# How to Use Claude: Sign Up, Pick a Model and Run Your First Prompts

> Sign up free at claude.ai, pick a plan and model, hand Claude whole tasks, and copy three prompts we ran on Opus 5.5. Every price and plan detail was checked against Anthropic's own pages on November 6, 2026.

By Pat Simmons · November 6, 2026 · 13 min read

Canonical: https://www.aiformortals.co/blog/how-to-use-claude

To start using Claude, go to claude.ai or download the Claude app for Mac, Windows, iPhone or Android, then sign up for a free account. Type a question in the chat box and send it. Anthropic's getting-started guide says you must be 18 or older and in a supported country, and the model you're talking to is shown under the box.

The Free plan costs $0 and covers chat, web search, file creation, memory and connected apps, with "limited usage every 5 hours and every week," according to Anthropic's pricing page. Pro is $20 a month, or $17 a month if you pay for a year up front, and adds more usage, more models including Opus, and Claude Code.

We checked every price and plan detail on this page against Anthropic's pricing page and help center on November 6, 2026. Below are the sign-up steps, which plan and model to pick, what people use Claude for, how to hand Claude a whole task, and prompts we ran on Claude Opus 5.5 that you can copy.

## How do I start using Claude?

You start using Claude by opening it in a browser or the app, signing up and typing what you want in plain words. Anthropic's guide says to talk to Claude "like you would a coworker or friend," and its first example prompt is "How do I hang a picture frame in my room?"

Step 1: Open Claude on the web, desktop or phone

Anthropic lists three ways in: claude.ai in any web browser, Claude Desktop for Mac or Windows, and the Claude app for iOS or Android. You don't have to download anything to try it, since the web version works on its own.

Step 2: Sign up and check you're eligible

Create a free account. You need to be at least 18, and you need to be in one of the countries on Anthropic's list of supported locations.

Step 3: Type a prompt and press send

Write your message in the chat box and click the submit button to start a conversation. Then reply to Claude's answer the way you'd reply to a person, with follow-up questions or changes.

Step 4: Use "+" or "/" for more options

Click the "+" button in the lower left of the box, or type "/", to see more options and commands. The "+" menu is also where you choose which connected apps Claude can use, according to Anthropic's guide to handing Claude tasks.

_Claude's message box, from Anthropic's getting-started guide: the "+" button on the left, "Type / for commands" in the box and the model picker on the right (Anthropic's screenshot still shows an older model, Opus 4.5). Source: Get started with Claude, Claude Help Center._

Step 5: Check which model you're using

On the web and desktop, the model's name shows under your text input, and on a phone it's at the top of the screen. Click the name to open the model picker and switch. The same guide says you can also choose how much effort Claude puts into each answer.

## Which Claude plan and model should a beginner pick?

Start on the Free plan, which costs nothing and runs on Anthropic's Sonnet and Haiku models. Move to Pro ($20 a month) when you keep hitting the limit or want Opus, Projects without the five-project cap, Research or Claude Code, according to Anthropic's pricing page. Anthropic labels Max "For all-day work" and Ultra "For your longest tasks."

Every row below comes from Anthropic's pricing page, checked November 6, 2026. Prices are in US dollars before tax, and Anthropic says plans and prices can change at its discretion.

PlanPriceWhat it addsAnthropic's label

Free$0Chat on web, desktop and phone, web search, file creation, memory, connected apps, Artifacts, and Claude Design, Slides and Docs, on Sonnet and Haiku, with limited usage every 5 hours and every week"Try Claude"
Pro$20 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly ($200 up front)More usage than Free, Opus and more models, Fable paid with usage credits, handing off and scheduling tasks, Projects, Research, Claude Code, and Claude in Chrome and Microsoft 365"For everyday work"
Max$100 a month5x Pro usage every 5 hours and every week, Fable up to half your weekly limit, $100 a month in API credits, priority access at busy times"For all-day work"
Ultra$200 a monthNo 5-hour limit for verified accounts, 10x Pro usage every week, $200 a month in API credits"For your longest tasks"
Team (2 to 150 people)$25 a seat a month, or $20 billed yearly; premium seats $125, or $100 billed yearlyAll Claude features with more usage than Pro per standard seat, plus central billing and admin controls"For teams of 2 to 150"

_The four individual plans on Anthropic's pricing page, with the red box on the Free plan's usage line. Screenshot taken November 6, 2026, from claude.com/pricing._

Our guide to what Claude's Free plan includes and what Pro adds goes through each limit in more detail.

Which model to use

Anthropic's plan comparison marks Sonnet and Haiku as included on every plan and Opus as starting on Pro. Claude Haiku 5.5, the smallest and fastest model, is free to pick in the Claude app.

Fable isn't on the Free plan. Pro pays for it with usage credits, and Max and Ultra include it up to half of the weekly limit, according to the pricing page. When Pat gave Opus 5.5, Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra the same three builds, he wrote that "Opus 5.5 won all three, and it wasn't especially close," and Opus cost less than Fable on two of the three, according to his results post.

How to get the most out of Claude Pro

Pro is the first plan with Opus, Research, handing off and scheduling tasks, and Claude in Chrome. Free accounts can make up to five Projects, and the pricing page lists Projects without that cap on Pro. Anthropic's Projects article says paid plans also let a Project hold up to 10 times more material once its files approach the model's limit.

## Is Claude difficult to learn?

No. You write to Claude in everyday language, and Anthropic's own advice is to start with simple questions and get more specific as you go. For structured lessons, Claude Academy describes its courses, tutorials and use cases as free.

Three Academy courses fit a beginner, according to its home page on November 6, 2026:

- AI Fluency: Framework and foundations: 14 lessons, about 4 hours

- AI capabilities and limitations: 13 lessons, about 3.5 hours

- Building effective human-agent teams (beta): 5 lessons, about 45 minutes

_The three AI Fluency courses on Claude Academy's home page, with lesson counts and lengths. Screenshot taken November 6, 2026, from academy.claude.com._

Worked examples help too. Our page of 12 Claude prompts we ran on Opus 5.5, with results shows what each prompt produced, so you can see the kind of answer to expect.

## What's the best thing to use Claude for?

Anthropic names writing, learning, summarizing, coding, brainstorming, translating and reading images as the main jobs Claude helps with. Its list of uses gives these examples:

- Writing anything from a text message or email to a screenplay

- Learning something new, from pasta carbonara to a programming library

- Summarizing long articles, documents and conversations

- Coding in all major programming languages

- Brainstorming or debating an idea

- Translating between more than a dozen languages

- Reading images, including chart data

Claude can also make files. Anthropic's file creation guide says every plan, Free included, can ask Claude for Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint decks, Word documents and PDFs to download.

In AI for Mortals' runs on Opus 5.5, a two-sentence prompt listed all seven tasks from a meeting transcript with the right owners and dates, and one plain-English paragraph produced a working invoice app in 90 seconds. The best use depends on your job, so start with the task that takes up most of your time.

## How can I use Claude in my daily life?

In daily life, Claude helps with small jobs like drafting an email, explaining a bill or turning notes into a to-do list. Voice mode and memory across conversations are both on the Free plan, according to Anthropic's plan comparison, so you can talk to Claude out loud and it can remember what you've told it before.

Check where your money goes

You can download your bank transactions as CSV files and hand them to Claude. On a made-up year of transactions for a two-person household, Claude found all 15 money problems AI for Mortals had hidden in them, including a gym membership nobody used and the same dinner charged twice. This works on the Free plan, since Anthropic turns on file creation and code for every plan.

If you'd rather link your bank, Anthropic's Personal Finance help page says the feature is a beta on Pro, Max and Ultra in the US only. It connects through Plaid, so Claude never sees your bank password, and it can read your accounts but can't move money. Our post on Claude's Personal Finance covers what it can see.

Turn meetings and messages into to-dos

Paste a meeting transcript, a long email thread or your own messy notes and ask for the action items grouped by person. The first prompt card further down this page does that, and adding today's date let Claude point out which tasks were already overdue.

## How do I use Claude agents?

To use Claude as an agent, describe a whole task in the message box and let Claude work through the steps on its own. Anthropic calls this Cowork, and its Cowork guide says it's on paid plans only (Pro, Max, Ultra, Team and Enterprise). On the pricing page it shows up as "Hand off and schedule tasks."

Anthropic's steps to start a task:

- Open Claude on the web, in the desktop app or on your phone.

- In the message box, select "Cowork."

- Describe the task you want done.

- Review Claude's plan, then let it run.

If your message box doesn't show "Chat" and "Cowork," you have what Anthropic calls the new Claude experience, and any conversation can take on a task, so skip step 2.

The work runs on Anthropic's servers and keeps going if you close your laptop. Tasks that use files on your computer or your browser need the Claude Desktop app open. To repeat a task on a schedule, type /schedule in a task.

Choose how often Claude asks before it acts

The setting in the message box decides whether Claude stops to ask before each action. In the new Claude experience, the guide says Auto is the default on Pro, Max, Ultra and Team, and Manual is the default on Enterprise.

In Auto, Claude reviews every action for safety and blocks the ones it judges unsafe. Anthropic's advice is to stay close, or switch back to Manual, for work involving money, messages sent as you or important files. Our post on Claude's auto mode explains how the safety check decides.

Pat's daily Claude routines

In his video "5 Claude Routines I Use Every Day," Pat describes routines as a way to "set up an automated task once and then have it run on a schedule without you being there," and he sets them up at claude.ai/code/routines.

_The New routine form in Pat's April 2026 video: a name, a plain-English description of the job, a schedule, GitHub or API trigger, and the connected apps the routine can use. Frame from Pat's routines video at 0:30._

The routine he calls "probably the single most useful for me" runs at the end of the day, reads the day's changes to a client's project on GitHub, translates them out of developer speak and saves a client-ready update email in his Gmail drafts. Setting it up "took a couple minutes," he says.

Pat doesn't think routines can replace the automation app n8n yet. For a new automation, he suggests you "try to set it up in Claude Routines first, see if it works there." Routines run in Claude Code, which starts on Pro.

A team of Claude agents on one big project

Agents can also split a large job between them. Pat gave a team of Claude Opus 5.5 agents one goal, a murder mystery game that runs in the browser, and over eight days they wrote the story, cast and voiced the characters, built every room in Blender and coded the whole thing.

## Prompts to copy for your first Claude chats

These prompts come word for word from our post of 12 Claude prompts we ran on Opus 5.5, where each one is shown with what it produced. Swap the details for your own.

**1 · Meeting notes to action items**

```
List the action items from this meeting, grouped by person, with deadlines. Today is Wednesday, October 29.

[paste the transcript here]
```

Every run of this prompt listed the same seven tasks with the right owners and dates, and none listed the task that had been cancelled in the meeting. Tip: change the date line to today's date.

The next two prompts built a small app for a freelancer who forgets who owes them money. They ran in Claude's coding tool, which starts on Pro, and the step-by-step build is in Claude Code for beginners: building an app without writing code.

**2 · Build the first version**

```
I'm a freelancer and I always forget who still owes me money. I don't know how to code. Can you build me a simple app I can open in my web browser where I can type in a client's name, what the job was, how much they owe, and the date the invoice was due. It should show me everyone who hasn't paid yet, with the ones that are late at the top and how many days late they are. Next to each one I want a button that writes a short, polite reminder email I can copy and paste into Gmail. It needs to remember my list when I close it and open it again. Keep it simple and make it look clean. When you're done, tell me exactly how to open it.
```

This produced a working app called Who Owes Me about 90 seconds later. Tip: say who you are and what annoys you before you say what you want built.

**3 · React to what you tried**

```
I tried it and it's great, but a few things:
1. The reminder email starts "Hi Northwind," and Northwind is a bakery, not a person. Let me add the name of the person I deal with for each client and use that in the email.
2. Some of my clients pay me in euros or pounds. Let me pick the currency for each invoice, and don't add euros and dollars together in the totals.
3. Copying and pasting into Gmail is a bit fiddly. Can there be a button that opens the email in Gmail already filled in?
4. At the top, show me how much I've been paid this month.
```

All four changes were done about two minutes later. Tip: describe what went wrong the way you'd tell a person.

## How to use Claude effectively: Anthropic's 4 tips plus Projects

Anthropic's getting-started guide gives four tips: start with simple questions, be specific, refine your prompt or ask follow-ups, and try different kinds of tasks. Projects then keep your files and instructions in one place so you don't repeat yourself.

Be specific about what only you know

In our 27-run test of long and short Claude prompts on Opus 5.5, four kinds of lines changed the answer: facts only you know (your numbers, today's date, the deadline), the format you want, who the answer is for, and what to leave out. Expert personas, "think step by step," all-caps warnings and an offer of a $200 tip made no difference we could measure.

Keep refining in the same chat

Treat Claude's first answer as a draft. Reply with what's wrong and what you want changed, the way the third prompt card above does, instead of starting a new chat each time.

Put repeat work in a Project

A Project is a separate workspace with its own chat history and knowledge base, according to Anthropic's Projects article. You upload documents to it and write instructions, such as a formal tone or answering from a specific role's point of view, and every chat inside it starts with that context. Free accounts can create up to five.

Save a job as a skill

The plan comparison lists skills on every plan, Free included. The Claude skills Pat built and uses show what a saved job looks like.

Claude changes often, and our page on Claude's latest features and updates tracks each release.

## Questions people ask about using Claude

Is Claude free to use?

Yes. The Free plan costs $0 and Anthropic's pricing page calls it "Free for everyone," with limited usage every five hours and every week.

Do I have to download Claude to use it?

No. You can use Claude in any web browser at claude.ai. The desktop and phone apps are optional.

How do I use Claude Desktop?

Download it for Mac or Windows from claude.ai/download and sign in with your account. Anthropic's Cowork guide says the desktop app is what lets Claude reach files on your computer and your browser during a task.

How old do you have to be to use Claude?

At least 18, according to Anthropic's getting-started guide.

What happens when I hit the usage limit?

On Free, Claude tells you when you've reached the limit, and the session limit resets every five hours. Anthropic's getting-started guide says the number of messages you can send on Free varies with demand.

Can I move my ChatGPT history into Claude?

Not your chat history. Anthropic's getting-started guide says Free, Pro, Max and Ultra users can import their memory from another AI provider, but past conversations can't be brought over.

Can I use Claude in other languages?

Yes. Anthropic says Claude performs well in many common languages besides English, and its list of uses names Portuguese, French and German as especially strong.

How do I use Claude Fable?

You need a paid plan. Pro pays for Fable with usage credits, Max and Ultra include it up to half of your weekly limit, and Free doesn't include it, according to Anthropic's pricing page.

How do I learn Claude AI for free?

Use the Free plan on real tasks and take Claude Academy's free courses, starting with AI Fluency: Framework and foundations.

## Sources

- Plans and pricing, Anthropic

- Get started with Claude, Claude Help Center

- Where can I access Claude?, Claude Help Center

- What are some things I can use Claude for?, Claude Help Center

- What are projects?, Claude Help Center

- Create and edit files with Claude, Claude Help Center

- Get started with Claude Cowork, Claude Help Center

- Use Personal Finance in Claude, Claude Help Center

- Claude Academy, Anthropic

- 12 Claude Prompts We Actually Ran on Opus 5.5 and Claude Code, With the Results, AI for Mortals

- Are Your Long Claude Prompts Worth It? We Cut Them Down to Find Out, AI for Mortals

- Claude Code for Beginners: We Built a Small App Without Writing Any Code, AI for Mortals

- We Had Claude Audit a Year of Bank Statements Without Linking a Bank, AI for Mortals

- I Made Opus 5.5, Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra Build the Same App, AI for Mortals

- How I Built a Murder Mystery Game With a Team of Claude Agents, AI for Mortals