Read this article if...
you’ve seen the buzz about Claude and wondered, “Is it really worth my time?” Well, I dove headfirst into testing Claude, so you don’t have to.
I’ll lay out the 3 things Claude does amazingly well—and also spill on the 5 big mistakes it makes.
Plus, let’s be honest, you probably want the real scoop on Claude’s pricing. I’ll break down exactly what Claude costs.
Curious about other tools? I’m sharing the top Claude alternatives you might want to check out too.
And of course, I know you’re asking: Is Claude legit? Don’t worry, I’m covering that in detail.
This isn't just a generic Claude review. I've personally tested every feature and scoured tons of real user reviews for you.
If you skip this blog, you’ll definitely miss some key insights—trust me, you want the inside scoop before trying Claude.
Go grab a snack, settle in, and let’s jump right in!
Before we get started, here are some quick links to everything covered in this Claude review:
- Claude Review Summary
- 3 Things Claude Does Well
- 5 Big Mistakes Claude Makes
- What Does Claude Cost?
- What are Some Claude Alternatives?
- Is Claude Legit? – The Final Verdict

Claude Review Summary

If you're in a rush, here's a quick 2-minute summary of this blog:
3 Things Claude Does Well
- Handles Big Tasks: People notice that with some versions, like Sonnet, you can work for a long time without hitting limits, so you don’t have to stop halfway through something.
- Graphs and Analytics: Some users point out it’s helpful if you want to make graphs or look at data, so if you ever need to check out numbers or trends, it can give you a hand.
- Feels Smart: There are some reviews saying it acts almost like a bossy, smart assistant, meaning it sometimes feels even more capable than other tools folks have tried, but it still has limits.
- See more on Claude's advantages below.
5 Big Mistakes Claude Makes
- Pain to Get Help or Refunds: If you ever need a refund or want to cancel, good luck! Their customer support hardly replies, and you’ll be left waiting days, feeling like you’re just shouting into a void.
- Stuck in Pricey Plans: Claude locks you into expensive subscriptions, and the worst part? If you don’t use all your credits this month, poof—they’re gone. You’re basically overpaying every single month for stuff you never even got to use.
- Unpredictable Usage Limits: The rules keep changing without warning. One day it’s a “5 hour limit,” next day it’s a whole new set of random restrictions. You never know when you’ll hit a wall, and they hardly tell you about changes.
- Refuses to Follow Instructions: Even if you try to give clear instructions, Claude just ignores them and does its own thing. You end up wasting loads of your paid credits just fighting the bot to get the answers you want.
- Bugs and Random Account Lockouts: Imagine paying and then finding out you can’t even log in because your account got randomly disabled. It happens to people, and getting it fixed is a total pain since support barely replies.
- More details on Claude's problems below.
What Does Claude Cost?

- Free Plan – So, Claude’s got a free plan that doesn’t cost you a cent. You can chat with it on the web, iOS, Android, or your desktop. But I found that you hit the usage limits pretty fast if you use it a lot, and some features are locked away.
- Pro Plan – This one is $17 a month if you pay for a year upfront ($200 billed at once), or it’s $20 per month if you do monthly billing. You get more usage, can run unlimited projects, and even use Claude Code in your terminal. But honestly, if you’re not going to use all those fancy features, it’s a bit pricey, and you still have usage caps.
- Max Plan – Max is for folks who want to do a ton of stuff and don't want to wait around. It starts at $100 per person each month and gives you up to 20 times more usage than Pro, along with early access to new features. But $100 a month is a huge jump – not great if you don’t actually need all that firepower.
- Should you buy Claude? I’d say no for most people, since even paid plans have limits and can get pretty expensive. Plus, credits and usage don’t carry over if you don’t use them up.
Well, that's the quick rundown. If you want, I can go deeper on Claude's pros and cons.
Claude Review - What Does it Get Right?

So, let’s chat about three things people really notice when they use Claude:
-
Handles big tasks:
- Folks like that the Sonnet version doesn’t stop working while you tackle big projects or long chats.
- Some people say they use Sonnet for hours without hitting annoying limits.
- Just a heads up though, other versions like Opus can still have limit issues pretty quick.
-
Graphs and analytics:
- If you want to make sense of numbers or trends, Claude helps with making graphs and breaking down data.
- Users talk about it being handy for checking out data when other AI can get a bit lost.
- Some reviews say it actually feels easier to handle analytics here than in other tools they’ve tried.
-
Feels smart:
- People mention Claude feels sort of like a bossy, smart helper—sometimes even more on top of things than ChatGPT.
- It’s not perfect, but users notice that Claude picks up on trickier tasks better than most AI tools.
- But it still has limits—don’t expect it to do everything right every single time.
“Great, I love it! Helpful with graphs and analytics.”
Claude Review – The Top 5 Things Where Claude Drops the Ball

Alright, let’s get real about the biggest 5 things that totally mess up the Claude experience:
-
Pain to Get Help or Refunds
- When you hit up Claude’s support because of a real problem, you’re waiting forever. It's like they just ignore you and your issues aren't important at all.
- If you’re hoping to get a refund, you’ll find it nearly impossible. Sometimes it takes weeks to hear back and you never feel like a priority.
- If your account is disabled or something goes wrong, there's often just no way to get it fixed fast. I’ve spent days waiting and gotten nowhere, which just feels super unfair as a paying customer.
-
Stuck in Pricey Plans
- Claude makes you choose these super expensive plans, but if you don’t use all your credits, they vanish—no rollovers. It’s frustrating when you’re basically paying for nothing.
- If you go out of town or get busy, any unused time or credits just expire. I’ve lost money month after month this way, and it feels like a rip-off.
- Even worse, they never warn you about losing your credits, so you only find out once it’s too late. It almost feels like they set it up this way on purpose.
-
Unpredictable Usage Limits
- Claude keeps changing the rules about usage limits, and honestly, you never know what you’re going to get. Sometimes it’s a “5 hour limit,” then suddenly it’s “wait until Friday.”
- You don’t get any heads up before these changes, and the info on their website is often outdated. I’ve logged in to work, only to find I can’t use the service I paid for.
- I feel trapped because I already paid, but the limits change out of nowhere, so you’re just stuck with whatever they decide that week. It makes planning impossible.
-
Refuses to Follow Instructions
- No matter how clear you are, Claude just does what it wants. I’ve given step-by-step prompts and it still ignores most of them, which wastes my time and paid credits.
- The AI sometimes just starts preaching or giving “safe” answers instead of actually doing what you ask. This gets old really fast if you have specific needs.
- I feel like I'm arguing with a brick wall half the time. It doesn’t ask for clarity, just skips your request and leaves you frustrated.
-
Bugs and Random Account Lockouts
- It’s scary knowing you could wake up one day and find your paid account locked out for no reason at all. This has happened to me and to other people, too.
- When you get locked out, there’s basically nobody on their end helping you get back in. The support just sits silent while you’re locked out of stuff you already paid for.
- I paid for credits, but sometimes I can’t even use them because a random bug locked me out. That’s not just annoying—it actually costs you money you can’t get back.
Here's a review by AT from US talking about their service issues:
“Without a doubt this is the worst service I have ever paid for. It is a scam of scams. The system does whatever it feels like, disregards prompts, refuses to ask for clarity when needed and in doing so wastes ALL of your paid usage limits. It makes ridiculous and unavoidable problems and then uses your "tokens" to fix them. I reached out to their CS team to get some credits back as I not only hit my "5 hour limit" multiple times because of this but then I also reached a "weekly limit"?? Like come on. ANYWAY I've been waiting on their CS team for 15 hours now and I am just going to go straight to the BBB to try to force a response and get my money back. Stay far far away from this joke.”
Here's a review by Practice Manager West End Anim US discussing recent changes in service:
“Claude started out strong, I came on when Opus 4.1 showed promise, and was a true dominant force allowing users to construct complex projects, be it code based, or even creative writing or strategizing, on a level that no other AI system could touch. However, over the last 6 months there have been some significant and worrying changes in the direction the company is taking. The most recent being the decision to silently roll out new usage limits, which makes me, a user who pays for their maximum plan ($200.00USD per month) absolutely appalled. There wasn't even an email. I came on today after having been away a week, and started to get to work, and immediately ran out of my OPUS useage in less than an hour. It used to say "5 hour limit" now it says "NEXT FRIDAY AT 11:00 it will be available". Meanwhile they roll out their new model Sonnet 4.5, which they claim is superior and more efficient, but I found it short, and making careless errors that Opus would have never let happen. Needless to say, I used it on the MAX PLAN for 3 hours, and used 30% of my WEEKLY useage. On a 200 dollar plan. So I get 10 hours of usage a week? They haven't even updated their marketing yet, its showing all the old rates and plans. This is a silent rug pull, and in no way do I feel comfortable doing business with a company who pulls shady practices as this. And I was HUGE supporter of claude, shooting down chatGPT and Grok every chance I got. To say I am disappointed is an understatement. Waiting for my refund now.”
Looking for a solution that doesn’t require ongoing subscriptions and lets you keep your credits indefinitely? Give AIDetectPlus a try. You can even check it out for free—with support for up to 1000 words—by clicking here.
That concludes this comprehensive review. Interested in some other alternatives to Claude? But first, let's discuss the pricing details!
What Does Claude Really Cost?

Alright, let me break down Claude’s subscription pricing in a way that actually makes sense, with all the facts they won’t tell you upfront. Heads up: these plans all charge you every single month, whether you use your credits or not. Let’s dig in:
Claude Free Plan ($0)
- Yeah, this one sounds nice at first since it’s free, but you only get limited usage. If you try to do anything heavy, you’ll hit a wall super quick.
- You get basic chat, simple content generation, and access on web or mobile. But honestly, even as a free user, I ran into usage caps all the time, and the experience feels watered down.
- Not good if you need anything more than just quick, casual chatting.
Claude Pro Plan ($20/month or ~$200/year)
- If you want more out of Claude, now you’re shelling out 20 bucks a month—every single month, like clockwork.
- Sure, you get higher usage limits (about 5× what you got on the free plan), so you can do more chatting, have unlimited projects, and even get Google Workspace integration.
- You can also use more Claude models and access Claude Code. But if you’re not using it a lot one month, those “credits” are just gone. You’re still paying.
- Even at $200/year, that’s a lot of money for something you might barely use some months—and you definitely won’t get it back if you miss a month.
Claude Max Plan (From $100/month)
- Here’s where it gets wild: the Max plan starts at $100 a month. That’s at least five times the Pro usage, but it’s still hundreds of dollars a year for text credits that don’t roll over if you don’t use them.
- If you need even more, the $200/month sub-plan is supposed to give you up to 20× the Pro usage, but you’re still dealing with caps.
- This is for “power users,” but honestly, most people never need that much, and you’re still stuck with credits expiring every month.
- They say you get priority access and advanced features, but in my own experience, you’re just stuck paying a huge bill for the privilege of not waiting in line.
Claude Team Plan ($30/user/month, or $25 with annual discount — minimum 5 users)
- This one is for groups and teams, but let’s be real: $30 a month per person (and you need at least five people)? That adds up fast.
- You get collaboration tools, admin controls, centralized billing, and premium Claude Code access. But if you have a small team or not everyone is using it all the time, a big chunk of your money is wasted each month.
- Also, those credits don’t roll over, which means you’re basically just burning cash if your team doesn't max out on usage every month.
Claude Enterprise Plan (Custom pricing – Contact Sales)
- This plan is “custom”—which is usually code for “it’s going to be expensive, but they don’t want to scare you off with the number.”
- Sure, you supposedly get everything Team offers, plus stronger security and compliance, audits, logs, and support.
- But if you’re not a giant corporation with tons of users, you’re just paying out the nose every month for features you probably don’t need. And again, no rollover credits.
- I’ve worked with companies who picked this, and IT always asks the same “why are we still paying so much when some months no one even logs in?”
Claude API / Developer / Token-Based Costs
- If you want to build apps or use Claude as a backend (like for chatbots or agents), you pay by usage—specifically, by input and output tokens.
- Cheapest model (Claude Haiku) is about $0.80 per million input tokens and $1 for output; mid-tier Claude Sonnet 4 is $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output; high-end Claude Opus 4.1 is $15 per million input and whopping $75 per million output tokens.
- If you do the math, generating just 1 million output tokens with Opus costs $75—that stacks up fast if your app gets any real usage.
- Plus, both input and output count toward your costs—so you’re double-charged for every API call, which nobody tells you until the bill comes.
- Yeah, there are some prompts about batch processing reducing costs, but trust me, unless you’re a seasoned developer, you end up overspending.
Bottom line: Claude looks fancy, but you’re paying every month for the same credits—even when you don’t use them. The costs add up ridiculously fast, and you have zero flexibility. Let me tell you a better way:
Why I Recommend AIDetectPlus Instead
- With AIDetectPlus, you only pay once for credits, and they NEVER EXPIRE. If you buy 5,000 or 60,000 words, you use them whenever you want—no more paying month after month for stuff you didn’t even touch.
- AIDetectPlus does way more than just chat: you get built-in GPT-4, Claude, Gemini and more, plus an AI detector, humanizer, essay writer, plagiarism checker, PDF tools and a whole lot more—basically, it has it all.
- It all starts at just $9 one time—not $20 or $100 or $200 monthly. You just buy more credits if you need them, and that’s it.
- Your money actually goes to work for you—no more wasted subscriptions or paying for unused “credits.” To me, that’s a no-brainer. See all features here, and compare for yourself.
- If you want to see how Claude stacks up to AIDetectPlus, check out the full comparison below.
What are some Claude alternatives?

Alright, so you’ve seen what Claude can do (and where it messes up). But before you decide, let’s check out some other options. Here are my top 3 picks:
#1 - Claude vs AIDetectPlus
- Both Claude and AIDetectPlus let you chat with smart AI, but they’re built for different things:
- Claude is mainly a chat assistant—good for talking, brainstorming, and sometimes crunching numbers or making graphs.
- AIDetectPlus is like a Swiss Army knife for students and writers. You get AI chat (with Claude, GPT-4, Gemini, and more), plus essay writing, citation tools, plagiarism removal, and even AI detection—all in one spot.
- Where is AIDetectPlus Better?
- All-in-one writing toolkit: You can write essays, get citations, check for plagiarism, and even humanize your text—no need to jump between different apps.
- Unlimited AI chat, no weird limits: Chat with Claude, GPT-4, and Gemini as much as you want—no surprise cutoffs or random usage caps.
- Pay once, use anytime: Just buy credits starting at $5, and they never expire. No monthly bills or wasted credits if you skip a month.
- Super fast, real support: If you get stuck, you can actually talk to a real person and get help fast. No more waiting days for a reply.
- Perfect for school and work: If you need to write, cite, or make sure your stuff is original, AIDetectPlus has you covered.
- Where is Claude Better?
- Handles big, long chats: If you need to work on huge projects or analyze lots of data in one go, Claude can sometimes go longer without stopping.
#2 - Claude vs Deep AI
- Both of these are handy if you want to chat with an AI, but they work super differently:
- Claude is kind of like a smart assistant that’s real good with big research, graphs, or data projects. It’s made for people who want to handle lots of info or get help with tricky stuff.
- DeepAI Chat is more like a creative toolbox—it lets you chat, generate text, and even make images, music, and videos, all on one website.
- Where is DeepAI Chat Better?
- Creative superpowers: DeepAI isn’t just for chatting. You can make pictures, songs, videos, talk with your voice, and even mess with stories—all in the same spot.
- Jump right in (for free): You don’t even have to log in to try most features. Just go to the website and start playing with the AI stuff right away.
- Flexible and cheap: You can pay per use with credits or go Pro for only $4.99/month and get a big monthly quota for all kinds of features.
- All together now: DeepAI puts everything in one dashboard, so you don’t have to keep switching apps just to get different creative tools.
- Where is Claude Better?
- Great with long tasks & research: Claude really shines if you need help with lots of data or want a smart assistant to handle bigger projects.
- Handy for making graphs: If you like looking at numbers or want quick charts, Claude can pitch in with analytics.
- Feels pretty smart in conversations: Some people say it “gets” what you’re saying a bit better than other bots.
#3 - Claude vs Duck AI
- Both Claude and Duck AI are cool if you want to chat with an AI, but they're kind of meant for different things:
- Claude is like having a super-smart assistant that helps you tackle big projects, make charts, and dig into data. It’s built to handle deep work and long sessions, though it does put some pretty tight rules on how much you can use it, especially if you don’t pay.
- Duck AI (from DuckDuckGo) is all about keeping things private and easy. You get to play with a bunch of different AI models—like GPT-4o, Claude 3 Haiku, Llama 3, and Mistral Small—without ever making an account, and Duck AI never tracks anything.
- Where is Claude Better?
- Good for big or complex jobs: If you need help with something long or detailed, Claude handles bigger tasks without cutting you off too fast.
- Great for numbers and graphs: Claude is handy if you want to make charts or look at data in new ways.
- Where is Duck AI Better?
- Privacy is king: No account, no tracking, and your chats aren’t saved anywhere but your device. No one’s snooping on you.
- Multiple AIs in one spot: Want to compare GPT-4o, Claude 3 Haiku, Llama 3, and more? Duck AI lets you switch models while chatting. Super handy.
- Totally free, no paywalls: Use it as much as you want, no subscriptions, no credit cards, nothing tricky. Just open and chat.
- Easy to play with: You can change the style, the length, and even the mood of your responses—no sign-ups, no hassle.
- Want more about Claude’s pros? Check here. Interested in the stuff it messes up? Read this.
Is Claude Legit?

Short answer - Nope, not really worth it!
Here’s why:
- Reason #1: Customer Support is a Nightmare: Honestly, if something goes wrong or you need your money back, good luck getting help. Their support is super slow, sometimes they just don’t even bother to reply, and you might wait days feeling totally ignored.
- Reason #2: You Lose Money on Unused Credits: Once you pay for a plan, if you don’t use up your credits this month, they’re gone for good. I ended up paying for stuff I never got to use, and it stings!
- Reason #3: Weird Limits and Random Bugs: One day your account works, next day you’re locked out for no reason—or suddenly there are new rules about how much you can use. They never warn you, and just figuring out what happened wastes more of your time (and money).
Here's a review by Ian GB:
“Terrible sanctimonious AI which ignores instructions preferring to preach - cost is too high as usage limits are ridiculous.”
So what’s a better pick?
Honestly, AIDetectPlus fixes all of Claude's issues. Here's how:

You can actually try it out—for free! You get to test things with 1000 words before even paying a cent. But that’s just for starters:
- #1 Fast, Accurate AI Chat with Top Models: You get built-in AI chat powered by GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, and more. So you can ask questions, brainstorm, and do research without needing to switch apps—makes life super easy for anyone, whether you’re a student, writer, or just need quick answers.
- #2 Credits NEVER EXPIRE: Any credits you buy are yours until you use them. They don’t disappear after a month, so you’re only paying for what you actually use.
- #3 Real help from real people: If you need help, you’ll get a reply fast—like within 12 hours, sometimes way quicker. No robots, no ghosting, just answers!
- #4 All-in-one toolkit, not just AI chat: It’s more than just chat—you get AI detection tools, humanization, plagiarism checking, essay writing, paraphrasing, and even summarizing PDFs. If you’re a student, a researcher, or just someone who deals with words a lot, everything’s in one place. Check out the menu above for more.
Alright, that’s it—hope my thoughts on Claude saved you some trouble, and gave you better options. If you wanna see for yourself, just head over to AIDetectPlus or grab your free 1000-word trial. No credit card, no phone number needed—just your email and you’re all set!