

Claude scores on public API. Portability 5/10 ; lock-in is the inverse. How this is calculated.

The long-context advantage

The practical difference between Claude and most assistants shows up when the input is large. Paste a 90-page contract, a full research paper set or a repository’s worth of source files and Claude will still answer questions about page 12 accurately. Assistants with smaller effective context quietly lose the middle of long inputs, and the failure is hard to spot because the answer still reads well.

Claude Code is the developer argument

Claude Code is a command-line agent that reads a repository, edits files, runs tests and iterates. It is included in the Pro and Max subscriptions rather than sold separately. For engineering teams this, not the chat interface, is usually what justifies the spend.

Where it is the wrong tool

No image generation, so any visual-asset workflow needs something else - Canva or a dedicated image model. If you want a large marketplace of third-party plugins, ChatGPT has more. And like every model of this kind, it will state incorrect things fluently; the long context makes it better at staying consistent, not immune to being wrong.

Limits, honestly

The gap between Pro at $20 and Max at $100+ is usage limits, not capability. Heavy users - particularly anyone running the coding agent all day - will meet the Pro ceiling. Model your real daily volume before assuming $20 covers it.

Claude questions, answered

Is Claude worth it?
Claude is the assistant to pick when the work is long, precise or code-shaped.
How much does Claude cost?
Free; Pro from $17/month billed annually ($20 monthly). The cheapest paid tier we recorded is Pro, published at $17 a month, which works out at $17 a month or $204 over a year. Verified against the vendor's pricing page.
Does Claude have a free plan or free trial?
Claude has a free plan. No free trial is offered.
What is the best Claude alternative?
It depends on the job. ChatGPT: Wider consumer feature set, image generation and a larger plugin ecosystem. Google Gemini: Better if your organisation already runs on Google Workspace. GitHub Copilot: Narrower and cheaper if you only want in-editor code completion.
Can I self-host Claude?
No. Claude is a hosted service only, so your data lives on the vendor's infrastructure.
Check Claude pricing at source ↗

Opens the vendor's own pricing page. Figures here were read from it on 19 August 2026.

What this profile is based on

Every claim below is about our work, not about Claude. A "no" is recorded rather than omitted, because the difference between a tested review and careful desk research is the reader's to weigh. How we research a profile.

  • Prices read from the vendor : yes

    Read from Claude's own pricing page on 19 August 2026

  • Plans and terms recorded : yes

    5 rows, each with its billing period

  • Original screenshots : yes

    2 captured by us: pricing page, homepage

  • Sources cited and dated : yes

    2 primary sources, each with the date it was read

  • Product used first-hand : no

    Not tested. This profile is desk research from primary sources

  • Alternatives used first-hand : no

    None, so comparisons here rest on published facts rather than use

  • Vendor contacted : no

    Not contacted for this profile

Desk research from Anthropic's own Claude pricing page, read on 19 August 2026 through a United States egress. Nobody here has used Claude for a documented test, and no model quality was benchmarked.

Where Claude appears on this site

6 other pages here reference Claude. Every one is listed below, so the figure can be checked rather than taken.

  • Another profile ChatGPT names it as a competitor
  • Another profile DeepSeek picks it for long-document analysis
  • Another profile Google Gemini names it as a competitor
  • Another profile Microsoft Copilot picks it for work through very long documents
  • Another profile Mistral names it as a competitor
  • Another profile Perplexity names it as a competitor

Counts pages on this site that name the product by choice - price guides, pricing question pages, deal records and other profiles. Category and directory indexes list everything automatically and are not counted.

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Provenance and freshness

When each fact was last checked

  • Pricing ·
  • Plans ·
  • Free trial
  • Features
  • Platforms
  • Integrations
  • Affiliate programme
  • Company details

What has changed

  1. August 2026

    • Prices re-read for the AI assistants guide; Pro at $17 on annual billing, Team at $20 a seat and Max from $100 unchanged
    • Recorded that usage is described as multiples of a lower tier rather than absolute figures
  2. August 2026

    • Plan ladder re-verified including annual Pro pricing and Max usage multiples
    • Added plan picker and verdicts

Sources & verification

Facts on this page were read from the sources below on the dates shown. Where a vendor does not publish a figure, we record it as not disclosed rather than estimating it.

  1. Claude pricing page - checked 19 August 2026
  2. Anthropic documentation - checked 19 August 2026
Reviewed by
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Last verified
Last updated

Spotted something out of date? Email [email protected] and we will re-check it. Corrections are logged on the page.

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