How to allocate and spend seed funding guide for startups
Learn how UK founders can spend seed funding wisely, allocate budget across product, hiring, operations, and marketing, and protect runway for the next round.
As with any other enterprise AI tool, cost is a major consideration when it comes to Claude. The plan, the number of people using it, whether you need the API - the list of factors goes on.
To help you make sense of it all, this guide breaks down Claude pricing for UK businesses, including current plan prices, Team and Enterprise options, API rates and how to budget when costs are shown in USD.
| 💡 Paying for Claude in USD? |
|---|
| Some providers may charge hidden fees or use a marked-up exchange rate, leaving you with a bigger bill for your Claude usage than anticipated. With Wise Business, you can convert GBP to USD to pay your business's Claude bill at the mid-market exchange rate with low, transparent fees and no sneaky exchange rate mark-ups. |
Note: Wise Business offers a free Essential plan for basic spending and transferring. If you need to receive money, set up direct debits, or generate invoices, you'll pay a one-time £50 setup fee to unlock the Advanced features.
Claude's current public price list shows the USD prices below. We've put in all of the plans (not just enterprise) as smaller companies in the earlier stages of their life cycle might still opt for personal plans for select members of their teams.
Prices shown don't include applicable tax, and Anthropic notes that plans and prices can change.1
| Plan or route | Current listed price | Who it may suit |
|---|---|---|
| Free | USD 0 | Occasional use or testing.2 |
| Pro | USD 20 monthly, or USD 200 yearly | Regular individual use. The annual option works out at USD 17 a month, billed upfront.1,2 |
| Max 5x | USD 100 monthly | Individuals who need five times Pro capacity per session.2 |
| Max 20x | USD 200 monthly | Daily, high-volume individual use, with 20 times Pro capacity per session.2 |
| Team | Standard: USD 20 per seat a month annually or USD 25 monthly. Premium: USD 100 per seat annually or USD 125 monthly. | Teams of 2 to 150 that need central billing, administration and more usage.1 |
| Enterprise | USD 20 per seat plus usage at API rates for the self-serve route; a sales-assisted option is also available. | Larger organisations that need additional administration, controls or commercial support.1 |
| API | Usage-based, charged by model and token volume | Developers building Claude into products, automations or internal workflows.1 |
The public Claude pages list the individual plans in USD: Free at USD 0, Pro at USD 20 monthly or USD 200 yearly, Max 5x at USD 100 monthly and Max 20x at USD 200 monthly.2 The Team and Enterprise pages also show USD pricing, with tax excluded from the displayed prices.1
If you're paying using Wise Business, you can either convert GBP to USD at the mid-market rate then pay - or simply pay with your GBP balance, and the conversion to USD will happen at the mid-market rate with low, transparent fees.
For a small team, the Team plan may be the more straightforward route. According to Claude's pricing page, it is for teams of 2 to 150 and includes central billing and administration, single sign-on and controls for connectors. Standard seats offer more usage than Pro, while Premium seats offer five times the usage of Standard seats.1
Enterprise is designed for organisations operating at a larger scale. The self-serve Enterprise route is listed at USD 20 per seat plus API-rate usage, and includes features such as role-based access, SCIM, audit logs, a compliance API and custom data-retention controls.1 If those governance requirements matter, compare the full feature list and commercial route with your existing security, procurement and usage-management needs before committing.
Claude API costs aren't a monthly subscription. They are measured in tokens: input tokens are what you send to a model, while output tokens are what the model returns. A million tokens is shown as MTok on Claude's price list.
| Model | Input price | Output price | What to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fable 5 | USD 10 / MTok | USD 50 / MTok | Anthropic positions it for long-running agents and more demanding workloads.1 |
| Opus 4.8 | USD 5 / MTok | USD 25 / MTok | Higher-cost model for complex agentic coding and enterprise work.1 |
| Sonnet 5 | USD 2 / MTok until 31 August 2026 | USD 10 / MTok until 31 August 2026 | The price list states standard pricing of USD 3 / MTok input and USD 15 / MTok output after the introductory period.1 |
| Haiku 4.5 | USD 1 / MTok | USD 5 / MTok | Lower-cost option for faster workloads.1 |
For repeated prompts or large documents, Claude's API documentation explains that prompt caching can reduce the cost of reusing already processed content: a cache read is charged at 10% of the standard input price. The same documentation says Batch API requests receive a 50% discount on input and output tokens.3
API estimates should include the model, expected input and output volume, caching, batch processing and any features such as web search or code execution. A quick proof of concept can look inexpensive, then become materially different once it runs across many users or documents.
It comes down to your work. Pro may be enough if you use Claude regularly for writing, analysis or coding but don't regularly hit its limits. If you need much more capacity, Claude's current plan guide lists Max 5x and Max 20x at USD 100 and USD 200 a month respectively.2 Before upgrading, check what you actually use over a typical week rather than assuming a higher-priced plan will be better value.
Note: USD 20 is the current monthly price of Claude Pro, not a separate price for Claude Code. The Pro plan currently includes Claude Code, alongside higher usage than the Free plan and access to additional Claude features.1
💡 If you're paying for Claude and other USD software subscriptions from the UK, some banks and card providers may add an exchange rate markup, which could mean paying more in GBP than expected.
With Wise Business, you can pay for Claude knowing your USD bill is converted to GBP at the mid-market exchange rate with low, transparent fees.
Wise Business offers a free Essential plan for basic spending and transferring. If you need to receive money, set up direct debits, or generate invoices, you'll pay a one-time £50 setup fee to unlock the Advanced features.
With Wise Business, you can:
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Claude's individual plans currently run from Free at USD 0 to Pro at USD 20 a month or USD 200 a year, then Max 5x at USD 100 a month and Max 20x at USD 200 a month.2 Check the live Claude price list before buying because prices, plan features and tax treatment can change.1
Usage isn't a fixed message allowance. Claude's plan guide describes Max 5x and Max 20x as providing five and 20 times Pro capacity per session, while the pricing page notes that limits apply.1,2 The amount of work a session supports can vary with the model, task, conversation length, files and demand, so plan around your own usage rather than a headline message count.
Neither is automatically better. Claude Max is an individual Claude subscription with higher capacity than Pro, while ChatGPT Pro's current plan has its own model access, limits and tools.1,4 Compare the tasks you need to complete, the model and coding tools you need, usage limits, data controls and the price shown in the live purchase flow before choosing.
Sources:
Sources last checked on 24th July 2026
*Please see terms of use and product availability for your region or visit Wise fees and pricing for the most up to date pricing and fee information.
This publication is provided for general information purposes and does not constitute legal, tax or other professional advice from Wise Payments Limited or its subsidiaries and its affiliates, and it is not intended as a substitute for obtaining advice from a financial advisor or any other professional.
We make no representations, warranties or guarantees, whether expressed or implied, that the content in the publication is accurate, complete or up to date.
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