Claude for business: what it does, what it costs and how secure it is

Someone on your team already uses Claude, probably on a personal account. To summarise a long contract, rewrite a proposal or make sense of a piece of code. It works well. The question is whether you set it up properly for the business, which plan fits and what happens to your company data.

Claude is Anthropic's AI assistant. This article covers what Claude can do for a business, which plans there are, how privacy and data location work, and how to connect Claude to your own systems. The product information comes from Anthropic's websites, checked on 18 October 2026. Claude changes quickly, so check what applies now before you choose.

What can Claude do for a business?

Claude is a language model with a workspace around it. You ask a question, add documents and get text back. Teams mostly use it for:

• Reading and summarising: contracts, tender documents, reports.
• Writing and rewriting: proposals, emails, policies, job ads.
• Analysing: going through a spreadsheet or finding the differences between two versions.
• Working with your own knowledge: in a Project you give Claude fixed instructions and documents. On Team and Enterprise you can share a project with colleagues, with view or edit rights (Anthropic).

What sets it apart from a standalone chatbot is integrations. With connectors, Claude reads your email, documents or CRM and, if you allow it, takes actions too. More on that below.

What to watch: a language model can be convincingly wrong. Always have amounts and numbers come from the source system, not from the model's memory. See preventing AI hallucinations.

Can Claude work in other languages?

Yes. Claude replies in the language you write in, even if the app is set to another language. Anthropic offers display languages including English, German and French (Anthropic). If you build Claude into your own software, set the language in the instructions. Anthropic recommends this itself (Anthropic).

Which plans are there?

Anthropic splits Claude into individual and business plans (Anthropic):

• Free, Pro and Max: for individual use. Good for trying it out, but without central management.
• Team: for teams of 2 to 150 people. With central billing and administration, single sign-on and settings for which connectors your team may use. For each person you choose a standard or premium seat; a premium seat gives five times as much usage.
• Enterprise: for larger organisations, from 20 seats. On top of Team it adds audit logs, roles with fine-grained permissions, SCIM, custom retention and IP allowlisting, among other things.

On 18 October 2026, Anthropic lists a standard Team seat from $20 per user per month billed annually, or $25 billed monthly. A premium seat is $100 per month billed annually. Enterprise charges $20 per seat per month plus usage, which depends on the model and the task. Prices are in US dollars. Check the pricing page for current prices.

If you want to use Claude in your own software, that goes through the Claude API. There you pay for the amount of text going in and out, counted in tokens (Anthropic).

Why not just Pro for everyone?

Because then you have no control. With individual accounts, each employee decides which integrations are switched on and what happens to their conversations. And training works differently on the individual plans, see below. For work with company data, Team or Enterprise is the route. Also set out which tools are and aren't allowed in your AI policy.

Is Claude secure for company data?

Three questions matter: is your data used for training, where is it stored, and who has which role under the GDPR?

Training on your data

On Team, Enterprise and the API, Anthropic doesn't use your inputs and outputs to train models by default (Anthropic). The exception is feedback: if someone gives a thumbs up or down, that conversation may be used. Owners of a Team or Enterprise account can switch that button off.

Free, Pro and Max work differently. The pricing page lists them as 'opt-out': you switch off the use of your chats for training yourself in your privacy settings (Anthropic). One more reason not to run company work on personal accounts.

Where is your data?

Anthropic stores data in the US and may process traffic in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia (Anthropic). With the API you can restrict processing to the US, but not to Europe (Anthropic).

If your data has to stay in Europe, you use Claude through Amazon Bedrock or Google Cloud Vertex AI in a European region. For Microsoft Foundry, Europe is still listed as 'coming soon' on 18 October 2026 (Anthropic). That route is for your own software calling Claude through such a cloud platform. The Claude apps themselves store data in the US.

The GDPR

On Team and Enterprise, your organisation is the controller and Anthropic the processor (Anthropic). Anthropic has a Data Processing Addendum with the EU Standard Contractual Clauses for transfers outside the EU. That doesn't sort out your side. You still need a legal basis, an entry in your record of processing and rules on which data can go in. See AI Act and GDPR: what do you need to arrange? and AI literacy is mandatory.

Connecting Claude to your own systems

Claude only becomes really useful when it can reach your own data. That works through connectors, built on MCP: the open standard that lets an AI assistant work with other software. Anthropic came up with it, and Claude and ChatGPT, among others, now support it.

This is how it works (Anthropic):

• On Team and Enterprise, an owner enables a connector for the organisation. Then each employee signs in themselves.
• Claude inherits the user's permissions in the connected system. What someone can't see there, Claude can't see either.
• Per connector or per action you choose: always allow, ask for approval first, or block. For example: reading files is allowed, editing isn't.
• For a system without a connector, you add a custom connector through a remote MCP server.

For several systems an integration already exists. What it can do and what to watch is covered per system: Microsoft 365 and Claude, HubSpot and Claude, Salesforce and Claude and Shopify and Claude. The overview is under connecting Claude.

Where a standard connector stops

For searching, summarising and a simple change, a connector is often enough. It falls short when your system doesn't have one, such as an industry package or your own database, or when Claude has to follow rules the connector doesn't know. Then you build your own MCP server, with the right permissions per action.

An example: for Sprints & Sneakers we built an MCP server that lets the team manage the website through Claude: pages, blogs, cases and events, using the building blocks of their own design system. What Claude creates is first saved as a draft with a preview. Publishing is a separate step. More in managing your CMS with your own MCP server.

Watch one risk: a malicious MCP server can contain hidden instructions that try to make Claude do things you don't want (Anthropic). Only connect servers from parties you trust. See also prompt injection.

Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot?

If your business runs on Microsoft 365 and the work lives in Outlook, Word and Teams, Copilot is the obvious choice. If your team works a lot with long documents and writing, Claude is strong. Many businesses use two tools side by side. See also ChatGPT for business and Microsoft 365 Copilot for business.

From assistant to agent

Claude in the chat is an assistant: an employee asks the question and decides what happens with the answer. If the work has to start on its own, for example with every new request, or the result has to land in your ERP, you need an AI agent. Often with the same model, but with a layer around it: your own integrations, permissions per action and a log.

What you can build yourself with Projects and connectors is in building your own AI agent. How we build an agent that works in your own systems is covered under AI agent development.

How do you start?

• Move company work off personal accounts and choose Team or Enterprise.
• Set out which data can go in and which connectors are switched on.
• Start with connectors that only read. Set write actions to 'needs approval'.
• Pick one task with volume and look at what it delivers after a few weeks.

Want to know where Claude delivers most in your processes, and where it doesn't? We map that out in the AI Opportunity Audit.

Sources, checked on 18 October 2026: Anthropic: plans and pricing, Anthropic: Projects, Anthropic: using Claude in your preferred language, Anthropic: multilingual support, Anthropic: API pricing, Anthropic: training on commercial products, Anthropic: training on individual plans, Anthropic: server locations, Anthropic: data residency in the API, Anthropic: regional compliance, Anthropic: processor or controller, Anthropic: Data Processing Addendum, Anthropic: connectors, Anthropic: custom connectors via MCP.