Set it up once, then pick what to pay

Change these first

1. 1

   Stop your chats being used to train the model

   Settings → Privacy → Help Improve our AI models → off. Left on, your conversations can sit in training pipelines in de-identified form for up to five years. Turned off, new chats stop being used going forward, though anything already in a training run that has started stays there.

2. 2

   Don't rate an answer that has client information in it

   Thumbs up or thumbs down sends that whole conversation to Anthropic, and it is kept for five years. This is separate from the setting above and it is not covered by turning that one off.

3. 3

   Decide about memory, and know what it will not keep

   Settings → Memory → Generate memory from chats. On, it carries what it learns from one chat into the next. Health, politics and religion are left out unless you opt in. ID numbers, financial account numbers, criminal history and immigration status are never stored, even if you ask. Deleting a conversation does not delete what it remembered from it, so clear those under Topics.

4. 4

   Learn where the incognito button is before you need it

   The ghost icon starts a chat that is not saved, is not searchable later, and is not used for training even when the setting above is on. Use it for anything about a client, your money or your family.

5. 5

   Turn on file creation, or it can only talk about the spreadsheet

   Settings → Capabilities → Code execution and file creation. Without this, Claude describes the document. With it, Claude hands you the file. Skills need it switched on too.

6. 6

   Switch on skills, then connect only what you need

   Customize → Skills to turn on the ones that come with the account or add your own. Then Settings → Connectors for your calendar, email or files. Every connector you add is standing access until you take it away, so add them one at a time as a job calls for it.

What each plan actually does

US web prices, checked 15 October 2026. Anthropic changes plans and prices, so look before you buy.

The three questions people ask

The published plan page lists projects under Pro while the help article says free accounts get five, so check your own account.

Nobody publishes the number you actually want

There is no official message count for any plan. What is published is the shape: a session allowance that refills every five hours, and a weekly cap on top of it. Max is sold as five times or twenty times Pro's session allowance, so the multiplier is real but the starting number is not stated anywhere.

So don't buy a tier off a spreadsheet. Start one step below where you think you need to be. Upgrade the week you first notice yourself sitting and waiting for the limit to reset, because at that point the math is easy: an hour of your time is worth more than the difference.