# Claude Code Pricing: Is It Free, What Pro, Max, Ultra, Team and the API Cost

> Claude Code isn't on Claude's Free plan. It starts with Pro at $20 a month, with Max at $100, Ultra at $200 and pay-per-token use through a Console account. Every price here comes from Anthropic's own pages, checked November 10, 2026.

By Pat Simmons · November 10, 2026 · 12 min read

Canonical: https://www.aiformortals.co/blog/claude-code-pricing

Claude Code isn't free, because Claude's Free plan doesn't include it. The cheapest way in is Claude Pro at $20 a month, or $17 a month if you pay $200 for the year up front, according to Anthropic's pricing page. Max costs $100 a month for 5x Pro's usage, and Ultra costs $200 a month for 10x Pro's weekly usage, with no 5-hour limit for verified accounts.

Team seats start at $20 a seat a month billed yearly ($25 billed monthly). If you'd rather not subscribe at all, you can sign in to Claude Code with a Claude Console account (Anthropic's developer account) and pay for each piece of text it reads and writes. Anthropic's own figures put enterprise developers at about $13 per active day and $150-250 a month that way.

Last checked November 10, 2026: every plan price, usage multiple and API rate on this page, against Anthropic's pricing page, the Claude Code product page, the Claude Code cost docs and the API pricing docs, plus OpenAI's Codex pricing and Cursor's pricing pages.

PlanPriceClaude Code?UsageAPI credits

Free$0NoLimited, every 5 hours and every weekNone
Pro$20 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly ($200 up front)YesMore than Free, every 5 hours and every weekNone
Max$100 a monthYes5x Pro, every 5 hours and every week$100 a month
Ultra$200 a monthYes10x Pro every week, no 5-hour limit for verified accounts$200 a month
Team Standard seat$20 a seat a month billed yearly, $25 billed monthlyYesMore than ProUp to $500 a month, pooled across the team
Team Premium seat$100 a seat a month billed yearly, $125 billed monthlyYes5x a Standard seatShares the team's pool
Enterprise$20 a seat a month billed yearly, 20-seat minimum, plus usage at API ratesYesBilled at API rates, with spend limits set by adminsNone

Prices don't include tax. "API credits" are a monthly allowance for building on the Claude Platform, Anthropic's service for developers.

## Is Claude Code free?

No. Anthropic's plan comparison marks Claude Code as unavailable on the Free plan, and its pricing FAQ says Claude Code "is included in all paid plans." There's no free trial of Claude Code listed on either page.

The Free plan still gets you a lot of Claude: chat on the web, desktop and phone, web search, file creation, memory, Artifacts and Claude Design, Slides and Docs, all on Sonnet and Haiku. Our guide to what Claude's Free plan includes goes through it feature by feature. For writing and running code on your own computer, though, Claude Code starts on Pro.

The other way to use it without a subscription is to pay as you go. Anthropic's Claude Code page says that "when used with a Claude Console account, Claude Code consumes API tokens at standard API pricing." Tokens are the small chunks of text an AI model reads and writes, and the API section below lists what each model charges for them. That route costs nothing until you use it, but every request is billed.

Some people search "free Claude Code" for a different trick, which Pat covers in the video below: pointing Claude Code at another company's AI model, MiniMax 2.7, which Nvidia offers free through its developer service, Nvidia NIM. Pat says the community-built proxy that connects Claude Code to Nvidia is not supported by Anthropic and could break Anthropic's terms, so he sets the model up in a separate coding tool, OpenCode, instead. That route leaves Claude's own plans exactly as priced above.

_Pat Simmons, "Mini Max 2.7 + Nvidia Nims = FREE Claude Code". The proxy warning is at 2:42 and the switch to OpenCode at 3:02._

## What each Claude plan gets in Claude Code

Every paid plan gets Claude Code. What changes as you pay more is how much you can use it before you hit a limit, plus a few extras on the bigger plans. The Claude Code page lists five ways in: "a Claude Pro, Max, or Ultra plan, a Team or Enterprise plan, or a Claude Console account."

Pro: $20 a month

Pro is the plan Anthropic labels "For everyday work." It includes Claude Code along with Projects, Research, Claude in Chrome and Claude for Microsoft 365. Anthropic's FAQ says Pro gives you "at least 5x more usage per 5-hour session than Free." Pro is the only individual plan with a yearly price: $17 a month, billed as $200 up front.

On Anthropic's plan comparison, Pro gets Opus, Sonnet and Haiku, while Fable, Anthropic's top model, runs on usage credits that you pay for separately.

Max: $100 a month

Max is labeled "For all-day work." It gives you 5x Pro's usage every 5 hours and every week, includes Fable for up to half your weekly limit, and adds $100 a month in API credits for the Claude Platform. It also gets early access to advanced Claude features and priority access when Claude is busy. Max is billed monthly only.

Ultra: $200 a month

Ultra is labeled "For your longest tasks." It has no 5-hour limit for verified accounts, gives you 10x Pro's usage every week, and comes with $200 a month in API credits. Like Max, it includes Fable for up to half your weekly limit and is billed monthly.

Team and Enterprise

Team is for groups of 2 to 150 people. A Standard seat costs $20 a month billed yearly or $25 billed monthly and gets more usage than Pro. A Premium seat costs $100 billed yearly or $125 billed monthly and gets 5x the usage of a Standard seat. Both seat types include Claude Code and Claude Cowork, and the team shares up to $500 a month in API credits.

Enterprise costs $20 a seat a month, billed yearly with a 20-seat minimum, and usage on top is billed at API rates. Admins can set spending limits for each person and for the whole company.

The plans cover a lot more than coding, and our breakdown of what every Claude plan and the API cost lists everything else each one includes.

## Is Claude $20 a month?

Yes. Claude Pro costs $20 a month when you pay monthly, and that plan includes Claude Code. Paying yearly brings it to $17 a month, charged as $200 at once.

Max ($100) and Ultra ($200) don't have a yearly option, according to Anthropic's FAQ, which says "both plans are billed monthly." A Team Standard seat also works out to $20 a month, but only on the yearly plan, and only for a team of at least two people. None of these prices include tax.

If you already pay for Pro and want more room, an upgrade starts right away, and Anthropic credits the unused time on your current plan toward the new one.

## How much does Claude Code cost on the API?

On a Console account, you pay per token at Anthropic's API rates, and the price depends on the model. Prices are per million tokens. A million tokens is a lot of text, but Claude Code reads files, runs commands and checks its own work, so a long session uses tokens quickly.

ModelInput (what you send)Output (what it writes)Fast mode (input / output)

Fable 5.2$8$40$16 / $80
Opus 5.5$4$20$8 / $40
Sonnet 5.5$2$10n/a
Haiku 5.5$0.10 up to 100,000 tokens, $0.50 above$0.50 up to 100,000 tokens, $2.50 aboven/a

Rates per million tokens, from Anthropic's API pricing docs, checked November 10, 2026. The Haiku 5.5 rates go up once a single prompt runs past 100,000 tokens.

Fast mode is a faster setting for Opus 5.5 and Fable 5.2 that costs twice the standard rate. In Claude Code, fast mode for Opus 5.5 is in research preview at $8/$40 per million tokens, and people on a subscription pay for it through usage credits, per the Claude Code page.

Anthropic publishes averages for what this adds up to. Its Claude Code cost docs say that "across enterprise deployments, the average cost is around $13 per developer per active day and $150-250 per developer per month, with costs remaining below $30 per active day for 90% of users." Those are averages from companies paying API rates, so they describe professional developers, and a person on Pro, Max or Ultra pays the flat plan price instead.

## How do Claude Code usage limits work?

On Pro, Max and Ultra, Claude Code draws from the same usage allowance as the rest of your Claude plan. Anthropic's FAQ says your work "in the terminal and your chats draw from one pool," so a long coding session uses up room you'd otherwise spend in chat.

The allowance resets on a rolling five-hour window, and paid plans add a weekly limit on top. Anthropic gives no fixed message or hour count for any plan. How fast you hit a limit depends on the model you use, how long your conversations run and how big your files are, so the limits are set as multiples: Max is 5x Pro, Ultra is 10x Pro each week with no five-hour limit for verified accounts.

Typing /usage in Claude Code shows where you stand. Subscribers see their plan's usage bars, activity stats and a breakdown of what used the most. The dollar "Session" figure on the same screen is for API users, and the cost docs say it "isn't relevant for billing purposes" on a subscription.

When you hit a limit, you can wait for it to reset, move to a bigger plan, or turn on usage credits, which let you keep working past the limit at standard API rates. You turn them on and set a monthly spending limit under Settings > Usage on claude.ai, or by running /usage-credits in Claude Code, which opens that same page.

On Team and Enterprise, each person's Claude Code use comes out of a seat allowance that also resets every five hours and every week. Claude chat and Cowork share that same allowance, and its size depends on whether the seat is Standard or Premium.

## What is the difference between Claude and Claude Code?

Claude is Anthropic's AI assistant that you chat with on the web, desktop or phone. Claude Code is Anthropic's tool that writes, runs and tests code inside your own project. You describe what you want and, in Anthropic's words, "it plans, writes code, runs tests, and opens pull requests." Both come with the same paid subscription and share the same usage limits.

The product page sums it up as: "Hand Claude a bug fix, test, or multi-day migration. You set its permissions. Steer and review from your desktop, terminal, IDE, Slack, or the web." Permission settings decide what it can run on its own and what has to wait for your approval.

Pat Simmons built Murmur, a free, open-source Mac dictation app, with Claude Code in two prompts, and the full write-up covers the Mac dictation app Pat built with Claude Code from the first prompt to the finished app. He has also had Claude Code take control of a Fujifilm X-T5: shoot photos, design a film recipe and load it into the camera, and re-render RAW files on the camera itself.

_Murmur, the dictation app Pat Simmons built with Claude Code, with its history showing where it fixed "clawed code" to "Claude Code" (from his video, at 14:09)._

If you want to try something similar yourself, our guide shows how to build your first app with Claude Code from one plain-English description.

## Claude Code vs Codex vs Cursor: what each costs

All three give you an AI that writes and runs code, but they're paid for differently. Claude Code comes with a Claude plan from $20 a month. Codex, OpenAI's coding tool, comes with every ChatGPT plan, including the free one. Cursor, a code editor with AI built in, has its own plans, and Claude models in Cursor cost extra.

Price pointClaude CodeCodexCursor

FreeNot includedChatGPT Free, $0: quick coding tasksFree, $0: limited agent and chat requests
Under $20NoneChatGPT Go, $8 a monthPlus, $8 a month: Grok models only
$20-30Pro, $20 a monthChatGPT Plus, $20 a monthPremium, $30 a month: 4x Plus usage
$100Max: 5x ProChatGPT Pro from $100 a monthSuper: 15x Plus usage
$200Ultra: 10x Pro weeklyChatGPT Pro at $200 (a $500 plan also exists)Ultra: 50x Plus usage
Teams$20 a seat billed yearly, $25 monthlyBusiness: $20 a user billed yearly, $25 monthly, 2+ usersTeams from $30 a user a month
Pay as you goConsole account at API ratesAPI key at API ratesThird-party models billed separately by usage

Prices checked November 10, 2026 on OpenAI's Codex pricing page and Cursor's pricing page.

On Codex, OpenAI says it's included in "ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Edu, or Enterprise," and that Codex shares usage with ChatGPT Work. Free and Go get GPT-6 Luna in the desktop app, "subject to rollout," while Plus gets GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Luna on the web, in the terminal, in code editors and on iOS. Our guide to Codex pricing by ChatGPT plan covers what each plan's limits look like.

On Cursor, the paid plans share one pool of usage between Cursor and Grok, and the allowance refreshes weekly. Cursor's page says "Third Party model usage in Cursor is not included in the monthly prices shown and must be purchased separately," so using Claude models there is an extra charge on top of the plan. Our comparison of Cursor vs Claude Code, by job goes through which one fits which kind of work.

## How to spend less on Claude Code

These habits come from Anthropic's cost docs. They cut API bills, and on a subscription a smaller session also uses less of your plan's limit.

- Use Sonnet for most coding. The docs say Sonnet "handles most coding tasks well and costs less than Opus." Save Opus for complex decisions or reasoning across many steps, and switch with /model.

- Clear between unrelated jobs. Typing /clear starts fresh, so Claude stops rereading old context on every message.

- Plan first on big tasks. Press Shift+Tab to switch to plan mode, and Claude proposes an approach for you to approve before it writes anything, which avoids paying to redo work that went the wrong way.

- Ask for exactly what you want. The docs compare "improve this codebase," which sends Claude scanning everything, with "add input validation to the login function in auth.ts," which doesn't.

- Turn the effort down on simple jobs. Claude always thinks before it answers on the newest models, and that thinking is billed as output. A lower setting with /effort cuts it on easy tasks.

Agent teams are the biggest cost to watch. An agent team is several copies of Claude Code working on one job at once, each with its own memory of the task. The docs say agent teams "use approximately 7x more tokens than standard sessions when teammates run in plan mode." They're switched off by default, and the docs suggest small teams with Sonnet as the teammates' model.

Claude Code changes often, and Claude Code updates and new features are tracked on a separate page.

## Questions people ask about Claude Code pricing

Can I use Claude Code without a subscription?
Yes. Sign in with a Claude Console account and you pay per token at standard API rates, with no monthly fee. Anthropic's pricing FAQ also suggests this for heavy coding sessions on a paid plan.

How do I install Claude Code?
In a terminal, Anthropic's install command is curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash. Then you sign in with your Claude account or your Console account. You can also download the desktop app from the Claude Code page, which offers a macOS download and says it's available for macOS, Linux and Windows.

_The top of Anthropic's Claude Code page, with the desktop download and every other place Claude Code runs, captured November 10, 2026. Source: claude.com/claude-code._

Which plans get the Claude Code desktop app?
Pro, Max, Ultra, Team and Enterprise, according to the Claude Code page. Free doesn't include Claude Code at all.

Where else does Claude Code run?
The Claude Code page lists the terminal (the command line, often called the CLI), the web, iOS, Android, GitHub, VS Code, JetBrains and Slack, along with the desktop app.

Does Claude Code cost extra on top of Claude Pro?
No. It's included in Pro and every other paid plan. The only extra charges are optional: usage credits after you hit a limit, and fast mode, which subscribers pay for through usage credits.

Is the Claude Code Pro plan different from Claude Pro?
No. There's no separate Claude Code subscription. Claude Pro at $20 a month is the plan, and Claude Code comes with it.

What happens if I cancel?
Your plan stays active until the end of the billing period you've paid for. Anthropic's FAQ says to cancel at least 24 hours before your renewal date to avoid the next charge.

## Sources

- Claude plans and pricing (Anthropic)

- Claude Code product page and FAQ (Anthropic)

- Manage costs effectively (Claude Code docs)

- Claude API pricing (Anthropic docs)

- Codex pricing (OpenAI)

- Cursor pricing (Cursor)