Plans comparison (Free / Pro / Max / Team / Enterprise)
Claude.ai offers five subscription tiers — Free, Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise — each designed for a different scale of individual or organizational use. Free gives anyone basic access to Claude at no cost. Pro adds significantly more usage capacity and features for daily professionals. Max comes in two sub-tiers (5x and 20x) for heavy users who need far greater throughput. Team is built for groups of five or more people, with per-member usage limits and admin controls. Enterprise is designed for large organizations that need per-seat access plus metered API-rate usage billing, expanded context windows, compliance tooling, and deep integrations with workplace tools.
Usage on paid plans is governed by rolling windows — a five-hour session limit and a seven-day weekly limit — rather than a simple daily cap. This means exhausting a session limit mid-morning does not end your day; the allowance refreshes after five hours. Max plans carry two weekly limits: one across all models and a separate one specifically for Sonnet models. Enterprise is the exception — it has no plan-level or seat-level usage caps; instead every token consumed is billed at standard API rates on top of the per-seat fee.
All plans share a 200K-token context window except Enterprise, which unlocks 500K tokens on some models. The Pro plan does not include API access through the Claude Console; that requires a separate Console account billed independently. Team and Enterprise plans add administrative features such as SSO, spend controls, and audit logs that individual plans do not offer.
When you’d use it
- ◆Student or casual learner (Free) — Someone new to AI who wants to draft essays, ask questions, or brainstorm ideas a few times per week without spending money.
- ◆Freelance writer or content creator (Pro) — A writer who works with Claude every day to draft, edit, and refine articles. Pro's 5x usage increase over Free, priority access during busy periods, and Projects feature for organizing reference materials keep them productive.
- ◆Software developer with intensive coding sessions (Max 5x) — A developer who runs long Claude Code terminal sessions daily. Max 5x gives five times Pro's usage, includes Claude Code access, and prevents mid-sprint interruptions from hitting session limits.
- ◆AI researcher running back-to-back experiments (Max 20x) — A researcher who collaborates with Claude nearly all day, testing multiple model outputs and iterating on results. Max 20x provides 20 times Pro's usage and priority access to the newest models, effectively eliminating downtime.
- ◆Small startup (5–20 people) consolidating billing (Team) — A startup where different roles need different amounts of Claude access. Admins assign Premium seats to senior engineers and Standard seats to others, manage everything from a single invoice, and use SSO and spend controls.
What changed recently
- ◆2025-04 — Anthropic introduced the Max plan with two sub-tiers (Max 5x and Max 20x) to address high token consumption from Claude Code and Cowork agentic environments.
- ◆2026-05 — Claude Code's five-hour rate limits were doubled for Max plan subscribers, and the peak-hours limit reduction on Claude Code for Max accounts was removed.
- ◆2026-05 — Team plans introduced Premium seats (6.25x Pro usage, includes Claude Code) alongside Standard seats (1.25x Pro usage), allowing organizations to mix seat types within a single plan.
This is the short version
The full chapter has three worked examples, the common pitfalls, and the workflow that makes it pay — plus the other 84 features, kept current.
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