Claude has a real free plan, but paid plans don't list token counts

Claude is free, and the free plan is not a trial. Anthropic's pricing page, read on 23 October 2026, lists Free at $0. The bigger surprise is what is missing from the paid plans. Anthropic does not publish a token count for any of them, so any number you see online is a guess.

What Free includes

Free covers chat on web, desktop and mobile, web search, creating files and running code, and memory across conversations. It also has connectors to your apps and tools, Artifacts, and the Claude Design, Slides and Docs tools. Voice mode and incognito chats are on Free too.

The limits are clear. Claude Code, Claude Science and @Claude are marked No. Projects are capped at five. The current top model, Claude Opus 5.5, starts at Pro.

What Pro and Max add

Pro costs $20 a month, or $17 a month if you pay $200 up front for the year. It adds Claude Code, Claude Science, uncapped Projects, more models, Claude in Chrome and Claude for Microsoft 365. Claude Code shares your plan's usage limits, so chat and coding draw from one pool.

Max starts at $100 a month and comes in two sizes: 5x or 20x the usage of Pro. It also adds higher output limits, priority access at busy times, early access to features and $100 to $200 a month in API credits. Those credits are for building your own tools on Claude, so value them separately.

Why there is no token count

A token is a small chunk of text the AI reads or writes. Anthropic says usage resets on a rolling five-hour window, and paid plans add weekly limits. How much you get depends on conversation length, the model you pick and the features you use, so there is no fixed message count.

Pro gives at least 5x more usage per session than Free. Max gives 5x or 20x more than Pro. Those are comparisons against a baseline that has no published number, so they cannot be turned into tokens.

What to do

• Check Settings, then Usage, to see how often you actually hit a limit.
• If you rarely see a limit message, Max's bigger allowance may not be something you feel.
• Read the live pricing page before you budget. Anthropic says prices and plans can change.

Billing rules matter if you switch. Upgrades take effect immediately with the remaining value credited. Downgrades wait until the current period ends. Refunds are generally not available, though the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom get a fourteen-day withdrawal window.