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No. Claude Code is free to install but will not run without a paid Claude plan or an API key billed per token. The cheapest plan is Pro at $20 a month, and Claude's Free plan leaves it out. The only free ways in are a one-week pass shared by a subscriber and a small API credit on a new account.
Pay for Pro if you would open it most weeks and can live with limits that Anthropic puts no number on.
Use an API key if you need it a few times a month and will watch the meter while it runs.
Skip it if you want to see what a coding agent does before paying anyone, because Codex on ChatGPT Free and OpenCode with a free model both run today at $0.
prices checked 2026-10-05 · by dan scutaru
| plan | price | what matters |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Free | $0 | No Claude Code. |
| Pro | $20/mo | Claude Code included. Or $200 upfront for a year ($17/mo). |
| Max | $100 or $200/mo | 5x or 20x Pro's usage per session. Monthly billing only. |
| API key | pay per token | Per million tokens in / out: Sonnet 5.5 $2 / $10, Opus 5.5 $4 / $20. |
Claude Code is not sold on its own. It comes with every paid Claude plan, so the floor is Pro. One allowance covers chat and Claude Code together, on two clocks: a session limit that resets every five hours and a weekly limit. At the limit you wait, upgrade, or switch on usage credits, which bill at API rates once you agree to them.
An API key has no monthly fee, and it is rarely the cheap option. You pay per token, and an agent rereads your code on every turn. Anthropic's own average across enterprise deployments is about $13 per developer per active day, and $150 to $250 a month. At that average, two active days cost more than a month of Pro. The default model on a key is Opus 5.5. Sonnet is half the rate.
There is no trial you can start yourself. Three things come close. Eligible subscribers can share a free week with the /passes command, so ask someone who pays. New API accounts get what Anthropic calls a small amount of free credits. It prints no figure, although other pages quote $5. And open source maintainers who meet the bar can apply for six months of Max 20x.
Two agents run at $0. Codex comes with ChatGPT Free, limited to the desktop app and GPT-6 Luna. OpenCode is open source. You bring the model, and most of its rotating free ones may use your data for training. Gemini CLI, still listed as free on many pages, was replaced by Antigravity CLI for free users on 18 June 2026. Antigravity has a $0 plan with weekly rate limits.
Yes. Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise all include it. On Pro it shares one allowance with chat, so a long coding session eats into your chat.
No. Anthropic lists no student price for individuals. Its education plan is sold to universities, so access depends on your school having bought it.
You can, but it is no longer Claude. Ollama documents a command, ollama launch claude, that points the interface at a model on your own machine. Anthropic says it does not support routing Claude Code to non-Claude models.
No. The public GitHub repository holds plugins and examples, and its licence reads all rights reserved. Codex CLI and OpenCode are open source.