Claude is Anthropic's AI assistant — available on web, iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and Linux — built specifically for people who work with large amounts of text. Think long contracts, dense research papers, sprawling codebases, or multi-chapter drafts that other assistants either refuse to open or quietly mangle. With Claude Opus 5 now live as of July 24, 2026, it also happens to be the strongest model Anthropic has shipped at this price point: same API cost as its predecessor, meaningfully better at nearly everything that matters for real work.
Key Features
- 1-million-token context window on Opus 5 — that's roughly 750,000 words in a single conversation, which means you can paste an entire codebase or a book-length document and Claude will actually read all of it, not quietly skip the middle.
- Projects with persistent instructions and uploaded knowledge — define a system prompt and attach reference files once; every conversation inside that project inherits them automatically, without you re-pasting your style guide every session.
- Artifacts: live, runnable outputs in a side panel — when you ask Claude to build something interactive, it renders it right next to the chat: React components, HTML pages, SVG diagrams, functional tools. No copy-pasting into a separate editor to see if it actually works.
- MCP (Model Context Protocol) connections to external tools — Claude can talk to over 200 external services including Gmail, GitHub, Google Drive, and Slack. Remote MCP connectors are available on Pro and above; local MCP runs on the desktop app on all plans, including Free.
Screenshots
Why You'll Love Claude
A context window that's actually as large as advertised
Most AI assistants claim big context numbers and then quietly degrade — hallucinating details from earlier in the conversation, losing track of characters, confusing section A with section D. Claude's 1M-token window on Opus 5 is the real thing. Anthropic built verification and self-correction into the model's core behaviour: it checks its own work, iterates on failures, and doesn't just give up and return plausible-sounding nonsense. If you've ever fed a 90-page contract into another assistant and watched it confidently misquote clause 14, you'll notice the difference immediately.
Projects that hold your context so you don't have to
The Projects feature is the one that turns Claude from a chat window into something closer to a working environment. Upload your company style guide, your API documentation, your brand voice reference — attach them to a project, write a standing system prompt, and every new conversation in that workspace inherits all of it. No more starting every session with "here's what I'm working on and here are my constraints." For anyone who uses AI heavily in their daily work, Projects alone justifies the Pro subscription.
Category: AI Assistant / Productivity
Platform: Web, iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Linux (Linux beta)
Price: Free, with Pro at $20/month, Max from $100/month
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes — Claude has a free tier with no credit card required, giving you access to the web app, iOS, Android, and the desktop app. The free tier includes web search, memory, file uploads, and even some access to stronger models, though with weekly usage limits. Claude Opus 5, the flagship model launched July 24, 2026, is not available on the free tier; it's the default on the Max plan ($100/month) and accessible on the Pro plan ($20/month or $17/month billed annually). The free tier is genuinely usable for casual queries, but it's too limited for anyone relying on Claude as a daily work tool — you'll hit the ceiling fast.
No. Claude is entirely cloud-based — every message you send is processed on Anthropic's servers, so you need a working internet connection on every platform, including the desktop app. There's no local model option or offline mode. Your conversations and Projects sync across devices when you're signed in, which is convenient, but it does mean Claude is unavailable in a plane without Wi-Fi or anywhere without a reliable connection.
On iOS and Android, Claude requests access to your camera and photo library so you can send images for analysis, and to local storage so you can attach files to conversations. It also uses your microphone if you dictate input. The desktop app (Mac/Windows) additionally integrates with your file system for local MCP connections and can access other running applications if you enable Computer Use — that feature is opt-in and only available on Max, so free and Pro users won't be asked for it. None of these permissions are required to use the basic text chat; they only activate when you try to use the relevant features.