Is Claude Code free? What's really free, the 7-day trial, and what a month costs

No, Claude Code is not free: it is not included in Claude's free plan. What is free is the software itself—that is, the CLI and extensions for VS Code and JetBrains—and a guest pass: seven days of Claude Pro, including Claude Code, which an eligible Pro or Max subscriber can give to someone who has never had a paid Claude subscription. Beyond that, every model call must be paid for, either by subscription (Claude Pro costs 20 $ per month before tax) or, without a subscription, per token with an API key. At Kunavo, a typical 20-step Claude Code task on Claude Sonnet 5 costs about 0,87 $.

Updated on October 10, 2026. Plan details, prices, and limits are from Anthropic's pricing page, Claude Code's installation documentation, and two help center articles (Claude Code with Pro or Max, guest passes). Kunavo prices are read directly from Kunavo's model catalog.

What is free in Claude Code, and what isn't

Claude Code is an agent: every step—whether it reads a file, proposes a change, runs a command, or checks the result—triggers a call to a Claude model, and those calls must be paid for through an account. According to the installation documentation, Claude Code requires a Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise, or Console account, and Claude.ai's free plan does not include access to Claude Code. It also works through a cloud provider such as Amazon Bedrock or, as explained below, through a gateway with your own API key.

Claude plans that include Claude Code

Prices listed on claude.com/fr/pricing, in US dollars and before tax. For the break-even point between subscription and API usage and details by model, see Claude Code pricing.

According to the help center, Pro and Max share their usage allowance between Claude chat and Claude Code: everything you do in either one counts toward the same limits. The pricing page does not specify these allowances; it only gives Max's multiplier. Once you reach the session or weekly limit, you wait for it to reset or enable usage credits, billed at standard API rates. The monthly API credits included with Max cannot be used in Claude Code. Finally, if ANTHROPIC_API_KEY is set in your shell, Claude Code uses that key instead of the subscription: usage is then billed as API usage, and the plan allowance remains untouched.

The guest pass: seven days of Claude Code at no cost

The only official way to use Claude Code for free is with a guest pass. Here is what the Anthropic help center says:

• Who can send one: only eligible Pro and Max subscribers. They can find their passes in Claude Code using the /passes command, or in Claude settings under “Claude Code,” and share a personal referral link.
• What you get: seven days of Claude Pro, including Claude Code, Cowork, and Claude Design.
• Who can use it: only someone who has never had a paid Claude subscription.
• The catch: you must enter a payment method when signing up. Nothing is charged if you stop using Claude at the end of the seven days; without cancellation, the trial automatically turns into a paid Pro subscription.
• Limited availability: each subscriber has a limited number of passes, which may expire or be withdrawn, and they are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

In practice: ask a colleague or someone close to you who subscribes to Pro or Max for their link, and note the end of the seven days in your calendar if you do not want to pay afterward. If you have already had a paid Claude subscription, you are not eligible for the guest pass; your options are then a subscription or an API key.

Ollama, free models, “uncensored” versions: what these workarounds are worth

Many tutorials promising “free Claude Code” actually suggest a workaround. Here are the three most common, considered objectively:

• Claude Code with Ollama. According to its documentation, Ollama connects Claude Code to local and cloud models through an Anthropic-compatible API. The tool works, but the responses come from an open model by another provider, not Claude. Local use is not billed per token, but you need a sufficiently powerful machine: for large repositories, Ollama recommends a context window of at least 64k tokens.
• OpenRouter's free models. None of the free models in OpenRouter's list came from Anthropic as of October 10, 2026. Claude models are billed per token there, as they are elsewhere.
• Leaked or “uncensored” versions. The CLI is already free; an unofficial version does not change the fact that someone must pay for the model calls—it can only change the model at best. There is also a risk: Anthropic signs its macOS and Windows releases and publishes a signed manifest containing checksums with them (installation documentation). A version obtained elsewhere does not provide this verification chain.

Common to all three approaches: you get the Claude Code interface, but not the model it was built for. Working with Claude costs money; the only question is how little.

What Claude Code costs without a subscription

Without a subscription, you pay per token for every model call. Because Claude Code resends the system prompt, conversation history, and file context at every step, an agentic step is heavier than a chat message: about 25,000 input tokens and 1,200 output tokens. For Claude Sonnet 5, deliberately without prompt caching:

Ten tasks a month therefore cost about 8,68 $ on Kunavo, and the smallest top-up, 10 $, covers about 12 tasks. The 20 $ for Pro amounts to about 460 steps, or 23 tasks per month. If you exceed this volume every month and Pro's limits are enough for you, the subscription costs less; if you code in bursts, the key is cheaper, since a month without coding costs nothing. The full calculation, including Max and details by model, is in Claude Code pricing.

The cheapest way without a subscription: your own API key

Claude Code reads ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL and works with any endpoint that speaks Anthropic's Messages API, without a plugin, proxy, or modified binary. Kunavo is an independent gateway offering the same Claude models at 30% below Anthropic's public rate, paid from a prepaid balance starting at 10 $, with no subscription. The variables to put in your shell:

export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=https://api.kunavo.com
export ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN=sk-kn-...
export ANTHROPIC_MODEL=claude-sonnet-5
export ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL=claude-opus-5-5
export ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_SONNET_MODEL=claude-sonnet-5
export ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_HAIKU_MODEL=claude-haiku-4-5

Keep the model lines. Without ANTHROPIC_MODEL, Claude Code starts with its default model, Opus 5.5 today according to Anthropic; the line makes Claude Sonnet 5 the starting model used in the calculation above. ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL sets the opus alias to Opus 5.5, supported from Claude Code 2.1.280; on an older installation, run claude update. The sonnet alias requests Sonnet 5.5, which Kunavo does not provide: without ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_SONNET_MODEL, /model sonnet, the execution phase of opusplan, and subagents set to model: sonnet fail with a 404 error. ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_HAIKU_MODEL sends Claude Code's background calls to Claude Haiku 4.5.

For a permanent setup, put these variables in the env block of ~/.claude/settings.json. Remote Control and voice dictation require a claude.ai login and do not work with a gateway key; coding, tools, subagents, and MCP work as usual. Step-by-step installation and setup: install Claude Code.

Paying from France or Belgium

Top-ups are made through Stripe Checkout: with a bank card (a co-badged Visa or Mastercard CB card works as a Visa or Mastercard), Link, Apple Pay in Safari and on iPhone, or Google Pay in Chrome and on Android; buyers in Belgium also see Bancontact. Kunavo offers neither PayPal nor SEPA direct debit. Stripe displays the amount in euros, with a 2–4% conversion fee included in the exchange rate; you avoid this by paying in dollars. The balance does not expire and pays only for API usage through Kunavo: it cannot be used to buy a Claude Pro or Max subscription. All payment methods in detail: pay for Claude without a bank card.

Frequently asked questions