Choose Claude Team if you have fewer than 20 users or simply want a flat, predictable bill: $20 per seat per month billed annually. Choose Enterprise if you have 20 or more users and your compliance team needs audit logs, custom data retention and role-based access, because those are the controls Team does not include.
That is the short answer. The longer one depends on how much your people will actually use Claude, because the two plans charge in different ways. This guide sets out what each plan costs, what the extra controls are for, and a worked example of the cost difference. Prices are in US dollars, exclude VAT, and were taken from Anthropic's pricing page on 6 November 2026. For the wider choice, including the API, see our Claude for business guide.
| Team | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|
| Who it is for | 2 to 150 people | 20 seats minimum |
| Seat price | $20 a month billed annually, $25 monthly | $20 a month, billed annually only |
| Usage | Included in the seat, within usage limits | Charged on top at API rates |
| Premium seats | $100 a month annually, $125 monthly, 5x standard usage | Not applicable, usage is metered |
| Single sign-on, central billing | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs and compliance API | No | Yes |
| Custom data retention | No | Yes |
| Role-based access and SCIM | No | Yes |
| IP allowlisting, network controls | No | Yes |
| Model training on your content | None by default | None by default |
| Payment | Card, monthly or annual | Annual; card or ACH self-serve, invoicing via sales |
What Team gives you
Team is the plan most UK firms with 2 to 150 people should start on. Every seat gets the full Claude app, including Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Claude for Microsoft 365 and Outlook, Claude in Chrome, Claude Design, Slides and Docs, and enterprise search across connected company tools. Admins get single sign-on, domain verification, central billing, usage analytics, spend controls and control over which connectors staff may use.
Two details are easy to miss. You can mix standard and premium seats, so the two or three people who use Claude all day get five times the usage without paying premium prices for everyone. And Team includes up to $500 a month in pooled API credits, which is enough for a small internal tool or a first automation test before you commit to an API budget.
The most important point for most firms is training. Anthropic lists model training as none by default on Team. Personal accounts are opt-out, so if staff already use personal Claude accounts for work, moving them onto Team is the first step, whatever else you decide.
What Enterprise adds
Enterprise includes everything in Team and adds the controls a compliance or security team usually asks for. Audit logs record who did what. A compliance API lets you feed activity into your own monitoring. Custom data retention lets you decide how long conversations are kept. Role-based access with fine-grained permissions controls who can use which features, and SCIM keeps user accounts in step with your directory, so leavers lose access the day they leave.
It also adds IP allowlisting and network-level access control, domain capture so staff cannot sit outside the company account, admin-set spend limits for users and the whole organisation, a HIPAA-ready offering, and Claude Security, currently in beta. On the sales-assisted route you can be invoiced, buy through AWS Marketplace and arrange a trial.
None of these change what Claude can do for an individual user. They change what you can prove afterwards. If your compliance lead needs to answer who used Claude, on which data, and how long that data is kept, Enterprise is the plan that lets them answer.
How the cost compares: a worked example
The pricing models differ, so the comparison depends on usage. Take a firm with 25 users. On Team with standard seats billed annually, the bill is 25 times $20, or $500 a month. On Enterprise, the seat fee is the same $500 a month, and usage is added on top at API rates.
To see what usage might cost, take one illustrative request: 5,000 tokens in and 1,000 tokens out on Claude Sonnet 5.5, which Anthropic prices at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens. That request costs about $0.02. A user making 100 such requests a working day, for 21 days, would add about $42 a month. Twenty-five users at that level would add about $1,050 a month, taking Enterprise to roughly $1,550 against $500 on Team.
The same arithmetic cuts the other way. Light users on Enterprise cost little more than the seat fee, and heavy users on Team hit usage limits and need premium seats at $100 each. Long documents, larger models and agentic tasks use far more tokens than a short chat, so treat the example as a method, not a forecast. Measure a month of real use before you decide. Our Claude Code cost guide shows the same method applied to coding work.
| Scenario | Team (standard, annual) | Enterprise (seat + usage) |
|---|---|---|
| Light use, about 20 short requests a user per day | $500 | About $710 |
| Moderate use, about 100 requests a user per day | $500, if within limits | About $1,550 |
| Five heavy users on premium seats, 20 standard | $900 | Depends on actual usage |
Moving from Team to Enterprise later
Starting on Team does not lock you in. Many firms begin with Team for a pilot group, measure how much people use Claude, and move to Enterprise once headcount passes 20 or the compliance team asks for audit records. Two things make that move easier.
First, verify your company domain on Team from day one, so everyone signs in with a work address rather than a personal one. Enterprise can then capture the domain and migrate existing accounts that use it. Second, keep a simple monthly record of usage by team from the Team analytics. That record is what you need to estimate the Enterprise usage bill, and it turns the choice from a guess into a calculation.
UK data protection: what neither plan changes
Both plans run on Anthropic's own service. As of November 2026, its data residency options are global or US processing, with data stored in the US. There is no UK or EU processing option on Anthropic's own platform. Sending personal data to Claude on either plan is therefore an international transfer under UK GDPR, which needs the right safeguards and a transfer risk assessment.
Enterprise gives you more evidence about how Claude is used, but it does not move the data. If client personal data must stay in the UK, the usual route is Claude through Amazon Bedrock, called in the London region inside your own AWS account, with only some Claude models available that way. Our guide to using Claude with client data under UK GDPR compares the three designs that work.
Which one should you choose?
Fewer than 20 users: Team. Enterprise is not available below 20 seats, so the question is how to use Team safely. Keep identifiable client data out of it and write a one-page policy on what may go in.
20 to 150 users with no regulated client data in prompts: usually Team. The bill is flat and the admin controls are enough for most firms.
20 or more users in a regulated firm, or anyone whose auditors will ask for usage records: Enterprise. The audit logs, retention controls and role-based access are what you are paying for.
More than 150 users: Enterprise, as Team stops at 150.
An automated process on documents or client records: neither chat plan. That is a job for the API or Bedrock, with masking, logging and human review designed in, which our Claude for business guide explains.
How Kelriva can help
We help UK firms decide how Claude fits their work, write the usage policy, and build the automated side on the API or Bedrock when the chat plans are not enough. If you want a second opinion on your setup, get in touch and we will tell you plainly which plan we would choose in your position.
Sources
Checked on 6 November 2026: Claude plans and pricing (Team and Enterprise seat prices, features, pooled API credits and Sonnet 5.5 API rates), Claude Enterprise plan (20 seat minimum, usage at API rates) and Claude Platform data residency documentation (global and US inference, US workspace storage). Plans and prices change, so check them before you buy. This article is general guidance, not legal advice.