Anthropic's new Claude Duet agent opens to US Max users first, Pro next

Anthropic has opened a research preview of Claude Duet, an agent that keeps working in the background, to US users on its Pro and Max plans. Reports say Max accounts get invites first and Pro follows. That order is not in Anthropic's own documents. It comes from a 28 October observation by TestingCatalog, so treat it as what people are seeing, not official policy.

What Anthropic says

• Eligible: US Claude accounts on Pro or Max. Free, Team and Enterprise are excluded for now.
• Access: join a waitlist. Invitations go out in waves, with no promised date.
• Cost: nothing extra during the preview.
• Model: Claude Opus 5.5, picked by Duet. Users cannot choose.
• Where: standalone iOS and Android apps plus claude.ai, separate from the main Claude app.

New users get one full limit reset, valid only until 30 November 2026. Memory, skills and connected apps carry over from your Claude account.

Why Max may come first

Anthropic has not explained the order, so this part is inference. Duet's background work counts against the same five-hour and weekly limits as chat. Max plans carry five times Pro's allowance on the entry tier and twenty times on the top one. Those users have the most room for an agent that works while nobody is typing. Cloud capacity during the preview is also finite.

What it means for Pro

Pro costs $20 a month, or $17 a month billed annually. Duet is not a free extra on that plan. It draws on the same budget as everything else, and Anthropic warns users may hit limits sooner than with chat alone.

• Background checks count toward your limits, even on a quiet afternoon.
• You cannot switch Duet to a cheaper model to stretch your week.
• After 30 November, the preview runs on your ordinary allowance.
• Anyone who also uses Claude Code on Pro shares one allowance across both.

What Duet can and cannot do

Duet checks connected accounts every few hours, not continuously, so urgent items between checks wait. It works in a cloud virtual machine with its own browser. You cannot watch or take over that session. It needs your approval before sending messages, making payments, signing documents or deleting anything.

Some actions are refused even with approval, including trading securities, moving money between accounts and reaching into someone else's account. Anthropic says Duet never directly sees passwords or sign-in tokens, and it blocks the strictest data, such as credit card and government ID numbers. Microsoft 365 is not supported. Duet makes no calls or texts.

What is not known

Anthropic has not said how many invitations go out per wave or when Pro users will get theirs. For developers, there is no API key or per-token price that reaches Duet. The invite email is the only thing that will confirm your place in line.