Claude Team or Claude Enterprise: which does a business need?

How Claude Team is priced

Anthropic lists Claude Team for 2 to 150 people. A standard seat is US$25 a month on monthly billing or US$20 a month on annual billing. A premium seat, with five times the usage of a standard seat, is US$125 a month on monthly billing or US$100 on annual. You can mix the two. Prices exclude tax, and Anthropic notes that currency and tax handling vary by region, so check the price at checkout in Ireland.

Each Team seat comes with its own usage allowance, which resets every five hours and every week. Limits apply to each member separately, so one heavy user does not use up anyone else's allowance. If people reach their limit, the organisation can turn on usage credits so they keep working, with spending caps for the organisation and for each person.

Team includes single sign-on, central billing, admin controls for connectors, Claude Code and Cowork, and skills shared across the organisation.

How Claude Enterprise is priced

Enterprise works differently. Anthropic lists the seat at US$20 a month, billed annually, with a minimum of 20 seats when you buy online. The seat fee covers access to Claude on the web, desktop and mobile, plus Claude Code and Cowork, and includes no usage. Every request is billed on top at Anthropic's standard API rates, which vary by model.

There is no usage allowance and no usage limit attached to a seat. Owners set spend limits for the whole organisation and for individual people. On the self-serve plan, usage is bought upfront as credits shared by everyone, and when the credits run out, usage stops until an owner buys more. The sales-assisted plan, with a 50-seat minimum, bills usage monthly in arrears and supports invoicing and currencies other than US dollars.

In practice the Enterprise bill depends on how much people use Claude, and how, as much as on the number of seats. Anthropic lists conversation length, model choice and the size of attachments among the things that affect usage. A team that uses the most capable model for every small question, or keeps one very long conversation going, spends more for the same work.

What Enterprise adds

The main differences are in identity management, compliance and billing. The table summarises Anthropic's plan comparison, which is the reference. It changes, so check it before you decide.

• SCIM keeps Claude's member list in step with your identity provider. People are added and removed according to their assignments there, without having to sign in first. Team supports just-in-time provisioning instead, which adds people when they first sign in.
• Audit logs record user actions, system events and data access inside Claude.
• The Compliance API lets your systems retrieve activity logs, chat histories and files, filtered by user and date.
• Custom data retention lets an owner set how long Claude keeps conversations and project data.
• Anthropic also lists custom roles with detailed permissions, IP allowlisting and network-level access control, customer-managed encryption keys, a HIPAA-ready option and skill scanning on Enterprise.

When Team is enough

• Fewer than 150 people will use Claude.
• Single sign-on meets your security requirements, and you are content to add and remove members yourself or through just-in-time provisioning.
• You want a predictable bill: a fixed price for each seat, with usage credits only if you choose to turn them on.
• You want monthly billing while you find out who uses Claude and how much.
• Your data protection assessment does not call for an audit log inside Claude or a retention period other than the default. If you use the Microsoft 365 connector, its activity is recorded in your Microsoft 365 audit log on either plan.

When Enterprise is worth it

Moving later is straightforward. Anthropic recommends upgrading the existing Team organisation rather than starting a new one, which keeps conversations, projects, members and roles. The self-serve upgrade cannot be reversed, and some features that are on by default in Team start switched off in Enterprise, so check the capability settings after the move.

• Your security or compliance team needs audit logs, the Compliance API or control over how long chats are kept.
• You want joiners and leavers handled automatically through SCIM.
• More than 150 people will use Claude, or soon will.
• Use is uneven, with a few heavy users and many light ones, and you would rather pay for what is used than for an allowance on every seat.
• You need invoicing, or billing in a currency other than US dollars, which Anthropic offers on the sales-assisted plan.

Already on Enterprise? Training for your pilot group

Many organisations start Enterprise with a pilot group. Because every request is billed at API rates, the way people use Claude shows up directly in the bill. A group that knows when to start a fresh conversation, which model suits which task, and how to use projects and skills will usually spend less for the same work.

Training for a pilot group typically covers building and sharing the first skills, using artifacts for documents and small tools that others will use, working in shared projects, and the habits that keep usage down. Software teams can have a separate Claude Code session.

What that training covers is set out on Claude training for teams.

Common questions