Which Claude plans include Claude Code?
Pro, Max, Ultra, Team and Enterprise all include Claude Code as of November 2026. Free does not. Plus the Console pay-as-you-go route and the April pricing-page test.
As of November 2026, every paid Claude plan includes Claude Code: Pro, Max, Ultra, Team (Standard and Premium seats) and Enterprise. The Free plan does not. So the $20 Pro plan is the cheapest way to get it. Claude Code shares the plan's usage limits with the rest of Claude, so it is not a separate allowance. Sources: Anthropic's pricing FAQ and the Claude Code setup docs.
The plans
| Plan | Claude Code | Price (US, as of November 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Free | No | $0 |
| Pro | Yes | $20 a month, or $17 a month billed annually ($200 up front) |
| Max | Yes | $100 a month |
| Ultra | Yes | $200 a month |
| Team Standard seat | Yes | $25 per member a month, or $20 billed annually |
| Team Premium seat | Yes | $125 per member a month, or $100 billed annually |
| Enterprise | Yes | $20 per seat per month billed annually, plus usage at standard API rates |
Prices exclude tax and vary by region. Team needs a minimum of two members and goes up to 150 seats. Enterprise self-serve needs 20 seats; sales-assisted needs 50. See the Team plan article and the Enterprise plan article.
Anthropic's exact wording in the setup docs: "Claude Code requires a Pro, Max, Ultra, Team, Enterprise, or Console account. The free claude.ai plan does not include Claude Code access."
What "included" means
Included means you can sign in to Claude Code with that plan and use it without paying per token. It does not mean unlimited. Every paid plan except current Enterprise has a weekly limit, and most also have a five-hour session limit (verified Ultra accounts do not). Usage in Claude Code, claude.ai and Claude Desktop counts toward the same limit, and so does Claude Code inside VS Code, Cursor and JetBrains IDEs.
How much you get differs by plan, and Anthropic publishes multipliers, not message counts. See what 5x Pro usage means and how much Claude Code you get on Pro.
Some details differ by plan:
- Pro and Team Standard seats do not include Fable models in plan limits. They run on usage credits (apart from the Fable 5.2 launch week, which ends on November 16, 2026). Max, Ultra and premium seats can use up to 50% of the weekly limit on Fable.
- Max, Ultra and Team include monthly API credits, but those do not cover interactive Claude Code.
- On Team, "Claude Code is included with every Team plan seat. Premium seats offer more usage for team members with heavier workloads." Limits are per member and cannot be shared. See Team Standard vs Premium seats.
- Current Enterprise has no per-seat usage limits and no included token allowance. The seat fee "doesn't include any usage", and admins can set spend limits. Older Enterprise contracts, with Standard and Premium seats, keep per-seat limits until they move to the new model at renewal.
Why Free does not work
Free claude.ai has no Claude Code access, so Claude Code will not run on a free account. The fix is to subscribe to a paid plan, or use the Console route below.
The pay-as-you-go alternative: a Console account
You can also use Claude Code with an Anthropic Console account, billed per token at API rates. This is separate from any plan. Pro "does not include API usage through the Claude Console", so a Pro subscription and Console credits are two separate bills. Anthropic lists switching to a Console account and buying API credits as one option when you hit a Pro limit.
There is a trap in the other direction. If an ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment variable is set, Claude Code can use it instead of your subscription, which means API charges rather than plan usage. In an interactive session it asks once whether to use the key and remembers your answer; with claude -p the key is always used when present (authentication docs). If you are on a plan and see unexpected charges, run /status and check which credential is active.
The April 2026 pricing-page test
On April 22, 2026, Anthropic's pricing page briefly showed Claude Code only on Max, which led to a day of confusion. Anthropic's Head of Growth called it "a small test on ~2% of new prosumer signups", and the page was reverted the same day. That account comes from Simon Willison's write-up, a secondary source; no Anthropic page we found confirms it. Pro includes Claude Code today, per Anthropic's current pricing FAQ. Plans change often, so check the pricing page before you subscribe.
How to check your own plan
If you are unsure what your account has, open Settings > Usage on claude.ai. It shows the limits your plan has, including a "Current session" bar if you have a five-hour limit and weekly limits for all models. In Claude Code, /usage shows plan usage bars on a Pro, Max, Ultra, Team or Enterprise plan, and /status shows the version, model, account and connectivity. If both a login and an API key are configured, /status marks the credential that is not in use, which is the quickest way to confirm Claude Code is using your plan.
Which plan to start with
If you want to try Claude Code, start with Pro. If you hit limits, the next steps are Max and then Ultra: see Pro vs Max. For a team, compare Standard and Premium seats first.
Seeing your limits as you go
Headroom is a free Mac menu bar app that shows session and weekly use, and the plan name, for each Claude Code account signed in on your Mac. It works from Claude Code's own sign-in, so it only sees accounts signed in to Claude Code on that Mac. It does not track API key or Console billing. Headroom is independent, from Everyday Mac Tools, and not made or endorsed by Anthropic. Download it from the Headroom home page.