Is Claude Code free? What you can use without paying, and the cheapest ways in
Using Claude Code needs a paid Claude plan or an API key. Here is what each option costs, as of November 2026, and the cheapest way to try it.
Short answer: no. Claude Code needs something to pay for the model it runs on — a paid Claude plan or an API key. As of November 4, 2026, Anthropic's free plan doesn't include it.
What Anthropic includes for free
Anthropic's Free plan gives "limited usage every 5 hours and every week" in the Claude apps. Claude Code is listed among the features of the Pro plan and above, not Free (claude.com/pricing).
The ways to pay for it
| Option | Price | What limits it |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Pro | $20 a month ($17 billed annually) | 5-hour and weekly limits, shared with the Claude apps |
| Claude Max | $100 a month | 5× Pro, every 5 hours and every week |
| An API key | Per token, at list price | Your balance |
| A Token Plan | $20 a month for $60 of usage | The monthly credit; no 5-hour or weekly windows |
Anthropic's Claude Code help article also notes that if an ANTHROPIC_API_KEY variable is set, Claude Code uses the API key instead of your subscription and you are billed for API usage.
Trying it for an afternoon
If you only want to try Claude Code for an afternoon, pay-as-you-go on an API key costs exactly what you use. Claude Haiku 5.5 is the lowest-priced Claude model at $0.1 per 1M input tokens and $0.5 per 1M output tokens, and Claude Code can also run on non-Claude models such as DeepSeek V4.1 Flash at $0.15 per 1M input tokens:
| Model | Input / 1M | Cached / 1M | Output / 1M | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 5.5 | $0.1 | $0.01 | $0.5 | 1M |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | $2 | $0.1 | $10 | 1M |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | $0.15 | $0.003 | $0.6 | 1M |
| GLM-5.3 | $0.77 | $0.143 | $2.42 | 262K |
Set two variables and Claude Code runs on an Inferray key — see Claude Code with any model.
Using it every day
For daily use, a fixed monthly budget is easier to live with than per-token billing. A Token Plan's $20 buys $60 of usage at list price, spent on whichever models you choose, with no windows. Use the cost calculator to see which plan your usage needs.
Prices on this page come from the model catalog and were current on November 12, 2026.