Domain 6 · Task Statement 6.1

Plan Selection & Feature Availability

TL;DR

Navigate Claude's plan tiers from Free to Enterprise, understand which Cowork features unlock at each level, and know the critical distinctions between Team Standard and Team Premium seats.

What You Need to Know

Claude's plans form a ladder, and each rung unlocks capabilities that the lower tiers can't access. Choosing the wrong tier doesn't just mean overpaying or underpaying — it means missing critical governance controls, lacking Cowork features your workflow depends on, or discovering on rollout day that the capability you promised your team doesn't exist on the plan you purchased.

The plan ladder

Free ($0) — limited Cowork access. Enough to explore the interface, but rate limits and feature restrictions make it unsuitable for professional workflows.

Pro ($20/month) — full Cowork access, 5x free usage, rate limits that reset every 5 hours. This is the entry point for individual professionals. Computer Use, Dispatch, and Scheduled Tasks are all available here.

Max ($100-200/month) — 5-20x Pro usage depending on tier, conversation memory, priority access during high demand. For power users who hit Pro's rate limits regularly.

Team Standard ($25/seat) — all Pro features plus admin tools, SSO, domain verification, and centralised no-training defaults. The entry point for organisational deployment.

Team Premium ($100-150/seat) — includes Claude Code and full Cowork capabilities. Required for teams that need the complete agentic feature set.

Enterprise (custom pricing) — everything in Team Premium plus SAML SSO, SCIM provisioning, RBAC, tenant restrictions, and custom data retention policies.

[!]

Exam Trap: Standard vs Premium Team Seats

Team Standard and Team Premium aren't the same. Standard ($25/seat) includes Pro features plus admin tools and SSO. Premium ($100-150/seat) adds Claude Code and full Cowork. Purchasing Standard seats expecting full agentic capabilities will leave your team without the features they need. Always check which tier includes the specific capabilities your workflow requires.

Rate limit resets: the 5-hour window

Pro plan rate limits reset every 5 hours, not daily. This means a heavy user can hit the ceiling mid-morning, wait it out, and get a fresh allocation by mid-afternoon. Understanding this window helps teams plan workloads — batch the heaviest processing for early morning, and have lightweight tasks ready for the post-limit period.

The all-or-nothing admin toggle

The Cowork access toggle on Team and Enterprise plans is organisation-wide. It's either on for everyone or off for everyone. There's no per-user, per-department, or per-role granularity. You can't enable Cowork for Engineering while keeping it off for Finance.

This means organisational readiness must be assessed across all departments before enabling the toggle. If one department isn't ready for Cowork, you have two choices: delay for everyone, or enable it and rely on policy and training controls for the departments that aren't ready.

Data training: the opt-out difference

Team and Enterprise plans have no-training defaults — conversation data isn't used to improve models, enforced centrally by the administrator. Pro and Max are individual plans where each user must manually opt out in Settings > Privacy.

This distinction matters enormously at scale. With 100 Pro accounts, you are relying on 100 individuals to remember to opt out. A single forgotten opt-out could expose sensitive data to the training pipeline. Team plans eliminate this risk with a centralised default.

Tenant restrictions: Enterprise only

Tenant restrictions use HTTP header injection via a network proxy to prevent personal Claude accounts on corporate devices. Without this, any employee can bypass organisational controls by logging in with a personal email.

This capability exists only on Enterprise. Team plans offer SSO and domain verification for managed accounts, but can't technically prevent employees from switching to personal accounts on the same device.

Common Mistakes

Common Mistake

Purchasing Team Standard seats at $25/seat expecting full Cowork and Claude Code capabilities — then discovering on rollout day that these features require Team Premium at $100-150/seat.

Instead: Check the feature matrix before purchasing. Team Standard includes Pro features plus admin tools. Team Premium adds Claude Code and full Cowork. Match the tier to the specific capabilities your workflow requires.

Common Mistake

Assuming the Cowork admin toggle can be enabled for specific departments while keeping it off for others — then discovering it's all-or-nothing.

Instead: The Cowork toggle is organisation-wide with no per-user override. Assess readiness across all departments before enabling. If some teams aren't ready, use policy and training controls alongside the toggle, not instead of it.

Common Mistake

Comparing Pro ($20/month) against Team Standard ($25/seat) purely on price, without factoring in the governance value of centralised no-training defaults.

Instead: The $5/month per user difference buys centralised privacy control. With 100 Pro accounts, one forgotten opt-out exposes the organisation. Team's no-training default eliminates this risk — a governance feature with measurable risk reduction value.

Delegating work to Cowork

Before

Write a Python script to organise my Downloads folder and tell me how to run it.

After

I've mounted my 'Project_Alpha' folder. Scan the files, create a 'Summaries' subfolder, and generate a text summary for every PDF. Execute this now.

Hands-On Activity

Hands-On Activity

Explore Plan Features and Sandbox Boundaries

15 min

Locate the admin Cowork toggle, test the sandbox boundaries with a scoped folder, and verify that Claude can't access directories outside the mounted workspace.

What you will learn

  • Locate the organisation-wide Cowork toggle in admin settings
  • Demonstrate the VM sandbox model with a dedicated test folder
  • Verify that Claude can't access files outside the scoped directory
  • Understand the security implications of folder scoping
  1. 01

    Open Claude Desktop and navigate to Settings. If you have admin access, locate the Cowork toggle under Capabilities and note its current state.

    Why: Understanding where the org-wide Cowork toggle lives is essential for any administrator. This is the single control that governs Cowork access for the entire organisation.

    Expected: The Capabilities panel with the Cowork toggle visible. On Team plans, it should be enabled by default during research preview.

  2. 02

    Create a folder on your Desktop called "Sandbox-Test". Add a text file inside it with some sample content. Open Cowork and mount only this "Sandbox-Test" folder as your working directory.

    Why: Scoping Cowork to a dedicated folder demonstrates the VM sandbox model. Claude will only see files inside the folder you explicitly share.

    Expected: Cowork activates with "Sandbox-Test" as its working directory.

  3. 03

    Ask Claude: "List all files in my Documents folder." Observe the response when it attempts to access a directory outside the mounted workspace.

    Why: This test verifies that the sandbox enforces file access boundaries. Even though your Documents folder exists, the VM can't reach outside the explicitly shared directory.

    Expected: Claude either refuses the request or reports that it can't access the Documents folder. It can only see files within the mounted "Sandbox-Test" directory.

Practice Question

Practice Question

A regulated financial services firm wants to deploy Cowork for 50 analysts. Their requirements include blocking personal Claude accounts on corporate laptops and ensuring no conversation data is used to train AI models. Which plan meets both requirements?

Sources