Claude, explained

What Claude is, and what it can do for your company

Claude is the AI assistant made by Anthropic, and the name of the models behind it. It runs in the browser, on the desktop and on the phone, and on the paid plans it takes on whole tasks.

Checked against Anthropic's pages on 11 October 2026.

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Four things, before anything else

Who makes itAnthropic, an American AI research and safety company.
What it isAn AI assistant and the models behind it: Claude Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5, Haiku 5.5 and Fable 5.1, on 11 October 2026.
Where it runsOn the web, on the desktop for macOS and Windows (Linux in beta), on iPhone and Android, and as a Chrome extension. Available in the United Kingdom.
What it costsThere is a Free plan. Pro and Team carry prices Anthropic publishes for the UK, in pounds; they are on our Claude pricing page, with the date read. Cowork comes with every paid plan.

01What it is

What Claude is, in short

Claude is the AI assistant made by Anthropic. You write to it as you would to a colleague; it reads, answers, drafts, summarises and works with your files. Anthropic describes it as a collaborator that works on real tasks, not only on questions.

Anthropic is the AI research and safety company behind it, based in San Francisco. It is organised as a Public Benefit Corporation, an American form of company with a stated public purpose.

Claude is also the name of the models. On 11 October 2026 Anthropic lists them as below, and says all of them read text and images, use tools and are multilingual:

Claude Opus 5.5

Writing code and long tasks with many steps; Anthropic's recommended starting point.

Claude Sonnet 5.5

The balance between speed and intelligence, in Anthropic's description.

Claude Haiku 5.5

High volumes and fast tasks: classification, extraction, routing.

Claude Fable 5.1

Complex reasoning and long tasks.

For your company the model's name matters little. What matters is the plan, what you allow it to read, and who sets it up.

02Which is which

Claude, Claude Cowork, Claude Code, the API: which is which

Four names for the same Claude. They are often confused, because Anthropic has changed them several times this year.

Claude, the appThe chat: a question, an answer, a draft, a summary, one turn at a time. On the web, the desktop and the phone. It is on the Free plan too.

Claude CoworkWhat Claude does when you give it a task, not a question: it reads the folders and apps you allow, works through the steps, shows them and stops where you said. It comes with every paid plan and uses the same agent architecture as Claude Code, with no terminal. Since 16 September 2026 Anthropic has been bringing it into every conversation, Pro and Max first.

Claude CodeThe same way of working, for software: a bug, a test, a migration, from the terminal, an IDE, Slack or the web. On Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise. Cowork is built on it.

The APIThe models without the app, for software built for you: directly from Anthropic or through Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud and Microsoft Foundry. That is how we build an AI agent on Claude: on your own account, by default on Amazon Bedrock in the London region.

An AI agent on Claude, in our words, is a program we build that uses Claude. It takes on one of the company's processes end to end: orders, quotes or support requests. It works in your systems around the clock and asks a person only when a decision is needed.

Cowork has its own page: the Claude Cowork guide.

03How you use it

How you use it: apps, projects, skills, connectors

You install nothing beyond Claude itself. What decides whether it works well in your company is the plan, the folders and the connectors.

The apps

The web, at claude.ai; the desktop for macOS and Windows, Linux in beta; iPhone and Android; the Claude in Chrome extension. The chat works on every plan, Free included; Cowork and Claude Code need a paid plan.

Projects

Separate workspaces, each with its own history and knowledge: instructions and files, the price list, the templates, the staff handbook. Up to five on Free; on Team and Enterprise they are shared with colleagues.

Skills

Folders of instructions, scripts and resources that Claude loads when it needs them. Some are Anthropic's, for Excel, Word, PowerPoint and PDF; others you write yourself, for the way you price a quote. On every plan.

Connectors

On 11 October 2026 Anthropic's directory had connectors for Microsoft 365, Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive, Xero (read-only) and QuickBooks. It also lists verified connectors for Zoho CRM, Books, Desk and Projects; Zoho Inventory joins through Zoho MCP, Zoho's official MCP server. Sage and FreeAgent have none: for them we build an MCP server, priced in the offer.

04What it costs

What Claude costs in the UK

Here, what each plan covers; Anthropic's UK prices, in pounds, with the date read, are on our Claude pricing page. Cowork and Claude Code come with every paid plan.

There is a Free plan, free for everyone, as Anthropic puts it: chat on the web, desktop and phone, web search, files, memory and up to five projects. No Cowork and no Claude Code.

Plan	For	How you pay	The data
Pro	One person, to try Claude; not for company documents	Monthly or annually, by card, to Anthropic	Consumer terms; training is on until you turn it off
Max	One person who works with it a lot: 5 or 20 times the usage of Pro, monthly only	Monthly, by card, to Anthropic	Consumer terms; training is on until you turn it off
Team, standard seat	A company, from two seats, with an admin	Monthly or annually, per seat, from the company account	Commercial terms, no training on your content; data processing agreement included
Team, premium seat	Staff who use it heavily: a limit five times that of a standard seat	Monthly or annually, per seat, from the company account	Commercial terms, no training on your content; data processing agreement included
Enterprise	Larger companies; Anthropic makes the offer, and usage is paid on top	Under a contract with Anthropic, in USD	Commercial terms, no training on your content; custom retention and audit logs

Pro and Max are personal plans on consumer terms, which is why a company goes on Team. Every plan has usage limits that reset every five hours, with no published figures.

You buy the seats directly from Anthropic, by card, in pounds. We do not resell them and add nothing to their price.

Every plan, with the date read, and a calculator: Claude pricing in the UK.

05British English

Does Claude write British English?

Yes, when you ask it to. It writes organise and colour, puts the day before the month and prices in pounds, and keeps a formal or a familiar tone as you choose. It reads a scanned contract or invoice and translates in the same conversation.

What Anthropic says: its models page states that all current models are multilingual. We found no official list of languages in Anthropic's help centre on 11 October 2026, so we do not quote one.

What we know from practice: we use Claude every day and build it into agents for clients. Sally, the support assistant for Salus Controls, is a published case study. Conversations ending without an answer fell from 35.6% to 14.3% within 30 days of go-live.

The Sally case study, for Salus Controls.

06The data

Where the data goes

The answer depends on how you use Claude: on a company seat, on a personal plan, or through an agent we build.

A Team or Enterprise seat

The task, including any local file Cowork opens, goes to Anthropic. Anthropic stores the data in the US and may process it in the US, Europe, Asia or Australia; no plan keeps a seat's data in the UK or the EU today. The commercial terms prohibit training on your content, and Anthropic's data processing agreement includes the UK Addendum for the transfer.

A Pro or Max plan

Consumer terms, for an individual. Data from Free, Pro and Max may be used to improve the models if you allow it in the settings, or when a conversation is flagged for a safety review. They are not for business data: company data goes on Team.

An AI agent on Claude that we build

It runs in your own AWS account, on Amazon Bedrock in London (eu-west-2). There Opus 5.5 runs in the UK, while Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5 are processed within Europe, not always in the UK. It works in your company's name with the least privilege that works, and the log of every action stays with you.

In the UK the law is the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, with the Information Commission (formerly the ICO) as regulator. On Team, Anthropic is your processor, and your privacy notice has to name the kinds of organisation that process personal data for you.

There is no UK AI Act. Where a system makes a decision about a person with legal or similarly significant effect, Articles 22A to 22D of the UK GDPR apply.

The company's AI policy, which we hand over with every delivery, says which client data may go into Claude.

The data and security page: the three layers in one table, the AI policy, the security pack for your IT.

07Claude or ChatGPT

Claude or ChatGPT?

Both are assistants built on large language models; both answer, write and summarise. The feature lists change monthly on both sides, so we do not rank them and do not say what the other product can or cannot do.

For a company the choice is not the feature list. It is the work to be done, the terms your data sits under, and the connectors to the systems you actually use: Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, Zoho, Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, FreeAgent. And who sets it up.

We build on Claude. Svennis Cloud Solutions is a Select Partner in the Claude Partner Network, and the agents we have published run on Claude. Ten colleagues on our team hold the Claude Certified Architect certification, the official certification for people who build with Claude.

08How to start

The four steps, with the price of each

You start with the Workshop, which chooses where Claude is worth it first. At the end of every step you decide whether to go on.

Step 1Claude Readiness Workshop2 weeks: the processes worth doing, with the value and the cost of each. Credited in full against a pilot signed within 60 days.2,500 GBP
Step 2, option AClaude Pilot A: an AI agent on Claude30 days. The base price covers one process end to end, one channel, the existing connectors, one new MCP server and the skills.from 16,800 GBP
Step 2, option BClaude Pilot B: Claude Team for your team30 days. The base price covers the company account for the whole team, the existing connectors, three real tasks, the company's AI policy and two Claude ambassadors.from 12,500 GBP
Step 3Department ActivationA 2-week sprint per department, with 5 to 8 tested skills. At day 90 you decide whether to extend.from 5,600 GBP per department
Step 4Managed AI OperationsMonthly, no minimum term: we keep what we built running.from 550 GBP a month

A small team, or already on Claude Team? Claude Team Adoption sets it up in 2 weeks, from 5,900 GBP. Not sure which process to start with? The AI readiness test has 18 questions and takes a few minutes.

All prices are in GBP and exclude VAT.

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09Questions

Questions about Claude

What is Claude AI?

The AI assistant made by Anthropic, an AI research and safety company in San Francisco. The name covers the app and the models behind it: Claude Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5, Haiku 5.5 and Fable 5.1 on 11 October 2026.

Is Claude free?

There is a Free plan, with the chat, files, memory and up to five projects; Cowork and Claude Code need a paid plan. Pro and Team carry prices Anthropic publishes for the UK, in pounds; they are on our Claude pricing page, with the date read.

Which languages does Claude answer in?

It answers in the language you write in, and in British English when you ask for it. Anthropic says all current models are multilingual; we found no official list of languages in its help centre.

What is Claude Cowork?

The way Claude works when you give it a task, not a question. It reads the folders and apps you allow, works through the steps and asks where you told it to. It comes with every paid plan, at no extra cost.

What is Claude Code?

Claude for software: a bug, a test or a migration, from the terminal, an IDE, Slack or the web, on Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise. If you write code, Claude Code; if you run a company, Cowork.

Pro or Team for a company?

Team. Pro is for one person, on consumer terms. Team has commercial terms with no training on your content, a data processing agreement and an admin, from two members; the price per seat, monthly and annual, is on our Claude pricing page.

How does a UK company pay for Claude?

Directly to Anthropic, from the company account, by card, in pounds; Enterprise is contracted separately, in USD. We do not resell seats: in Pilot B you buy them from the company account and we set them up.

Where is the data when we use Claude?

On a seat, Anthropic stores the data in the US and may process it in the US, Europe, Asia or Australia; no plan keeps a seat's data in the UK today. On Team there is no training on your content, and the transfer sits on the UK Addendum. An agent we build runs in your own AWS account, from London.

Can Claude raise invoices in Xero, Sage or FreeAgent?

Not from a seat today. Xero's own connector in Anthropic's directory reads the books and does not write, and on 11 October 2026 there was no connector for Sage or FreeAgent. Draft invoices in your ledger are agent work: in Pilot A we build the connector or MCP server, priced in the offer.

Who is Anthropic?

The company that makes Claude: AI research and safety, based in San Francisco, organised as an American Public Benefit Corporation. Svennis Cloud Solutions is a Select Partner in the Claude Partner Network, and is not Anthropic.

10Sources

Sources: the Anthropic pages read for this guide

Every product fact comes from one of the pages below, read on 11 October 2026, or from the site's price modules. What we could not check, we did not write.

Claude, Claude Cowork and Claude Code are names of Anthropic's products. Svennis Cloud Solutions is a Select Partner in the Claude Partner Network, and is not Anthropic.

The Anthropic pages this guide rests on

Where next

Claude Cowork, explainedWhat it does, what it costs, where the data goes.Claude pricing in the UKEvery plan in pounds, with the date read.The AI readiness test18 questions, a few minutes, a score and a plan.Data and securityThe three layers and the AI policy.Claude for businessWhich subscription you need, what it costs and how you put it in place, step by step.Claude by industryWhat an AI agent on Claude can take on in your sector.

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