Claude Team for Scientists
Introduction
Anthropic offers a heavily discounted Claude Team plan for academic research groups. Standard seats are free and Premium seats are $15 per user per month, compared to $20 and $100 per seat on the regular Team plan. If you are a PI at UMD running a lab in the natural sciences, mathematics, computer science, or engineering, this is almost certainly the cheapest way to get your whole group on Claude.
The discount runs for an initial 12-month period. Groups can have between 1 and 25 seats.
If you need any support, please reach out to the Engineering Digital Service at eds@umd.edu.
Who Is Eligible
Principal investigators (or equivalent) at accredited universities and nonprofit research institutes working in the natural sciences, mathematics, computer science, engineering, and related fields can apply. UMD faculty qualify.
The PI applies and verifies institutional affiliation, then invites the rest of the group; postdocs, graduate students, research staff.
For-profit organizations and industry R&D operations are not eligible. If your work sits inside a center with corporate sponsorship, the test is the status of your institution, not the funding source, but check with us if you are unsure.
What You Get
| Seat Type | Cost | What's Included |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | $0/user/month | Claude Science, Claude Code, Claude Cowork, centralized billing and administration, SSO |
| Premium | $15/user/month, or $180/user/year billed annually | Everything in Standard with 5x more usage and higher limits for long-running analyses |
Both seat types include the same features. The difference is usage headroom. Premium is worth it for anyone running Claude Code against a codebase all day or pushing long agentic analyses; Standard is fine for most students and staff. You can mix seat types within one group.
Anthropic does not train its models on Team plan content by default.
How to Apply
- Go to https://claude.com/programs/team-plan-for-scientists and start an application as the PI or lab lead.
- Verify your eligibility by confirming your institutional affiliation. Use your @umd.edu address.
- Wait for approval, which typically takes up to seven business days. You will get an email when you are approved.
- Set up your workspace and invite your group.
Important: How This Interacts with the Clark School Claude Team
Engineering IT runs a Claude Team plan for the Clark School, and Clark School users who log in at claude.ai with SSO are automatically provisioned into that organization (see Log in to Claude for Clark School Faculty, Staff, & Students Only).
If you stand up your own lab workspace under the scientists program, it is a separate organization with its own billing and administration. Your lab members will end up belonging to two Claude organizations and will need to switch between them using the profile menu in the bottom-left corner of claude.ai. Work saved in one organization – Projects, chats, uploaded files – is not visible from the other.
That is a manageable annoyance, and for most labs the savings are worth it: a ten-person group on Standard seats goes from roughly $2,400 a year to $0. But please email eds@umd.edu before you apply so we can help you plan the transition, move anyone who is already on our Team plan, and avoid double-paying for seats.
Anthropic's own guidance is to check with your institution before applying if your campus has an existing Claude agreement. UMD does not have a campus-wide Enterprise agreement today – Internet2 is in discussions with Anthropic – so this program is currently open to UMD PIs.
Things to Know
Inactivity. If a group has no activity for 90 days, Anthropic may return it to standard Team pricing.
Existing Team plans. If you already run your own discounted Team plan, your billing moves to the new pricing automatically. If you have a regular Team plan and want the discount applied, you still need to complete the verification application first.
Larger projects. If your research needs more capacity than 25 seats or more compute than a seat provides, look at Anthropic's AI for Science program, which awards API credits through merit-based review.
Data classification. The same rules apply here as anywhere else at UMD. Claude is authorized for Level 3 (High) data. Do not put Level 4 (Restricted) – export controlled material, PCI data, and similar – into Claude unless your plan and configuration have been reviewed for compliance. Email eds@umd.edu if you are unsure where your research data falls.
Getting Help
- Email the Engineering Digital Service at eds@umd.edu.
- Submit a support ticket via DASH.
- For Anthropic product support, visit support.claude.com.