Pick a model and know your limits

Start a chat. Next to the send button, you’ll see the model Claude is using, and its effort level. Click the model name to switch to another one, and click More models to see the rest. You can change it at any point in a chat, and the change applies from Claude’s next reply.

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Step 1: Find the model menu

CheckpointYou know where the model name is, and that you can change it mid-chat.

Effort controls how much thinking Claude puts into a reply. Click the model name, then Effort, and pick a level. Anthropic says Low and Medium suit routine jobs, and they make your usage go further. High is the best overall balance, and Max is for the hardest jobs. Higher effort means more thorough replies, but slower ones, and you’ll hit your usage limits faster. Each model marks its recommended level as “Default”.

CheckpointYou know what Low, High and Max are for.

Thinking lets Claude work through a problem before it replies, and you can open a “Thinking” section above the reply to read how it got there. Thinking and effort are separate settings. On some models, the thinking switch can’t be turned off, so you might not see it. For everyday jobs, like simple questions and general writing, Anthropic says the defaults work well. But raise the effort, or turn on thinking, for jobs like calculations, detailed document analysis or planning.

CheckpointYou know when to leave the defaults alone, and when to turn the settings up.

Claude’s plans page lists the Free plan as “Free for everyone”. It includes chat on web, desktop and mobile, memory across conversations, and creating artifacts, which you’ll try in lesson 5. The page shows prices in your local currency, and our browser showed euros, so we don’t quote any here. Paid plans add more usage and more models.

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Step 4: See what the Free plan includes

CheckpointYou know you’re on the Free plan, and what that means.

A usage limit is how much you can use Claude over a stretch of time. On the Free plan, Claude’s help page says there’s a session limit that resets every five hours, and the number of messages you can send varies with demand. What uses your allowance faster? Long conversations, the features you use, the model you choose, and the effort level. If you hit the limit, wait for it to reset, or upgrade. A separate length limit is how long a single chat can get, so the fix there is to start a new chat.

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Step 5: Understand usage limits

CheckpointYou can say what makes your usage run out sooner.