Claude

The name covers both the models and the app. Anthropic, an AI safety and research company founded in 2021, builds the Claude large language models and offers them in its own apps on the web, desktop and phone, and through an API that developers and other companies use to build products.

Claude is a direct alternative to ChatGPT and Gemini. The assistants overlap heavily in what they can do; they differ in their models, tone, data terms, the tools they connect to and how they are priced. Many people use more than one and pick per task.

How it works

Claude works like other assistants: your message, the earlier conversation, any files and Anthropic's hidden instructions go to a Claude model, which writes the reply. Its built-in knowledge stops at the model's training cutoff, and it can search the web for current information when that feature is available and switched on.

Anthropic is known for publishing how it shapes Claude's behaviour. It trains its models using an approach it calls Constitutional AI: a written set of principles, the constitution, is used during training, the model critiques and revises its own answers against those principles, and AI feedback based on them replaces much of the human labelling of harmful replies. The aim is an assistant that is helpful while declining clearly harmful requests and being honest about uncertainty.

Claude can connect to outside tools and data through the Model Context Protocol, an open standard Anthropic introduced so assistants can use services such as file stores, databases and business apps. Plans, limits and features change, so Anthropic's own pages hold the current details. Developers choose between larger and smaller Claude models, trading capability against speed and cost, and pay per token used.

Example

An accountant receives a sixty-page lease and needs the clauses on rent reviews, break options and repair duties. She uploads it to Claude and asks for those clauses quoted with page references, then a short summary for her client. She checks each quoted clause against the original before sending anything.

To compare tools, she runs the same task in two other assistants. All three find the main clauses; one misses a rent review hidden in a schedule. The test shows her that whichever tool she uses, the page references are the part that makes checking fast. For the client summary, she gives Claude a short example of a summary she wrote before, and the output then matches her usual structure and level of detail. She saves that example as a standing instruction so she does not have to paste it every time. The same approach works in any assistant, so the habit survives a change of tool.

Why it matters for your business

Claude is one of the main assistants people use to work and to ask for recommendations, so it matters both as a tool and as a channel where your business may be described. Anthropic documents its web crawlers so you can control them in robots.txt. As with any assistant, check data settings before sharing client material, and verify figures and legal points yourself. If a supplier builds a tool for you on Claude through the API, ask which data is sent to Anthropic, how long it is kept and whether it is used for training; business and API terms usually differ from free consumer plans.

Common mistakes

• Assuming Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini will give the same answer, when each uses different models and sources.
• Uploading confidential client documents without checking the plan's data and retention terms.
• Taking quoted text from a long document as exact without comparing it with the original.
• Blocking AI crawlers by default without considering how that affects what assistants can say about you.

Questions people ask

Who makes Claude?

Claude is made by Anthropic, an AI safety and research company founded in 2021 and based in San Francisco. Anthropic builds the Claude models and offers them through its own apps, through an API for developers, and through some major cloud platforms.

What is the difference between Claude and ChatGPT?

They are competing AI assistants from different companies, Anthropic and OpenAI, built on different language models. Both write, analyse, code and search the web. They differ in writing style, how they handle long documents, connected tools, data terms and pricing. Trying both on your own tasks is the reliable way to compare.

Is Claude free to use?

Anthropic offers a free plan with usage limits and paid plans for individuals, teams and enterprises with more use and extra features. Developers pay per token through the API. Prices and limits change, so check Anthropic's site for the current plans.