Is Claude Code free? No. Claude Code pricing, plan by plan

No. Claude Code is free to install, but you can’t use it on the free Claude plan. Anthropic’s docs say it plainly: “Claude Code requires a Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise, or Console account. The free claude.ai plan does not include Claude Code access” (Claude Code setup). Installing it on Windows? Step by step, with the common errors. The cheapest way in is Claude Pro, at $20 a month in the US or $17 a month billed yearly. The alternative to a plan is a Console account that pays per use at API rates. Prices below were checked on Anthropic’s pricing page on October 4, 2026.

I’ve used Claude Code for about a year and a half, on Claude Max today, building Plyloft and Lyra PPC. So this is the honest version: what each plan gets you, how the limits work, and what you can do without paying.

Claude Code pricing by plan

Plan	Price	Claude Code	Usage, in Anthropic’s words
Free	$0	No	“Free covers everyday questions”
Pro	$20 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly ($200 up front)	Yes	At least 5× Free’s usage per 5-hour session
Max	From $100 a month	Yes	5× or 20× Pro’s usage per 5-hour session
Team	Standard seat $25 a month ($20 yearly); premium seat $125 ($100 yearly)	Yes	Standard: more than Pro; premium: 5× a standard seat
Enterprise	$20 a seat a month, yearly, plus usage at API rates	Yes	Admins set spend limits
Console (API)	Pay per use	Yes	Billed at API rates, no monthly plan

Claude Code doesn’t cost extra on any paid plan. Anthropic’s pricing FAQ: it “is included in all paid plans. It shares the same usage limits as the rest of your plan, so your work in the terminal and your chats draw from one pool.”

How the limits work

Every plan has a limit that resets on a rolling five-hour window, and paid plans add a weekly limit on top. Your chats, the desktop and mobile apps and Claude Code all draw from the same pool, and how far it goes depends on the model, the length of the work and the features you use. There’s no fixed number of messages (Claude pricing).

From my side: on intense days, many hours in a row, I hit the weekly limit even on Max. When that happens I switch to Codex on my ChatGPT plan. At $20, I wouldn’t expect Pro to cover a full working day of agent sessions; it’s a good way to find out whether Claude Code suits you before paying more.

When you run out, you can wait for the reset, move up a plan, or turn on usage credits, which bill at API rates.

What you can do without paying

None of these is Claude Code for free. They’re the honest options if you don’t want to pay yet.

Codex on ChatGPT Free. OpenAI lists Codex on the free ChatGPT plan for quick coding tasks in the desktop app, subject to rollout. The Codex CLI, the IDE extension and Codex on the web start with Plus at $20 a month (Codex pricing). Here’s the full Codex pricing, plan by plan, with how its usage limits work. If you already pay for ChatGPT, you already have Codex: here’s how to install the CLI and sign in.

Google’s Antigravity CLI. You may have read that Gemini CLI gives you 1,000 free requests a day with a personal Google account. That was true, but Google’s own quota page says that for unpaid accounts “Gemini CLI was replaced by Antigravity CLI on June 18th, 2026” (Gemini CLI quotas). Antigravity CLI accepts a free Google account, but its plans page gives no number: accounts without Google AI Pro or Ultra get a quota that refreshes weekly, with a weekly rate limit, while Pro and Ultra refresh every five hours. I haven’t used either, so I can’t tell you how much real work fits in the free allowance.

Claude’s free chat. The free plan can’t run Claude Code, but it can still read code you paste, explain an error or help you plan a change. It’s a long way from an agent working in your repository, and it’s free.

Pay per use instead of a plan. A Console account runs Claude Code at API rates with no subscription. It isn’t free, and I haven’t compared what a typical week would cost against Pro, but it means you only pay for the days you use it.

Is Claude Code worth paying for?

For me, yes: every new job I do starts in Claude Code. But I’d be honest with a friend about why I’d pick it over Codex: it’s a feeling for the platform, not a technical gap that will survive the next model release. If you already pay for ChatGPT, start with Codex: it’s included. I wrote up the longer answer in Codex vs Claude Code. If you’re on Windows, here’s how to install Claude Code on Windows and sign in.

Where Plyloft fits

Plyloft has a Free plan, and it’s free for real: plan a job, build it with one agent, have the other review it, run your checks and ship, one job at a time. It doesn’t include any AI usage, though. It runs the official claude and codex command-line tools on a plan you already pay for: Claude Pro or higher, or ChatGPT Plus or higher. ChatGPT Free and Go don’t include the Codex CLI, so they don’t work with Plyloft. One plan is enough: with only one, the reviewer is a second session of the same agent, and the card says so.

It never asks for an API key, and its server never receives your code, your prompts or your file names. If you already pay for Claude Pro or ChatGPT Plus, or higher, download Plyloft and try the Free plan.