Pathways to Purchase for Claude at UMD
Tip
Are you a researcher who is looking to use Claude with your lab group? You may be eligible for Claude Team for Scientists, a heavily discounted plan specifically made for researchers.
There are several pathways to purchase Claude at UMD. Please review the available options below and choose the option that is most relevant for your use case.
Claude offers several plan tiers. The right choice depends on whether you're purchasing for yourself or for a team, and how heavily you expect to use it.
Individual Plans (Purchase via PCard)
These plans are purchased directly at claude.ai using a university PCard or personal credit card.
| Plan | Cost | What You Get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Basic access to Claude with limited usage, including web search, file creation, and up to 5 projects. Good for trying it out. |
| Pro | $17/month with annual plan ($200 billed up front) or $20/month billed monthly | More usage, access to all Claude models (including Opus 5.5), Claude Code, Claude Cowork, unlimited Projects, Research mode, and the Claude in Chrome and Microsoft 365 (Excel, PowerPoint) extensions. This is the best option for most individual users. |
| Max | From $100/month | Everything in Pro with 5x or 20x more usage, higher output limits, early access to new features, and priority access during peak times. Best for power users with heavy daily usage. |
To purchase: Log in at claude.ai, click your profile icon, and select "Upgrade." You / your business office can pay with a PCard. Clark School affiliated users have additional options.
Team Plan (Purchase via PCard)
The Team plan is designed for groups of 2 to 150 people who want shared administration and centralized billing.
| Seat Type | Cost | Usage Level |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | $20/seat/month (annual) or $25/seat/month (monthly) | More usage than Pro, includes Claude Code |
| Premium | $100/seat/month (annual) or $125/seat/month (monthly) | 5x more usage than Standard, includes Claude Code |
Team plans include central billing and administration, single sign-on (SSO), admin controls for connectors, enterprise deployment for the desktop app, and no model training on your content by default. You can mix and match Standard and Premium seats.
To purchase: Visit claude.ai, log in, and select "Upgrade" to create a Team workspace. You can add members by email and pay via PCard. If you do not have a PCard, coordinate with your department's business office to purchase the subscription. Clark School affiliated users have additional options.
Enterprise and Education Plans
UMD has Claude for Enterprise for Higher Education. More details on how to purchase, set up, and migrate existing Claude accounts will be shared soon. In the meantime, please continue to use your existing Claude Individual or Claude Team subscriptions.
API Access (For Developers and Researchers)
If you're building applications, running experiments, or integrating Claude into research pipelines, you can access Claude through the API on a pay-per-use basis.
| Model | Input | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 (most capable) | $10 / million tokens | $50 / million tokens |
| Opus 5.5 (flagship) | $4 / million tokens | $20 / million tokens |
| Sonnet 5 (balanced) | $2 / million tokens | $10 / million tokens |
| Haiku 4.5 (fastest) | $1 / million tokens | $5 / million tokens |
Opus 5.5 performs at the level of Fable 5.1 on most tasks at a lower price, so it is a good default for most API workloads. The Batch API offers a 50% discount for jobs that don't need an immediate response. Note that newer models (Opus 4.7 and later, Sonnet 4.6 and later, and Fable 5.1) use a tokenizer that produces ~30% more tokens for the same text, which affects cost comparisons against older models.
To get started: Create an account at platform.claude.com, add a payment method (you can use a PCard), and generate an API key. Documentation is available at platform.claude.com/docs.
For Students (API + Claude.ai)
Students can use Claude Free at no cost. For students hitting Claude Free limits, consider joining the Claude Builder Club here at UMD to gain access to API credits and other perks.
If you are an undergrad engineering major, please also let us know if you're interested in a college-wide Claude deployment so we can better understand the need.