Pathways to Purchase for Claude at UMD
There are several pathways to purchase for 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. 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, Claude Cowork, Projects, Research mode, Claude for Excel and PowerPoint (beta). 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, and priority access. 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 5 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 |
| 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, 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
Internet2 is in active discussions with Anthropic to make Claude available at the enterprise (campus) level across many institutions. At this time, we recommend users either purchase individual Pro subscriptions or Team subscriptions on a unit-by-unit basis.
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 (most capable) | $10 / million tokens | $50 / million tokens |
| Opus 4.8 (flagship) | $5 / million tokens | $25 / million tokens |
| Sonnet 5 (balanced) | $2 / million tokens* | $10 / million tokens* |
| Haiku 4.5 (fastest) | $1 / million tokens | $5 / million tokens |
*Sonnet 5 introductory pricing through August 31, 2026; standard pricing of $3/$15 per million tokens applies after. Note that newer models (Opus 4.7+, Sonnet 5, Fable 5) 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 you're if you're interested in a college-wide Claude deployment so we can better understand the need.