Anthropic expanded Claude's free tier with premium features this week, positioning its AI assistant as an ad-free alternative to ChatGPT. The move comes two days after OpenAI began rolling out advertisements to free and low-cost ChatGPT users.
Free Claude users now gain access to file creation, app connectors, and custom skills previously reserved for paid subscribers. They can generate Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, and PDFs directly within conversations using the Sonnet 4.5 model, while paid subscribers retain access to the more advanced Opus model.
Connectors allow Claude to integrate with third-party services including Slack, Asana, Zapier, Stripe, Canva, Notion, Figma, and WordPress. The feature enables the AI to act inside calendars, email inboxes, and design platforms rather than just supplying text for manual copying.
Skills provide repeatable, filesystem-based tools that train Claude to perform tasks in specific ways. Users can teach the AI to format reports with particular aesthetics, write emails in their voice, or follow brand guidelines for documents. This customization was traditionally limited to enterprise tiers in other AI ecosystems.
Anthropic also enhanced the free tier with longer conversations, interactive responses, and improved voice and image search capabilities, though free users will still encounter usage limitations.
Conversation compaction automatically summarizes earlier context, eliminating the need to restart discussions from the beginning.
The company's announcement ended with the tagline "No ads in sight," directly contrasting with OpenAI's advertising rollout. Anthropic reinforced this position last week with a promise to keep Claude ad-free, potentially luring ChatGPT users seeking uninterrupted AI assistance.
Earlier this month, Anthropic released four 61-second commercials on YouTube mocking OpenAI's advertising plans. The Super Bowl debut declared "Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude," spotlighting the company's ad-free stance amid growing industry monetization pressures.
Industry estimates show tech companies including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Perplexity spent $333.6 million on US broadcast TV ads for AI products last year, a 43 percent increase. Digital ad spending more than tripled to $426 million during the same period.
OpenAI has indicated its ads will be clearly labeled, appear at the bottom of responses, and won't influence ChatGPT's answers. The company says advertisements won't appear for sensitive topics like politics and mental health, and users can opt out of personalization.
Anthropic's expansion follows six months of enterprise development with partners like Goldman Sachs. The investment bank has been working with embedded Anthropic engineers to co-develop autonomous agents for accounting, client vetting, and onboarding processes. This enterprise focus comes as Blackstone recently invested another $200 million in Anthropic, bringing its total stake to nearly $1 billion.
The AI company also secured government contracts earlier this year, including a groundbreaking OneGov agreement to deliver Claude for Enterprise and Claude for Government to all three branches of the U.S. government for a nominal $1 fee per agency.
Claude's enhanced free suite gives broad audiences access to tools that handle real work, turning AI from something people occasionally check into something they consistently use.
As competition intensifies, this decision could reshape expectations around what "free AI" means in practice.
