Is Claude Duet free? Not on Free: it needs Pro, Max or Ultra

Claude Duet is free to use in the sense that Anthropic charges nothing extra for it, but you cannot get it without a paid plan. During the research preview it is included with Pro, Max and Ultra plans at no extra cost, and Free is not on the list. Anthropic's pages state no separate price, so as of October 31, 2026 the cheapest way in is Pro at $20 a month.

Access is the harder part. Duet is a waitlist-only preview for accounts in the US, and the usage it burns comes out of the same limits you use for chat. Our earlier piece covers who can join the waitlist. This one covers what the price and the limits mean in practice.

How much Claude Duet costs

Nothing beyond your plan, according to Anthropic's help center. The Claude Duet product page names the plans that can use it and lists no price for Duet itself. The pricing page does not list Duet in any plan's feature table. Its only mention is a link in the Products menu.

Here is what the plans that include Duet cost, from the pricing page as of October 31, 2026:

The words "during the preview" matter. Anthropic has not said what happens to pricing when the preview ends, and neither the product page nor the help center gives a date for that.

The limits are shared with chat

Duet has no usage allowance of its own. The help center says it draws on your five-hour session limit and your weekly limits "at the same rate as chats in Claude." Background work counts too, including the morning brief and the periodic checks of your connected apps.

Anthropic says Duet checks connected accounts every few hours so that it does not use up plan limits much faster. It also says larger jobs, such as building a financial model or a deck, need more model turns and background work. None of the pages give numbers, so there is no way to say how many Duet tasks a Pro plan covers.

Duet runs on Claude Opus 5.5, and you cannot pick another model. Our article on whether Claude Opus 5.5 is free explains why that model needs a paid plan in chat as well.

One gap in the docs is worth noting. The help center describes Duet as drawing on the five-hour limit, while the pricing page says Ultra has no five-hour limit for verified accounts. Anthropic does not explain how the two fit together, so Ultra users should expect only the weekly limit to be the one that matters, and check their usage screen.

The one-time limit reset

Anyone admitted from the waitlist gets one full reset of both the five-hour and weekly limits. The help center says it is available until November 30, 2026. That is a credit for trying Duet, not extra capacity after the reset.

Who gets access

• Pro, Max and Ultra subscribers with a US Claude account, by waitlist invitation.
• Not Team or Enterprise yet. Anthropic says it plans to bring Duet to those plans later, with no date.
• Invitations go out in waves, and joining the waitlist does not guarantee a date.
• The email on the waitlist has to match your Claude account or the Apple or Google account on your phone. Duet has iPhone and Android apps and also works on claude.ai.

Anthropic has not said when accounts outside the US will get in.

What we don't know yet

Anthropic has not published a price for Duet after the preview, a number of admitted users, a rollout schedule or any figures for how much of a plan's limits a typical day of Duet uses. Until it does, the honest answer to "is Claude Duet free" is that it costs nothing extra today, and nothing about tomorrow.