Review: Should You Spend $20 per Month for the Claude Pro AI Chatbot?

Anthropic just lately launched the Professional model of its already highly effective chatbot, Claude 2. The service guarantees 5 instances extra interactions, computing precedence, and early entry to new options.

Anthropic’s new Claude Professional is just out there within the US and UK, costing $20 (US) and £18 (UK), placing the AI chatbot in direct competitors with OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus service which is extra broadly out there for a similar worth.

However is the improve price it? On this article, we make it easier to determine whether or not Claude Professional is sensible for you, or in the event you could be higher off spending these $20 on a burger or one thing else to make you cheerful.

Know Your self

Extra necessary than understanding what Claude Professional presents is knowing what you, as a consumer, want. And for that, a fast self-assessment is important as a result of generally having “the very best” doesn’t translate to having the very best for you.

First, it’s essential to know: What sort of consumer are you? How typically do you end up needing to seek the advice of Claude to help you with a process?

When you use Claude consistently, to the purpose that it has change into an important instrument in your work, maybe it’s a good suggestion to pay these $20. Or, even higher: It is likely to be a greater concept to ask your boss to pay for a membership if the added worth that this chatbot presents will profit the corporate.

“In case your conversations are comparatively quick (roughly 200 English sentences, assuming your sentences are round 15-20 phrases), you’ll be able to anticipate to ship not less than 100 messages each 8 hours, typically extra relying on Claude’s present capability,” says Anthropic within the official documentation of Claude Professional. “Over two thirds of all conversations on claude.ai (as of September 2023) have been inside this size.”

This implies, contemplating that the typical working hours are exactly about 8 hours, the improve will make sense in the event you use the instrument greater than 100 instances a day. That might be about 12.5 instances per hour.

Know Your AI Prompts

In fact, the restrict of 1.5 hourly conversations each 8 hours is assuming that you’re throughout the common consumer base of Claude and that your interactions are throughout the established vary.

However there’s extra to that. Along with the variety of interactions, you will need to know the kind of use you’re on the lookout for in every dialog. Are you a typical consumer or would you see your self as an influence consumer? Claude handles 100K context tokens, however in the event you use very complicated prompts in every interplay, this variety of conversations will lower drastically.

“When you add a replica of The Nice Gatsby, you might solely have the ability to ship 20 messages in that dialog inside 8 hours,” Anthropic says in Claude’s Professional official documentation. Remember that Claude reads all the dialog with every interplay, so a little bit of immediate engineering is necessary to optimize every of the instructions you give.

Subsequently, if you’re an influence consumer who tends to cope with very lengthy prompts and workflows that require a number of iterations, you’ll undoubtedly need to improve whether it is one thing it’s essential to do consistently. But in addition take into account that if this heavy work shouldn’t be one thing it’s essential to do repeatedly all through the day, maybe the restrict of 8 conversations of the free model could also be adequate for you.

Take into account the Unpredictability of Service Availability

There may be additionally the matter of urgency. Do you depend on Claude to ship speedy outcomes? In that case, you need to take into account that Claude’s free model, similar to ChatGPT 3.5, generally is not going to work in periods of excessive visitors, as all of the bandwidth and computing energy out there will probably be reserved for “VIP” customers who pay for Claude Professional.

That is unpredictable; it will possibly occur at 5 a.m. or in the course of an pressing presentation that your boss requested you to switch on the final minute.

So, to deal with this subject, it’s essential to steadiness the danger/profit relationship. Is it price paying $20 for the privilege of getting fast responses in troublesome instances? If not, you is likely to be fantastic switching to different companies like ChatGPT, Bard, or Beluga when Claude is experiencing excessive visitors.

Cash and New Options

And at last, it’s essential to take into account the matter of your personal monetary stability. How a lot does a $20 month-to-month subscription matter to you?

If you’re the kind of consumer who counts each penny and doesn’t have extra cash to spend, it’s seemingly that the best choice for you is to make use of the highly effective free model of Claude and swap between Claude, ChatGPT, and Google Bard as per your wants.

Now, in the event you lose $20 and say “oh lol, I simply misplaced 20 bucks,” maybe an affordable subscription is price it for the comfort and peace of thoughts that Anthropic presents—solely contemplating that it’s simply that: comfort, not performance.

And what concerning the early entry to new options? Nicely, that is one other perk for Claude Professional customers, however it isn’t one thing it is best to take into account at this second as a result of there are literally no new options in Claude Professional on the time of writing.The Professional and Free customers have entry to the identical chatbot, with the identical capabilities, with the identical high quality — in contrast to ChatGPT Plus and Free customers who use completely different variations of OpenAI’s LLM. Plus customers use GPT-4 and Free customers use the much less highly effective GPT-3.5.

Conclusion

So, in the long run the choice to improve will largely rely upon how a lot you utilize Claude and probably not on how highly effective you need it to be. The important thing issue to ponder is how frequent and heavy your interactions will probably be. This determination shouldn’t be concerning the chatbot, it’s about you.

Claude Professional and Claude 2 are precisely the identical mannequin, so it is likely to be a good suggestion to stay with the free mannequin for a couple of months and see if the utilization limitations imposed by Anthropic negatively impression your work. In that case, upgrading to the professional model will undoubtedly be price it, as there isn’t any different language mannequin available on the market that matches Claude’s contextual capability.