Claude is free to use in 2026. Not a trial, not a demo with an expiry date: claude.ai has a permanent free plan that runs Claude Sonnet 5, one of the strongest models Anthropic ships. The catch is knowing which free routes exist, what each one includes, and where the limits sit. Some options give you the chat app, some give you Claude Code, and some give you raw API access you can test with Apidog without spending a cent.
This guide walks through every working free option, from the official free plan to guest passes, free API credits, and Claude access hiding inside tools you may already use. If you’re deciding whether the paid tier makes sense afterward, our Claude Free vs Pro comparison covers that decision in detail.
Is Claude free?
Yes. The free plan at claude.ai requires no credit card and never expires. As of August 2026 it includes:
- Claude Sonnet 5, the default model for free users since July 2026
- Claude Haiku 4.5 for faster, lighter replies
- Web search, file uploads, and image inputs in the chat interface
- Access on web, desktop, and mobile apps
What it doesn’t include: Claude Fable 5 (and Opus-tier models). Anthropic’s help center confirms Fable 5 is available on paid plans only: Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise. There was a brief free window in June 2026, which we covered in How to Use Claude Fable 5 for Free, but that promotion ended on July 19, 2026.
Free usage is also metered. Anthropic doesn’t publish exact numbers, but community measurements put the free plan at roughly 15 to 40 messages per rolling 5-hour window, and capacity shrinks when demand spikes because paid users get priority. Treat the free plan as generous for daily questions and short coding sessions, and tight for long back-and-forth work.
Option 1: the claude.ai free plan
The simplest route. Go to claude.ai, sign up with an email or Google account, and start chatting with Sonnet 5.
Sonnet 5 on the free plan is the same model paying users get, not a downgraded variant. We keep a dedicated guide to using Claude Sonnet 5 for free if you want to go deep on this one route. It handles code generation, document analysis, and multi-step reasoning well enough that many developers never hit a wall on quality, only on quota. Our Claude Sonnet 5 benchmarks breakdown shows where it lands against Opus-tier models.
Tips for stretching the free quota:
- Front-load context. Long conversations burn quota faster because Claude re-reads the whole thread each turn. Start fresh chats for new topics.
- Use Haiku 4.5 for quick lookups. Model selection is in the chat composer. Haiku answers cost less capacity than Sonnet answers.
- Time your sessions. The 5-hour window rolls continuously. If you hit the cap, the app tells you when messages free up.
Option 2: Claude Code guest passes
If you want Claude Code specifically, guest passes are the free door in. Anthropic gives Max-plan subscribers a small number of passes to share, each granting a new user seven days of Pro-level access, Claude Code included. Ask a colleague on a Max plan to run /passes in Claude Code, or check developer communities where spare passes circulate.
The fine print: passes are for new accounts, and reports say a card on file is required even though the week itself is free. Once the pass expires you drop back to the free plan rather than being charged automatically into Pro, but check the terms at redemption since referral mechanics change.
For the longer-term play, we’ve covered a proven way to use Claude Code for free and how to claim promotional Claude Code credits when Anthropic runs those campaigns.
Option 3: free API credits, tested with Apidog
New accounts at platform.claude.com receive a small starter credit balance. Third-party reports put it around $5, enough for real experimentation with Sonnet 5 or Haiku 4.5 over the API. Our guide to free Claude API access lists every route to API credits in more detail.
Five dollars evaporates fast if you burn it on trial-and-error requests. This is where Apidog earns its place in the workflow:
- Import the Anthropic API spec into Apidog so every endpoint, header, and body schema is filled in for you. No hand-typed curl commands, no malformed requests that cost tokens and return errors.
- Test one canonical request per use case. Send a single well-formed call to
/v1/messages, inspect the response structure, and save it as an example. - Mock the rest. Apidog can turn that saved response into a local mock server. Your app develops against the mock for free, and you only hit the real API for final verification.
That pattern routinely cuts API spend during development by an order of magnitude, and it’s the same approach we recommend in How to Cut Your Claude API Bill. When you do go to production, prompt caching keeps the paid bill down too.
Option 4: Claude inside tools you already have
Claude models show up inside other products with free tiers, which means you can reach Claude without an Anthropic account at all:
- GitHub Copilot offers Claude as a selectable model, so a Copilot subscription (or the limited free tier) is a side door to Claude in your editor.
- Poe, DuckDuckGo AI Chat, and Brave Leo all expose Claude variants with free daily allowances. Quotas are small but fine for occasional use.
- Cursor and Windsurf trials include Claude among their model options. Useful for a two-week evaluation sprint, and we’ve written up how to use Claude Sonnet 5 in Cursor step by step.
Quality caveat: these integrations sometimes route to older or smaller Claude models, and system prompts differ from claude.ai. For anything where model behavior matters, verify which model you’re getting.
Option 5: cloud provider trial credits
AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, and Azure AI Foundry all serve Claude models, and all three clouds hand out trial credits to new accounts. If you already have startup or education credits on any of them, that’s Claude API access you’ve already paid nothing for. Setup differs per cloud; our walkthrough on running Claude Fable 5 on Bedrock, Vertex, and Foundry covers the wiring, and the same steps apply to Sonnet 5.
This route is the most work, but it’s the only free path to Fable 5-class models right now, since the consumer free plan excludes them.
What free Claude won’t give you
Being clear about the ceiling saves you frustration:
- No Fable 5. Paid plans only, and on Pro it draws from pay-as-you-go usage credits rather than the flat subscription. See How to Access Claude Fable 5 for the full plan matrix.
- Lower priority at peak times. Free capacity shrinks when servers are busy.
- Tighter session limits. Long agentic runs and big projects will hit the wall. Claude Fable 5 Rate Limits Explained breaks down how Anthropic’s limit system works across tiers.
If you keep hitting limits weekly, that’s the signal the $20 Pro plan pays for itself. Until then, the free stack above covers most individual use.
FAQ
Which model does the free Claude plan use in 2026? Claude Sonnet 5 is the default, with Haiku 4.5 available for faster replies. See our full Sonnet 5 guide for its capabilities and pricing if you later move to the API.
How many messages do free users get? Anthropic doesn’t publish a fixed number. Community estimates land around 15 to 40 messages per 5-hour rolling window, varying with server load and message length.
Can I use the Claude API for free? New platform.claude.com accounts get a small starter credit, and cloud trial credits on Bedrock, Vertex, or Foundry also work. Pair the credits with Apidog’s mock servers so development traffic never touches the paid API.
Is Claude Code free? Not on the free plan. Guest passes give seven free days, promotional credit drops happen a few times a year, and the API starter credit can fund a few short sessions.
Start free, test smart
The free plan at claude.ai is the best no-cost entry point to a frontier model in 2026: real Sonnet 5, no card, no expiry. Layer on a guest pass when you want to try Claude Code, and use starter API credits for integration work. Whatever route you pick, put Apidog between your code and the API so mocks absorb your development traffic and the free credits go toward calls that matter. Download Apidog for free and pair it with your Claude account, then upgrade either tool only when usage tells you to.
