Anthropic makes its move on ChatGPT as it opens Claude’s core tools to free users

Claude AI

• Claude's free tier now allows file creation, connectors, and skills access
• Free users can generate Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and PDF files in Claude
• Anthropic aims to attract users preferring subscriptions over ad-supported AI

Did our AI summary help?

Anthropic said on Tuesday that users on Claude’s free tier can now create files, connect external apps and use skills, features that were previously reserved for paying customers. The change deepens the company’s push to attract users who are wary of ad-supported AI products, even as rivals experiment with new monetisation models.

Free users can now create, edit and work with files directly inside a Claude conversation using the Sonnet 4.5 model. While Pro subscribers still get access to the more capable Opus model, the free tier can generate Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, Word documents and PDFs, turning Claude into a lightweight productivity tool without a subscription.

Anthropic has also opened up connectors at no cost. These allow Claude to link with a wide range of third-party services, including Slack, Asana, Zapier, Stripe, Canva, Notion, Figma and WordPress. For many users, this brings Claude closer to being an everyday work assistant rather than a standalone chatbot.

Another addition is access to skills, which Anthropic describes as repeatable, filesystem-based resources that give Claude domain-specific expertise. The company already offers skills for PowerPoint, Excel, Word and PDFs, but users can also build custom skills using their own organisational knowledge or specialised workflows. It is a move that nudges Claude towards more serious, professional use cases, even on the free tier.

Anthropic is also improving how long free users can keep a conversation going. The company has added compaction to the free plan, allowing Claude to automatically summarise earlier parts of a conversation so users do not have to start from scratch each time. That said, Anthropic has not raised the free tier usage cap, meaning limits will still apply once those thresholds are reached.

Taken together, the updates reinforce Anthropic’s positioning of Claude as a paid-by-subscriptions product rather than one subsidised by advertising. It is a quieter strategy than splashy feature launches, but one clearly aimed at users who would rather pay, or tolerate limits, than see ads baked into their AI tools.