Claude

Claude is an assistant built by Anthropic for work that runs long: a full script rather than a paragraph, a spreadsheet of sponsor replies rather than one email. The free plan covers web search, file creation and memory across conversations. Pro adds more usage, unlimited projects, research and the ability to connect Slack and Google Workspace. The context window is 200k tokens on every plan, which in practice means a long transcript or a stack of documents goes in whole rather than in pieces.

Free covers chat on web, iOS, Android and desktop. Web search, memory across conversations and file creation are on it too. Pro is $20 a month billed monthly, or $17 a month if you pay $200 up front for the year, and adds more usage, unlimited projects, research and the ability to use more models. Max starts at $100 a month and sells five or twenty times Pro's usage with higher output limits and priority at busy times. Team and Enterprise are quoted separately and add single sign-on, central billing and audit logs.

Writing-heavy work where the input is long: turning a two-hour recording into show notes, editing a script against a research folder, drafting twenty variations of the same email. The free plan is worth trying first because memory and web search are on it. Somebody who mostly wants image generation, or a large library of third-party plugins, is better served elsewhere.