It's the question we hear most from businesses rolling out Claude: Claude Team vs Enterprise — which one, and what will it actually cost? On paper the seat prices look identical. In practice, what you pay for, how often you pay and how you pay are very different, and the difference shows up on the first invoice.
Anthropic sells Claude to organisations three ways: the Team plan, Enterprise bought online (self-serve), and Enterprise negotiated with Anthropic's sales team (sales-assisted). Here's what each one really means for your budget, your finance team and your compliance officer.
The Team plan suits groups of 2 to 150 people who want predictable, all-inclusive pricing. It's bought online, paid by card, and you choose either month-to-month or annual billing.
The key point: Team pricing includes usage. Each seat comes with its own usage allowance, so one enthusiastic colleague never eats into anyone else's limits. If someone does hit their limit, the organisation can buy extra usage credits.
| Seat type | Billed monthly | Billed annually |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | USD 25 per user per month | USD 20 per user per month |
| Premium (5x Standard usage, for power users) | USD 125 per user per month | USD 100 per user per month |
These are Anthropic's published US prices, excluding tax; pricing and tax handling vary by region. Once you grow beyond 150 seats, you move to Enterprise. (Source)
Enterprise comes in two flavours. The features and the seat price are the same; what changes is how you buy and how you pay.
You buy self-serve Enterprise at claude.ai without speaking to anyone at Anthropic. It needs a minimum of 20 seats and is billed annually only — there's no month-to-month option.
Payment is in US dollars only, by credit or debit card; newly created self-serve organisations can also use ACH, a US bank transfer method. Usage is paid upfront: you buy a pool of usage credits, and when they run out, usage pauses until an admin tops up. Worth putting a calendar reminder on, unless you enjoy the sound of a whole department discovering Claude has stopped working on month-end.
Sales-assisted Enterprise is the route for organisations that want to pay by invoice and bank transfer. It needs a minimum of 50 seats, is billed annually, and is set up directly with Anthropic's sales team. What you gain:
This is the part most buyers miss. On both Enterprise routes, the USD 20 per user per month seat fee covers access to the platform only — Claude on web, desktop and mobile, plus Claude Code and Cowork. It includes no token allowance at all.
Every token your team uses, in Claude chat, Claude Code or Cowork, is billed separately at Anthropic's standard API rates. So your real Enterprise bill is:
Total cost = (seats × USD 20 × 12 months) + all usage at API rates
For example, 20 Enterprise seats cost USD 4,800 a year in seat fees before a single message is sent. Usage then comes on top, and it depends entirely on how much your people use Claude. Twenty annual Team Standard seats also cost USD 4,800 a year — but on Team, that figure already includes usage.
The upside of the Enterprise model is that there are no per-seat usage limits, and admins can set spend caps for the whole organisation or for individual users. (Source)
| Team | Enterprise (self-serve) | Enterprise (sales-assisted) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seats | 2 to 150 | 20 minimum | 50 minimum |
| Billing cycle | Monthly or annual | Annual only | Annual only |
| How you buy | Online | Online | Negotiated with Anthropic sales |
| Payment | Card | Card; ACH for new organisations | Invoice, bank transfer (ACH or wire) or card |
| Currency | Varies by region | USD only | Multi-currency |
| Seat price | USD 25 monthly / USD 20 annual (Standard) | USD 20 per user per month | USD 20 per user per month |
| Usage | Included, with per-seat limits | Not included; prepaid credits at API rates | Not included; billed monthly in arrears at API rates |
Team covers the identity and admin basics, plus OpenTelemetry monitoring of Claude Cowork so activity can flow into your own SIEM or observability tools. Enterprise adds the audit, retention and compliance tooling that regulated organisations usually need. Both Enterprise routes include the same features.
| Capability | Team | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|
| Central admin and billing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Single sign-on (SSO) and domain capture | ✓ | ✓ |
| Just-in-time (JIT) provisioning | ✓ | ✓ |
| Role-based permissions | ✓ | ✓ |
| Spend caps per organisation and per user | ✓ | ✓ |
| Connectors for workplace tools (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Slack, GitHub) | ✓ | ✓ |
| OpenTelemetry monitoring of Cowork activity (tool calls, files touched, costs) to your own collector | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom OpenTelemetry collector for Office agents (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook) | — | ✓ |
| SCIM user provisioning | — | ✓ |
| Audit logs | — | ✓ |
| Custom data retention controls | — | ✓ |
| Compliance API (activity logs, chat histories, files) | — | ✓ |
| Analytics API (adoption and engagement metrics) | — | ✓ |
| Customer-managed encryption keys | — | ✓ |
| US-only inference | — | ✓ |
| HIPAA-ready configuration with a BAA | — | Eligible organisations |
A note for South African readers: US-only inference keeps processing in the United States. It is not local data residency, so it doesn't on its own settle POPIA's cross-border transfer requirements. Assess those with a qualified advisor — the Information Regulator publishes the guidance — and see our take on Claude Cowork and POPIA compliance by design. Sources: Cowork OpenTelemetry, Office agents OpenTelemetry.
Start on the Team plan. If you need fewer than 150 seats and can live with Team's controls, it's the simplest and usually the most cost-effective option. You can upgrade from Team to Enterprise later, and your chat history, projects and user roles carry over. One caveat: the migration is one-way, so make the move deliberately rather than on a whim.
Move to Enterprise when you genuinely need what it adds: more than 150 seats, SCIM, audit logs, the Compliance API, custom retention, or — via the sales-assisted route — invoicing and non-USD billing.
A few things to plan for either way:
Prices and plans change at Anthropic's discretion, so check the official pricing page before you commit.
Choosing the plan is the easy bit. The return comes from what your team does with it — the workflows Claude takes over, the systems it connects to, and the guardrails that keep it compliant. As a member of Anthropic's Claude Partner Network, that's the work we do every day through our Claude implementation service, from Cowork rollouts to agents wired into your own data.
Not sure whether Team or Enterprise fits, or what your usage bill will actually look like? Book a Free AI Assessment and we'll map your use cases, estimate your real cost, and tell you which plan to start on — even if the answer is the cheaper one.
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Our free AI assessment is a scoped conversation about your systems, your constraints and what is actually worth automating — not a product demo. You leave with a plan you can act on, whether or not you go on to work with us.
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