What Claude is and how to create your account

Claude is the model family from Anthropic, and claude.ai is where you talk to it in a browser. This article covers what Claude is and how to create your account: the email and Google routes, the phone verification step you cannot skip, the age and location requirements, and which plan fits a beginner. Every step below is written so you can replay it on your own machine.

What Claude is

Anthropic’s own tagline on the claude.ai sign-in page calls Claude “your thinking partner for big ambitions.” That is a fair description of what you get: a text box you write to, and a model that drafts, summarizes, analyzes, and reasons with you instead of just listing links. Anthropic’s get-started guide frames it the same way — speak to Claude like a coworker or a friend, naturally and conversationally.

“Claude” is also the name of a whole family of separate products built on the same models. They are not the same thing, and they are not all included in every plan, so it helps to know which one you are looking at:

• Claude on the web (claude.ai) is the chat app you open in a browser and install nothing for. The same chat app also exists as a desktop and a mobile app, and your conversations sync across them. This series covers this product.
• Claude Code is an agentic coding tool that works in your terminal, your IDE, or the browser. It is aimed at developers and is a paid-plan feature, not part of the free plan. We cover it separately in Connect Hermes to Claude Code.
• Claude in Chrome is a browser extension that adds Claude as a sidebar in Google Chrome and can take actions in the browser for you. It needs a paid plan.
• Claude for Microsoft 365 puts Claude in a sidebar inside Excel, PowerPoint, and Word, with Outlook available as a separate beta add-in. It also needs a paid plan.
• Claude Tag brings Claude into Slack: you tag it in a channel or thread to get help without leaving Slack.
• The Claude API (Claude Platform) is pay-as-you-go access to the models for developers, priced per million tokens and billed separately from the chat plans.

Everything else in this article, and in the rest of the series, is about the first one: Claude on the web. Anthropic has also folded “Claude Cowork” back into plain Claude, so a button you see in an older tutorial may be labeled differently on your account.

Once you are signed in, the screen is deliberately simple. There is a text input at the bottom of the page, a sidebar with your new and previous chats, and separate areas for projects — conversations organized with persistent context and custom instructions — and artifacts, which turn a piece of work into something you can share or reuse. That is the whole interface you need for this article; the rest of the series builds on it.

Create your account

Creating a Claude account takes about five minutes, and you do it from the same page you log in on. Work through these steps in order.

1. Open claude.ai. The page you land on is the sign-in page. Do not go looking for a register page: claude.ai/register does not exist, and claude.ai/signup redirects to Anthropic’s marketing site. Creating the account happens right here.
2. Pick a route. Click “Continue with email” or “Continue with Google” — both buttons are on the sign-in page.
3. Email route: confirm the link. Enter your email address and click “Continue with email”. Anthropic sends a message titled “Secure link to log in to Claude.ai”; open it and click the link inside. That link is your login — no password to create or remember.
4. Cross-device check. If you open that link on a different device than the one you signed up on, the link generates a verification code instead. Type that code into the original device to finish logging in.
5. Google route: pick the account. Click “Continue with Google”, choose the Google account you want, and accept the terms.
6. Add your name and confirm your age. You will be asked for a name and to confirm you are 18 or older. The exact order of these fields varies, so follow the prompts on screen.
7. Verify your phone number. Enter a phone number from a supported location, receive the six-digit code by text message, type it in, and click “Verify code”. This step is not optional — see the box below.

Age, location, and availability

Two requirements trip up more beginners than anything else, and neither has a workaround.

• Age. You must be at least 18 years old to use Claude.
• Location. Claude is available in around 180 supported locations, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium. You need to be physically in one of them when you create and use the account. The current list is in Anthropic’s supported locations article.

There is also a free plan, and it is genuinely usable: you can chat, search the web, create files, and run code without paying. The paid plans sit on top of the same account, so nothing about signing up commits you to a subscription.

Free, Pro, and Max: which plan fits

In short: three tiers, and the free one is enough to learn on.

• Budget — Free. Costs nothing and covers everyday chatting, web search, creating files and running code, memory across conversations, and up to five projects. It does not include Opus, Research, Claude Code, Claude in Chrome, or Claude for Microsoft 365.
• Mid — Pro. The step up for everyday work: more usage, more Claude models including Opus, and the features the free plan leaves out, such as Claude Code, Claude in Chrome, and Claude for Microsoft 365.
• Frontier — Max. Everything in Pro, with a choice of 5x or 20x more usage than Pro, for people who work with Claude for long stretches.

There are also Team and Enterprise plans for organizations; this series does not cover them. The exact price of the personal plans depends on where you are. The plan page showed US dollars in one region and British pounds in another when we checked, and mobile pricing can differ again depending on your app platform. Anthropic lists every current plan, with the price for your region, on its pricing page. Check it there rather than trusting any figure quoted here.

Every plan has usage limits, and the free plan runs on a rolling five-hour budget. The last article in this series, Claude.ai usage limits: the five-hour budget explained, covers how they work.

Troubleshooting: four things that block beginners

• “I went to claude.ai/register.” That page does not exist. Sign up from claude.ai itself, using the buttons on the sign-in page.
• “My phone number was rejected.” Only real mobile numbers from supported locations work; the rest are rejected, and the step cannot be skipped.
• “I hit a limit after a few messages.” That is the usage limit, not a bug. Settings > Usage shows where you stand and when the next reset lands.
• “The email link did not log me in.” If you opened the link on a different device, you get a verification code instead — type it into the device you signed up on.

Frequently asked questions

Is Claude free to use?

Yes. The free plan costs nothing and is a real, usable product rather than a trial: you can chat, search the web, create files and run code, use memory across conversations, and create up to five projects. What you give up is volume and a few features — Opus, Research, Claude Code, Claude in Chrome, and Claude for Microsoft 365 are paid-only — plus a usage limit that resets on a rolling basis.

Can I skip phone verification?

No. Every new account has to verify a phone number from a supported location with a six-digit code sent by text message, and Anthropic states there is no way to skip it.

Is Claude available where I live?

Probably — the list covers around 180 supported locations, and you need to be physically in one when you create and use the account. Anthropic’s supported-locations article has the current list.

Which plan should a beginner pick?

Start on free. It is enough to learn the interface, write your first prompts, and find out whether you use Claude often enough to pay for it. Move to Pro when you regularly run into the usage limit or want the paid-only features, and consider Max only if you need several times Pro’s usage for long, heavy sessions.

What’s next

Your account is ready. You know what Claude is, how the account gets created, and which plan to start on — and you have not spent anything yet. The next article in this series, Your first conversation with Claude on the web, takes you from the empty chat box to your first prompt and reply, and explains what the model menu next to the send button does. You can browse every part of the series on the Claude on the web: a beginner’s guide page.