Choosing a Claude plan for a 5 to 50 person NZ team

The first question: will business information go into Claude?

Anthropic runs two sets of terms. The Free, Pro and Max plans sit under its consumer terms, and on those plans each person chooses whether their chats can be used to improve Claude⁵. If someone allows it, Anthropic keeps that data for five years; if not, the standard retention period is 30 days⁵. That choice belongs to the individual, not to the business that pays the bill.

Team, Enterprise and API use sit under Anthropic's commercial terms, which the consumer changes do not apply to⁵. The commercial terms state that Anthropic may not train models on customer content from the services, and they bring in a data processing addendum⁶. For a firm that will paste in client emails, staff records or quotes, that difference settles the question. If business information goes in, buy a commercial plan.

A sole trader testing ideas on public information can reasonably start on Pro. As soon as there is a second person, client data, or a need to take an account back when someone leaves, a personal plan becomes the wrong tool.

The plans in plain terms

Anthropic publishes current prices, in US dollars before tax, at claude.com/pricing, and notes that pricing varies by region^1,2. Check it on the day you buy.

• Free: chat, web search, file creation, artifacts and connectors, with tight usage limits¹. Fine for a trial, not for work involving client data.
• Pro: an individual plan with monthly or discounted annual billing, adding more usage, Projects, Claude Code and the Chrome and Microsoft 365 extensions¹. Consumer terms.
• Max: five or twenty times the usage of Pro¹. For one heavy individual user, still under consumer terms.
• Team: from two to 150 seats, with standard and premium seat types, admin controls, single sign-on and no model training by default^1,2. The usual answer for a small business.
• Enterprise: a per-seat fee plus usage billed at API rates, annual billing only, with audit logs, SCIM, a Compliance API and custom retention^1,4. Worth a look once governance needs outgrow Team.

What Team gives a small business

Claude Team needs at least two members and supports up to 150 seats². Annual billing costs less per seat than monthly, and a premium seat costs several times a standard seat². Usage limits apply to each member rather than to the organisation as a whole, and each person can see when their weekly limit resets under Settings, then Usage².

The two seat types differ in capacity, not features. Anthropic describes a standard seat as 1.25 times Pro's per-session allowance and a premium seat as 6.25 times, aimed at power users with demanding workloads². Both include Claude Code³. The admin side is what a business is really paying for: centralised billing, single sign-on and domain capture, just-in-time provisioning, role-based permissions, spend controls, enterprise search, and connectors for Google Drive, GitHub, Microsoft 365 and Slack².

Shared Projects are the everyday payoff. On Team, a project can be shared with colleagues who can either view it or edit its instructions and knowledge¹². That lets one person build the quoting project or the policy library once, and everyone else uses the same source files.

Mixing seat types without overspending

Most small teams need only one or two premium seats, usually for the person who drafts long documents all day or the developer using Claude Code. Owners buy seats under Organization settings, then Organization and access, by choosing Manage beside Total seats and then Add or change seats³. An admin moves a person between tiers under Organization settings, then Members, using the Tier dropdown³.

Watch the billing rules. New seats and upgrades to premium are prorated and charged straight away³. Moving someone from premium back to standard only takes effect at your next renewal, with no prorated refund³. Removing a member does not create a credit either; you have to reduce the total seat allocation, and that reduction also waits for renewal³. Start people on standard and upgrade the ones who keep hitting limits.

Picture a nine-person Nelson marketing agency. Seven staff get standard seats and the two senior writers get premium seats, on annual billing. If a writer's workload drops, the agency moves them to standard ahead of the renewal date rather than mid-year.

When Enterprise is worth the conversation

Enterprise includes everything in Team plus audit logs, SCIM, custom data retention, a Compliance API, customer-managed encryption keys and an option to keep inference within the United States⁴. Seats carry one price, and usage is billed separately at API rates⁴. The self-serve route needs at least 20 seats, while the sales-assisted route starts at 50 seats and adds invoicing and multi-currency billing⁴.

For most firms that are still below the sales-assisted threshold, Team covers the need. Enterprise becomes a sensible conversation when you must produce audit logs for a client or regulator, when your IT provider manages identities through SCIM, or when your privacy impact assessment says you need control over how long conversations are kept.

New Zealand checks before you pay

GST first. Inland Revenue's guidance for overseas suppliers is that a New Zealand business which says it is GST registered, or gives its GST number, should usually not be charged GST on remote services⁸. If less than 95% of your use of the service is for taxable supplies, the reverse charge rules apply instead¹³. In Claude, the Tax or VAT ID field appears at signup once you enter an eligible billing address⁷. To add it later, open Billing Settings, choose Update beside the payment method, and enter the number⁷. Changes only affect future billing cycles, so do this before the first invoice, and tick Use a different name on invoices if the company name differs from the account⁷. Ask your accountant how to treat the invoices in your own return.

Privacy second. Where Anthropic only processes information on your behalf under the commercial terms and data processing addendum, section 11 of the Privacy Act 2020 generally treats it as still held by your business, so the principle 5 security duties apply¹⁴. Principle 12 is engaged mainly if a provider uses the information for its own purposes, so read it before staff start pasting in personal information⁹. The Privacy Commissioner explains that a business may disclose personal information to an organisation outside New Zealand only in certain cases, such as where the recipient is bound by comparable safeguards or by contract terms that protect the information adequately⁹. The commercial terms and their data processing addendum are the documents to file for that assessment⁶.

The Commissioner also expects senior leadership approval, a privacy impact assessment and human review of outputs before an organisation adopts a generative AI tool¹⁰. For a small firm, that can be a two-page document. Note in it that the US-only inference option belongs to Enterprise⁴, and record where your plan stores data according to Anthropic's current documentation.

A decision path for teams of 5 to 50

Work through these questions in order. Most firms stop at the third one.

• Will anyone enter client, staff or commercially sensitive information? If yes, rule out Free, Pro and Max for that work^5,6.
• Do you need central control of accounts, billing and offboarding? If yes, choose Team.
• Who will use Claude for hours every day? Give those people premium seats and everyone else standard seats².
• Do you need audit logs, SCIM or custom retention for a contract or regulator? If yes, price Enterprise as well⁴.
• Has a senior person approved the use and signed off a short privacy impact assessment¹⁰?

The first week on Team

Buying the plan is the easy part. Spend the first week on settings that are awkward to change later.

• Enter your GST number and invoice name before the first billing cycle⁷.
• Turn on single sign-on and domain capture if your staff already sign in with Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace².
• Decide on web search: an Owner enables it for the organisation under Organization settings, then Capabilities.
• Add the Microsoft 365 connector under Organization settings, then Connectors, if you use SharePoint and Outlook; it needs one-time consent from a Microsoft Entra Global Administrator and mirrors each person's existing permissions¹¹.
• Leave connector write tools off until you have a policy for Claude sending email or editing files on someone's behalf¹¹.
• Build two or three shared Projects for real, repeated work, and set spend controls so nobody is surprised by extra usage^2,12.