What Is Claude AI? Free Plan, Models, vs ChatGPT

Claude AI is Anthropic's chatbot for writing, code and long documents

Claude AI is Anthropic's chatbot and AI assistant, built for writing, coding and reading long documents. There are three ways in: the web at claude.ai, the desktop and mobile apps, and the Claude API for developers. Web, desktop and mobile chats all share one usage pool, so a conversation you start on a laptop uses the same allowance as one on your phone.

Anyone who has used ChatGPT will find the screen familiar: you type a request, Claude answers, and you keep refining in the same thread. The differences lie in the models behind the chat box, how much text one conversation can hold, and what each plan includes.

Claude is used for drafting, summaries, research and code review

People use Claude for everyday knowledge work such as drafting, summarizing, researching and reviewing code. Typical requests look like these.

• Draft an email, report or proposal from rough notes, then tighten the wording
• Condense a long contract, report or meeting transcript into decisions and open questions
• Research a topic and set out the evidence and the gaps separately
• Review a block of code, explain what it does and point to likely bugs
• Proofread a text and restyle it for a different reader

Anthropic pitches its current Opus model at long-running coding and knowledge work, which is why code sits on the list beside writing. None of the results is finished work, though; each is a draft someone still has to read before using it.

Opus 4.8 testers saw fewer unsupported claims

A hallucination is an answer that sounds confident but has nothing behind it, such as a made-up figure or a source that does not exist. When Anthropic announced Opus 4.8 on May 28, 2026, it said early testers found the model flagged uncertainty about its own work more often and made fewer claims it could not support.

That comes from early testers and is not a promise about every Claude model. Opus 4.8 is no longer the newest Opus, and no model eliminates hallucination, so the fact-checking habits covered under safe use still apply.

Pick Claude models by task, with Sonnet as the free default

Choose a Claude model by how hard the job is, and start with Sonnet, the default on the Free plan. The models come in tiers, with larger ones handling harder reasoning and smaller ones answering faster at lower cost. Anthropic's models overview listed this lineup as current in September 2026.

Anthropic made Sonnet 5 the default on the Free and Pro plans when it launched on June 30, 2026. Version numbers change every few months, so look at the model selector to see which Sonnet your account has now. Claude Sonnet 5 vs Opus 4.8: Pricing, Benchmarks covers what Sonnet 5 changed in speed and price.

Opus takes hard work, Sonnet covers everyday tasks

Give Opus the hard, long-running work and Sonnet everything else. Sonnet handles drafts, summaries, research questions and most code questions quickly enough for back-and-forth chat. Move to Opus when a task needs many steps kept together, like refactoring across several files or cross-checking a long report, or when Sonnet keeps missing the point.

Above Opus sits Fable. Anthropic tells developers to switch to Fable 5.1 only when Opus 5.5 at higher effort is still not enough, so it is meant for the toughest cases rather than daily use.

Haiku and the effort control speed up light questions

For quick questions, Haiku or a lower effort setting answers faster. Haiku 4.5, the fastest model in the September lineup, suits lookups, rewording and short sorting jobs, but its 200K-token context window rules it out for very long files. Anthropic has since released Claude Haiku 5.5, and its context window docs now list Haiku 5.5 with 1M tokens; Claude Haiku 5.5 API pricing and benchmarks covers it.

Next to the model selector is the effort control, which sets how much work Claude puts into an answer. Higher effort means Claude thinks more often and more deeply, while lower effort answers sooner and uses up your rate limits more slowly. Anthropic offers it on every plan, so free users can also trade depth for speed without switching models.

Claude pricing starts free, and Pro or Max plans raise usage limits

Claude costs nothing on the Free plan, and the Pro and Max plans raise your usage limits and open up more models. The prices below come from claude.com/pricing as of September 2026 and exclude tax. Anthropic says it can change prices and plans at its discretion, so check the page before you subscribe.

All plans have usage limits that reset on a rolling five-hour window, and paid plans also have weekly limits. There is no set number of messages, because long conversations, bigger models and heavier features use more of the allowance. Cancel Pro or Max and the account drops back to Free at the end of the billing period, with your chats kept.

Free is enough to see how Claude handles your own work. Pro makes sense once you keep running into the limit in normal use, and Max suits people who use Claude all day and still run out on Pro.

Team and Enterprise subscription plans serve whole companies

Team and Enterprise are the company plans, priced per seat with shared admin controls. A standard Team seat is $20 a month billed annually or $25 billed monthly and includes more usage than Pro. A premium seat with five times a standard seat's usage costs $100 a month annually or $125 monthly, and an Owner handles billing in the organization settings.

Enterprise costs $20 per seat a month plus usage charged at API rates, so the bill rises with the models and tasks your team uses. It is billed annually only. It adds security and admin features such as SCIM, audit logs, custom data retention and role-based access, which matter when legal or IT has to approve an AI tool before staff paste company material into it.

Developers reach Claude via the API, Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud

Developers can use Claude through the Claude API, Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud, Microsoft Foundry and Claude Platform on AWS. API use is charged per million tokens, the small chunks of text a model reads and writes. List prices per million input and output tokens range from $1 and $5 on Haiku 4.5 to $10 and $50 on Fable 5.1, with Sonnet 5.5 at $2 and $10.

API usage is not included in Pro or Max and is billed separately through the Console. If you only want to chat, the subscription plans above are all you need to know.

Claude vs ChatGPT comes down to context window, coding and images

Neither Claude nor ChatGPT wins outright, so choose by the job: Claude leans toward long documents and code, ChatGPT toward making images. Both have a free plan and several paid tiers, with ChatGPT selling Go, Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise. The gaps that matter are context length, coding and image generation.

You do not have to pick just one, either. Using both on their free plans for a while is the cheapest way to learn which suits the work you do most.

Claude's 1M context suits long documents and writing

With a 1M-token context window, one Claude conversation can hold a long contract, report or manuscript in full. The context window is the amount of text, measured in tokens, that a model can refer to at once, including your messages, attached files and its own replies. Anthropic's help center lists 1M tokens on paid plans for Fable 5.1, Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5.5, and says 200K tokens is about 500 pages of text.

ChatGPT's pricing page lists smaller windows: 54K tokens for GPT Instant and 256K for its reasoning model on Plus, rising to 128K and 400K on Pro. For writing, the bigger window lets Claude keep a whole draft in view while it edits one chapter. For code, it can take in more of a project at once.

ChatGPT is the better pick to generate images

For generating images, ChatGPT is the better choice. Every current Claude model takes text and image input and gives text output, according to Anthropic's models overview, so Claude can read a screenshot or chart you upload but always replies in text. ChatGPT's pricing page lists image generation as limited on Free and included on Go, Plus and Pro.

For most people the choice follows the task. If pictures are part of the work, ChatGPT handles it in one app; if the work is long reading, writing or code, try Claude first.

Sign in to Claude AI on the web or app, then refine replies

Getting started takes an account at claude.ai or in the Claude app, a typed request, and a few follow-ups to refine the reply. Setup comes down to three steps.

1. Open claude.ai in a browser, or install the Claude app on desktop or mobile, and sign up for the Free plan
2. Keep the default model or pick another, then describe what you need in plain language
3. Refine the reply with follow-ups: shorter, as a table, for a named reader, or at a set length

You will rarely keep the first reply. Telling Claude who the text is for, what format you want and roughly how long it should be gets you closer in one turn than rewriting the whole request. If something goes off track, quote the wrong sentence instead of asking Claude to start over.

Turn web pages into Markdown before you use them in a chat

Convert a long web page to Markdown before pasting it into Claude, so its headings and tables come through intact. Copying straight from a browser tends to bring along menus, cookie notices and footer links, and tables often fall apart into loose lines. Markdown keeps the page's heading levels and table rows as plain text that Claude reads in order.

sakutto's URL to Markdown tool takes a page address and gives back a Markdown version ready to paste or attach. It does not make Claude any smarter. It keeps the page's structure, so when you ask about the table under a certain heading, you and Claude are looking at the same thing.

Claude AI is safe for work drafts after a human review of the facts

Claude is safe for work drafts provided a person checks the facts before anything goes out. Anthropic itself says AI models sometimes jump to conclusions on thin evidence, and Claude can still give answers that sound right but are wrong. Treat every figure, name, date and quote as unchecked until you have compared it with the original source.

Check your workplace's rules on AI tools before pasting contracts, customer records or anything personal. If your company has a Team or Enterprise plan, use that account instead of a personal one, since that is where admins set data retention and access controls. For decisions with real consequences, treat Claude's answer as input and leave the final call to a person.

Spending works the same way. Begin on the Free plan and upgrade only when you keep hitting the limit on work that matters. Cancelling Pro or Max returns the account to Free at the end of the period, chats included.