Read on 13 October 2026, in US dollars before tax: Claude Free is $0, Pro is $20 a month or $200 a year, and Max is $100 a month for 5x the Pro allowance or $200 for 20x. Team seats are $25 a month ($20 billed annually), Premium seats $125 ($100), and Enterprise is $20 a seat plus usage at API rates. Claude Code has no price of its own: it is included in every paid plan. The API is billed separately per million tokens, from $0.10 input on Haiku 5.5 to $10 on Fable 5.1.
Claude costs $0 on the Free plan, $20 a month on Pro and $100 or $200 a month on Max in the US, and the API is billed separately per token. Claude Code is included in every paid plan, so there is no separate Claude Code subscription to buy. Its usage limits, resets and API-key billing are in Claude Code pricing explained.
Prices were read on 13 October 2026 from Anthropic's help centre articles on the Pro, Max and Team plans, its plan page and its API pricing docs. All figures are US dollars before tax. The plan page prices by region: opened from Australia it showed Australian dollars with GST included, so the plan prices here are the ones the help centre states for US customers, with the annual Pro figure from the US dollar version of the plan page.
- Free: $0, with the Sonnet and Haiku models and limits that reset every five hours
- Pro: $20 a month, or $200 a year. Adds Claude Code, Opus and Research
- Max: $100 a month for 5x the Pro allowance, $200 for 20x
- Team: $25 a seat a month, or $20 billed annually. Premium seats are $125 or $100
- Enterprise: $20 a seat a month, billed annually, plus usage at API rates
- Claude Code: included in every paid plan, not in Free
- API: per million tokens, from $0.10 input on Haiku 5.5 to $10 on Fable 5.1
Claude plans at a glance
Anthropic sells Claude three ways: plans for one person, seats for a team, and a pay-per-token API for software. The first two share one table.
| Plan | US price | Usage | What it adds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Resets every five hours | Chat on web, desktop and mobile, web search, files, memory, Artifacts. Sonnet and Haiku models |
| Pro | $20 a month, or $200 a year | At least 5x Free per session, plus a weekly limit | Claude Code, Opus models, Research, Projects, Claude in Chrome and Microsoft 365 |
| Max 5x | $100 a month | 5x Pro per session | Higher output limits, priority access, Fable inside the plan, $100 of API credits a month |
| Max 20x | $200 a month | 20x Pro per session | As Max 5x, with $200 of API credits a month |
| Team Standard seat | $25 a month, or $20 billed annually | 1.25x Pro per session | SSO, central billing, admin tools, no model training by default. 2 to 150 seats |
| Team Premium seat | $125 a month, or $100 billed annually | 6.25x Pro per session | Mix with Standard seats in one team |
| Enterprise | $20 a seat a month, billed annually, plus usage at API rates | Spend limits set by admins | SCIM, audit logs, Compliance API, custom data retention |
Three details are easy to miss. Max is monthly only, while Pro and Team can be paid yearly. The Max prices are for web subscriptions, and Anthropic's Max article notes that mobile app pricing may differ. And Anthropic says it has no standing discounts on any paid plan, only occasional promotions.
How usage limits work
Claude does not sell a number of messages. Every plan has a session limit that resets every five hours, and paid plans add a weekly limit that resets at a fixed time assigned to your account. How far a session goes depends on the length of your conversation, the files you attach and the model you pick, per the Pro plan article.
Chats, Claude Code and the desktop and mobile apps all draw from the same pool. You can see where you stand under Settings, then Usage.
- 01Wait
The session limit resets every five hours and the weekly limit once a week.
- 02Switch model
On Max, Fable has its own weekly limit. Other models keep working inside your plan.
- 03Turn on usage credits
Prepaid, billed at standard API rates, with a monthly spend limit you set.
- 04Move up a plan
Pro to Max 5x, or Max 5x to Max 20x. Upgrades are prorated.
Usage credits are the part that changes a bill. They are off until you enable them, you prepay a balance, and auto-reload is optional. Set the monthly spend limit when you turn them on. The Fable models are a special case: on Pro and on Team Standard seats they run on usage credits from the first message, while Max plans and Team Premium seats can spend up to 50% of their weekly limit on Fable at no extra cost (help centre).
Claude Code pricing
Claude Code has no price of its own. Anthropic's setup docs say it requires a Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise or Console account and that the free plan does not include it. So the question "how much is Claude Code" has four answers.
| Way to pay | Price | Limits | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pro | $20 a month | Shares Pro limits with your chats | Coding a few times a week |
| Max 5x or 20x | $100 or $200 a month | 5x or 20x the Pro allowance | Daily work in large repositories |
| Team or Enterprise seat | Per seat, see above | Per member, not pooled | A company that wants central billing |
| Console account | Per token at API rates | Your prepaid balance and spend limit | Scripts, CI and hard cost control |
On a subscription, Claude Code shares your plan's five-hour and weekly limits with everything else you do in Claude (help centre). On a Console account it bills per token. For teams on API billing, Anthropic's cost guide reports that across enterprise deployments the average is around $13 per developer per active day and $150 to $250 per developer per month, with 90% of users below $30 per active day. It adds that costs vary widely with model choice and codebase size, so run a small pilot before you budget.
Setup is in our guide to installing Claude Code. If you want to try it without a subscription first, see Claude Code free options, and for the editor alternative, Claude Code vs Cursor.
Claude API pricing
The API is a separate product with its own account, the Claude Console, and prepaid credits. Current models, per million tokens, from the pricing docs:
| Model | Input | 5-minute cache write | Cache read | Output |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Fable 5.1 | $10 | $12.50 | $0.25 | $50 |
| Claude Opus 5.5 | $4 | $5 | $0.20 | $20 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | $2 | $2.50 | $0.10 | $10 |
| Claude Haiku 5.5 | $0.10 | $0.125 | $0.01 | $0.50 |
- Batch API: 50% off input and output for jobs that can wait.
- Long prompts: Fable 5.1, Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5.5 bill the full 1M-token window at the standard rate. Haiku 5.5 rises to $0.50 input and $2.50 output once a prompt passes 100,000 tokens.
- US-only inference costs 1.1x, and fast mode on Opus 5.5, a research preview, costs $8 input and $40 output.
- Tools: web search is $10 per 1,000 searches plus tokens, and Managed Agents add $0.08 per session-hour.
- Spend caps: each usage tier has a monthly ceiling, $500 on Start, $1,000 on Build and $200,000 on Scale, and you can set a lower limit of your own (rate limits).
Anthropic's models overview suggests starting with Opus 5.5 for most workloads. Older models such as Haiku 4.5, at $1 and $5, are still listed as legacy. The pricing FAQ says new users receive a small amount of free credits and gives no figure. To see what your own prompts would cost, paste one into our free AI token cost calculator, which prices a request, 1,000 requests and a month on the current Claude models next to OpenAI and Gemini. Our Claude API pricing post works through real cost examples, and how to get a Claude API key covers setup.
API credits inside Max and Team
This is new and changes the old rule that a subscription never touches the API. Max and Team plans now include monthly API credits: $100 on Max 5x, $200 on Max 20x, and $20 per Standard seat or $100 per Premium seat on Team, pooled and capped at $500 a month. You claim them by linking a Console organization after seven days on the plan. They expire at the end of each billing cycle, and they cover the API, Managed Agents and the Agent SDK. They do not cover interactive Claude Code or extra usage in the apps. Pro is not eligible.
Which option to choose
| If you... | Choose |
|---|---|
| Use Claude a few times a week | Free |
| Write, research or code with it most days | Pro, yearly if you are sure |
| Hit Pro limits often, or run long Claude Code sessions | Max 5x, then Max 20x |
| Need shared billing and admin controls for two or more people | Team, mixing Standard and Premium seats |
| Need SCIM, audit logs or custom retention | Enterprise |
| Are building an app, an automation or a client workflow | The API, billed per token |
A subscription and the API solve different problems. A plan is a flat price for one person working in the apps. The API is the only option for software that calls Claude, and its cost follows your traffic. If you are comparing vendors, see Claude vs ChatGPT for the plans and the LLM API pricing comparison or Claude vs GPT for the API.
If the API is where you are heading, AI SaaS Builder, one of our programs, builds a product on the Claude API and includes a lesson on cost optimization and caching. For the short definition of the product itself, see Claude in the glossary, and the AI automation library lists our other guides.
What changes often
- Model names and API rates. Haiku 5.5 launched on 7 October 2026 and replaced Haiku 4.5 as the cheapest current model
- Cache read prices. Sonnet 5.5 cache reads dropped from $0.20 to $0.10 on the same day
- What each plan includes. The monthly API credits on Max and Team were marked new on the plan page
- Which models sit inside a plan. Fable 5 moved to usage credits on Pro in July 2026
- Your regional price. The plan page shows local currency, and some regions include tax
Anthropic states on each plan article that prices and plans are subject to change at its discretion. Treat every number here as a reading taken on 13 October 2026, and open the linked page before you commit to a yearly plan.
Claude pricing: FAQ
How much does Claude Pro cost?
Claude Pro costs $20 a month in the US, per Anthropic's help centre on 13 October 2026. Paid yearly it is $200 up front, which works out to about $17 a month. Prices exclude tax, and Anthropic shows local currency in other regions. Pro adds Claude Code, the Opus models, Research and more usage than Free.
Is Claude Code free?
No. Anthropic's setup docs say Claude Code requires a Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise or Console account, and that the free Claude plan does not include it. The cheapest way in is Pro at $20 a month. The alternative is a Claude Console account with prepaid credits, where you pay per token.
Is there a separate Claude Code subscription?
No. Claude Code has no plan or price of its own. It is included in every paid Claude plan and draws from the same usage limits as your chats. If you would sooner pay for exactly what you use, sign in with a Claude Console account and it bills per token at API rates.
What is the difference between Claude Pro and Max?
Usage. Max 5x costs $100 a month for five times the Pro allowance per five-hour session, and Max 20x costs $200 for twenty times. Max also lists higher output limits, priority access at busy times, Fable models inside the plan and monthly Claude API credits. Max is billed monthly only.
Does a Claude subscription include API access?
Not on Pro. Anthropic's help centre says the Pro plan does not include API usage through the Claude Console, which is billed separately. Max and Team plans now include monthly API credits: $100 on Max 5x, $200 on Max 20x, and a pooled amount on Team capped at $500. Those credits cannot be spent in Claude Code.
How much does Claude Team cost?
A Standard seat is $25 a month billed monthly or $20 billed annually. A Premium seat is $125 or $100. Team needs at least two members and supports up to 150 seats, and you can mix seat types. Anthropic states these as prices for US customers, before tax.
Why does claude.com show a different price from the ones here?
Because the plan page prices by region. Opened from Australia on 13 October 2026 it showed Pro at $34 a month with GST included, in local currency. The US dollar figures in this guide are the ones Anthropic states for US customers. Check the page from your own location, and your app store if you subscribe on mobile, before you pay.