What Claude actually costs.
Claude has a free tier, a $20 Pro plan, two pricier Max tiers, and a per-token API with three model sizes. Here's what each costs and what a real prompt runs you — honest September 2026 numbers.
01 The plans
| Plan | Price | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Trying Claude, light daily use |
| Pro | $20/mo | Most users — solid limits, Projects, Artifacts |
| Max (5×) | $100/mo | Heavy users wanting 5× the usage |
| Max (20×) | $200/mo | Power users living in Claude all day |
In the app, you're not billed per word — you get a usage allowance measured in messages, and the Max tiers simply raise that ceiling. Most people are well served by Pro.
02 Pay-per-use (the API)
Claude's API charges per token (~¾ of a word), and you pick a model size by how hard the job is. Current rates, per million tokens (input / output):
| Model | Input / Output (per 1M) | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku | $1 / $5 | Fast, cheap, high-volume tasks |
| Claude Sonnet 5 | $2 / $10 — permanent as of Aug 10, 2026 | The everyday workhorse |
| Claude Opus 5 | $5 / $25 | Near-flagship reasoning & agents (released July 24, 2026) |
| Claude Fable 5.1 | $10 / $50 | The top tier — long, complex, agentic jobs (released Sept 1, 2026) |
Fable 5.1 update · September 1, 2026: the per-token rates above did not move, but Fable 5.1 cut its cache read price from $1 to $0.25 per million tokens — 2.5% of the input rate, where every other Claude model charges 10%. Cache reads are what you pay when a request re-uses context the model already processed, so this only helps if you send the same long context repeatedly. Anthropic puts the saving at roughly 25% on typical workloads and up to 45% on heavily agentic ones. Nothing changes if you use Claude in the app — this is an API-side price. Full explainer: Claude Fable 5, explained.
Picking the right size is the whole cost game: Fable is 10× Haiku on input and Opus is 5×. Use the small model for routine work and save Opus for jobs that truly need it.
03 What a prompt actually costs
- Quick question (~250 in / 350 out): a fraction of a cent on any model.
- Summarize a 2-page doc (~800 in / 1,200 out): about $0.014 on Sonnet 5 — and that rate is permanent as of August 10, 2026; ~$0.007 on Haiku.
- Deep analysis on Opus (~2,500 in / 3,500 out): roughly $0.10 — the premium model on a long job is where cost shows up.
Claude's writing and reasoning quality is its draw — and for normal use, prompts are pennies. The cost lever is model choice: don't run everything on Opus. For most daily work, Pro ($20) flat beats per-token, and Sonnet is the right default if you're on the API.
04 Which is right for you?
- Trying it / light use: Free tier.
- Daily driver: Pro ($20).
- All-day heavy use: Max ($100 or $200) — only if you keep hitting limits.
- Builder: API — default to Sonnet, drop to Haiku for volume, reach for Opus sparingly.
Compare Claude against every other tool — subscription vs pay-per-use — with your real numbers.
Open the AI Cost Calculator →Quick gut-check
If you're on the API, look at how often you reach for Opus. Most jobs run fine on Sonnet at a fifth the price. Reserving Opus for the genuinely hard ones can cut your bill dramatically without hurting output.
Run the numbers →What you can do now
- Know the plans: Free, Pro ($20), Max ($100 / $200)
- Read the API rates by model: Haiku $1/$5, Sonnet 5 $2/$10 (now permanent), Opus 5 $5/$25, Fable 5.1 $10/$50
- If you send the same long context over and over on the API, Fable 5.1’s $0.25 cache-read rate is the cheapest of any Claude model
- Control cost with model choice — Sonnet by default, Opus sparingly
- Pick the plan that matches your real usage