Claude, often searched as "Claude AI" (Russian users type it as "klod ai"), is a family of language models and a chat assistant from the American company Anthropic. Claude reads and writes text, works through documents and images, writes code and acts as an agent over files. The official chat site is claude.ai. It does not open directly from Russia, but there is a legitimate route to Claude models through the API.
Claude: what this AI is and who makes it
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, among them Dario and Daniela Amodei. The company is headquartered in San Francisco. According to the company page, Anthropic is registered as a public benefit corporation: a commercial company with a public mission to get the world safely through the transition to powerful AI. The company released Claude in March 2023. It is often written that the name honours the mathematician Claude Shannon, but we found no confirmation from Anthropic.
People use "Claude" for several things at once, so let us separate them from the start.
| What people mean | What it actually is |
|---|---|
| The model | The Fable, Opus, Sonnet and Haiku family |
| The chat | The claude.ai site and the desktop and phone apps |
| The coding agent | Claude Code, runs in the terminal, IDEs and the app |
| The agent for office work | Cowork, a mode in the Claude app |
| Developer access | The API on Anthropic's platform and at cloud partners |
We have a separate breakdown of the coding agent: Claude Code from scratch: install, pricing and access from Russia. Read about Cowork in Claude Cowork: what it is and how it differs from Chat and Code.
What Claude can do
All current models accept text and images and answer in text. Claude does not draw pictures: that takes other models, for example Nano Banana or GPT Image. Anthropic's documentation names three more shared traits: support for many languages, image analysis and calls to external tools. Russian is covered in detail in Claude in Russian.
In practice that gives you the following:
- Text: drafts of emails, articles, translations, summaries of long documents. A 1M-token window holds, by Anthropic's estimate, about 555 thousand English words.
- Documents and spreadsheets: even the free plan includes file creation, code execution and web search, while Pro adds projects, Claude in Chrome and Microsoft 365 integration.
- Code: from explaining someone else's function to edits across a repository through Claude Code.
- Routine work on a computer: Cowork mode sorts files, builds reports and consolidates data while you do something else.
The limitation deserves a plain statement: Claude makes mistakes, like any language model. Check figures, links and legal wording by hand, especially if the answer goes further without your edit.
Claude versions: Fable, Opus, Sonnet and Haiku
The models come in classes. Haiku is fast and cheap, Sonnet sits in the middle, Opus is stronger, and Fable stands higher still: Anthropic places it in the Mythos class, which lies above Opus. What the Anthropic model overview lists as of 29 October 2026:
| Model | What it is for, per Anthropic | Anthropic API price, input / output per 1M tokens |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Fable 5.1 | Complex reasoning and long agentic tasks | $10 / $50 |
| Claude Opus 5.5 | Long-running agent work on code and knowledge | $4 / $20 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | The best mix of speed and intelligence | $2 / $10 |
| Claude Haiku 5.5 | High-volume, low-latency tasks: classification, data extraction | from $0.10 / from $0.50 |
Anthropic itself advises starting with Opus 5.5 and taking Fable 5.1 where Opus at a high effort level still falls short. We would start more modestly, with Sonnet 5.5, if the task needs no deep analysis. More on choosing between them: Opus 5.5, Sonnet and Fable compared and the Fable 5.1 review.
The release date matters for the choice too. Fable 5.1 came out on 1 September 2026, Opus 5.5 on 22 September, Haiku 5.5 on 7 October. Anthropic classes Opus 5 and Opus 4.5, 4.6, 4.7 and 4.8 as legacy models, but still keeps them available.
The official Claude site and apps
There are several official addresses, and all of them belong to Anthropic:
- claude.ai opens the chat itself;
- claude.com holds the product descriptions, the plans and the download page;
- anthropic.com is about the company, research and policies;
- platform.claude.com is for developers: the console and the API documentation.
The search "download Claude" is most often about the app. From the download page on claude.com you install apps for macOS and Windows (x64 and ARM64), and there is a beta for Linux on Ubuntu and Debian. On iPhone the app comes from the App Store, and there is an Android app too. The documentation has no file of the model itself: Claude runs as a service in the chat, through the API and in the clouds of Amazon, Google Cloud and Microsoft.
If a search for "Claude site" brought you to an unfamiliar domain or an APK file, it is most likely a copy. Take apps only from Anthropic's pages or from app stores.
Claude free and paid: plans as of 29 October 2026
Claude has free access, but a limited one. According to the pricing page, Free gives Sonnet and Haiku, while Opus and Claude Code are not included. The paid plans work like this.
| Plan | Price on claude.com/pricing | What opens up |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Sonnet, Haiku, web search, files, code execution, memory |
| Pro | $17 a month billed yearly ($200 upfront) or $20 month to month | Opus, Claude Code, projects; Fable only for usage credits |
| Max | from $100 a month (5x or 20x of Pro) | Fable within 50% of the weekly limit |
| Team | Standard seat $20 (yearly) or $25 (monthly), Premium $100 or $125 | Shared projects, a single bill, SSO; from 2 to 150 people |
| Enterprise | $20 per seat billed yearly, minimum 20 seats, plus tokens at the API rate | SCIM, audit log, role-based access |
Limits are counted in windows: the session window resets every five hours, with a weekly one on top. Prices and the choice between a subscription and paying per token are covered in how much a Claude subscription costs in 2026.
Does Claude work in Russia
Officially, no. Russia is not on the list of countries where Anthropic allows the use of Claude, and the company says outright that countries and regions not listed are unsupported. The restriction also covers legal entities registered or controlled from such countries, and their employees. The consequences are well known: sign-up, paying for a subscription with a Russian card and a stable account from Russia all run into that line.
A VPN does not help here. It does not solve payment, and faking your country can end in a banned account, so we advise against that route. A general breakdown of access is in Claude API from Russia without a VPN.
The working option for developers and writers who need the model rather than the site is an API gateway paid in rubles. Claude stays Claude there; only the door changes.
How to use Claude through codexkey
First, the limits. codexkey does not sell Claude Pro and Max subscriptions and does not open claude.ai. This is API access: you get a sk_cdx_... key, pay by Russian card, through SBP (the Russian Faster Payments System) or in cryptocurrency, and call the models from your own programs, from Claude Code or from Claude Desktop. A beginner with no code will find it easier to start with a ready client, for example Claude Desktop connected to the gateway.
Addresses and models:
| What | Value |
|---|---|
| Anthropic format | https://api.codexkey.online (without /v1) |
| OpenAI format | https://api.codexkey.online/v1 |
| List of IDs | GET https://api.codexkey.online/v1/models |
Prices in the codexkey price list as of 29 October 2026, input / output per 1M tokens (current figures are on the models page):
| Model | ID | Input / output |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 5.5 | claude-haiku-5.5 | $0.08 / $0.32 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | claude-sonnet-5-5 | $0.52 / $2.6 |
| Claude Opus 5.5 | claude-opus-5-5 | $0.86 / $4.32 |
| Claude Fable 5.1 | claude-fable-5-1 | $7.48 / $37.44 |
A first request through the OpenAI SDK:
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(
base_url="https://api.codexkey.online/v1",
api_key="sk_cdx_YOUR_KEY",
)
reply = client.chat.completions.create(
model="claude-sonnet-5-5",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Explain the difference between Opus and Sonnet in three sentences."}],
)
print(reply.choices[0].message.content)
The key is created in your account. If you want an Anthropic subscription rather than the API, that is a different product, and you cannot buy it through us.
FAQ
Claude official site: which address is the real one?
The chat lives at claude.ai, the product, pricing and download pages at claude.com, company information at anthropic.com. The console and the developer documentation are at platform.claude.com. We treat any address with a similar spelling as a fake.
Is Claude free: what does Free give?
The free plan offers the Sonnet and Haiku models, web search, file creation, code execution and memory. Opus and Claude Code are not included, and the number of messages is capped by limits. For regular work with code people usually move to Pro or to paying per token.
Whose AI is Claude and where is the company based?
Claude is made by Anthropic, an American company from San Francisco founded in 2021. Dario and Daniela Amodei sit on the board of directors. The company itself restricted access from Russia.
How much does Claude cost?
In the chat: Free is free, Pro is from $17 a month billed yearly or $20 month to month, Max from $100 a month. Through the API you pay per token: at Anthropic, Opus 5.5 costs $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens. At the codexkey price list of 29 October 2026 the same model costs $0.86 and $4.32.
How should a beginner use Claude?
Without code, open claude.ai where it is available, or Claude Desktop. With code, get a key, connect the OpenAI SDK or Claude Code and send a first request following the example above. Start with Sonnet 5.5 and bring in Opus or Fable once you see the task does not give way.
Does Claude work in Russia without a VPN?
Claude's own claude.ai site and Anthropic subscriptions are unavailable from Russia: the country is not on the supported list. The API through the codexkey gateway needs neither a VPN nor an Anthropic account, and payment is in rubles by Russian card, through SBP or in crypto.