Is Claude Cowork free? Pricing, and the open source stack you can self-host

Is Claude Cowork free?

No. Anthropic’s help center states that Claude Cowork is available on paid plans only, the Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans, and it requires a paid Claude subscription (Claude help center). The Free plan does not include it. Cowork is included across the paid tiers: the Cowork page says Pro, Max and Team include it, and Enterprise plans can opt in (Claude Cowork).

What the paid plans cost

Anthropic lists the plans that include Cowork on the Cowork page as Pro ($17), Max 5x ($100), Max 20x ($200), and Team ($20 per seat), checked October 2026. OpenAI’s pricing page lists ChatGPT Work across its plans, with Free at $0 per month, Plus at $20 per month, Pro from $100 per month, and Business at $20 per user per month billed annually or $25 per month, checked October 2026 (ChatGPT pricing). Both products run on the vendor’s cloud, and neither is a one-time cost: the subscription is per person or per seat, and it renews.

What self-hosting an open source stack costs

An open source stack splits the bill in two: the platform and the model. Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System, and it costs nothing to self-host. The platform is one Docker Compose stack on a Linux box you control, so the only new platform cost is the hardware. On managed cloud instead, Kortix pricing is Free at $0 with 200 credits per month and 1 project, and the team plan at $40 per seat per month with 2,500 pooled credits per month per seat (Kortix pricing). Agent Computer compute is billed per second, per resource, and runs about $0.20 per hour for the default machine and $0 while stopped.

The second bill is model inference. Kortix is bring-your-own-key: any model provider with your own keys, or the ChatGPT plan you already pay for. You pay your model provider at its published rate, and you can route cheap work to a cheaper model. The open source desktop option follows the same shape: OpenWork’s desktop app is free and brings your own provider keys, and its cloud adds a per-seat plan after the first five seats (OpenWork). Eigent lists a free tier with your own keys or local models, then paid plans from $19.99 per month (Eigent pricing).

What decides the bill

A closed plan charges per seat for each person who uses it. An open stack charges for the box and for the tokens the agents actually spend, so the cost follows the work rather than the headcount. For a worked comparison of the two closed products against Kortix, Read the Kortix blog.