Claude is an AI assistant built by Anthropic, a safety-focused AI research company. You might know Anthropic as one of the main competitors to OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT). Claude is Anthropic's answer to ChatGPT: a general-purpose AI that you can talk to, give tasks to, and use to assist with a wide range of knowledge work.
This guide explains what Claude actually is, what it is good for, and when it makes sense for your business.
What Claude can do
Claude can read and respond to text. That sounds simple, but in practice it covers a large range of business tasks:
Writing and editing. Give Claude a rough draft of an email, a proposal, or a blog post and ask it to improve it. Or give it instructions and ask it to write something from scratch. The output quality is high, particularly for longer-form pieces.
Reading and summarising documents. Paste a long report, contract, or email chain and ask Claude to summarise it, answer specific questions about it, or identify key points. This is one of Claude's strongest practical applications for business owners who do not have time to read everything that crosses their desk.
Research assistance. Claude can answer questions, explain concepts, compare options, and help you think through decisions. It is not a search engine (it does not browse the web by default), but its training includes an enormous range of business, technical, and general knowledge.
Data analysis. Paste a table of data and ask Claude to identify patterns, calculate summaries, or compare categories. For small to medium datasets that fit in a message, this works well.
Code assistance. If you work with developers or want to understand code, Claude can explain code in plain language, identify bugs, suggest improvements, or write simple scripts.
The difference between Claude and ChatGPT
Both Claude and ChatGPT are general-purpose AI assistants that can do most of the same things. The differences that matter in practice:
Claude handles longer documents better. If you want to paste a large document and ask questions about it, Claude's larger context window means you can fit more content in a single conversation.
Claude's writing is often more nuanced and less generic. For business writing that needs to sound like a specific voice or tone, Claude typically requires less editing.
ChatGPT has a larger plugin and integration ecosystem. If your workflow requires specific third-party tool connections, ChatGPT may have more ready-made options.
ChatGPT has native image generation. Claude does not currently generate images.
Which version of Claude should you use?
Anthropic offers several versions of Claude:
Claude Haiku: The fastest and cheapest model. Good for simple tasks where speed matters more than quality.
Claude Sonnet: The balanced model. Good quality, reasonable speed, suitable for most business tasks.
Claude Opus: The most capable model. Best quality output, slower response, higher cost. Use this for your most complex or important tasks.
For most day-to-day business use, Sonnet is the right choice. For critical writing, complex analysis, or difficult reasoning tasks, Opus is worth the extra cost.
How to access Claude
claude.ai: The direct web interface. Sign up, start chatting. A free tier exists with usage limits. Claude Pro ($20/month) removes most limits and gives access to more powerful models.
Mobile app: Available on iOS and Android.
API: For developers building products that use Claude's capabilities. Access through the Anthropic developer console.
Practical business uses (with examples)
Contract review: "I am not a lawyer. Here is a service agreement I am about to sign. Identify anything that seems unusual, could limit my rights, or that I should ask my lawyer about specifically."
Client proposal drafts: "I have a discovery call with a potential client. They are a 30-person accounting firm looking to automate their document processing. Write a first draft proposal for an AI automation project. Include sections for the problem, our approach, timeline, and team."
Job descriptions: "Write a job description for a senior React developer. The role is remote, based in our Sydney-timezone team, and involves both product feature work and mentoring junior developers. Salary range: $120,000-$150,000 AUD."
Meeting prep: "Here is the agenda for a strategy meeting tomorrow. Generate ten questions I should ask to make sure we cover the right ground."
When not to use Claude
Do not rely on Claude for:
- Legal advice (it is not a lawyer and can be wrong about specific legal questions)
- Medical advice (same reason)
- Real-time information (its knowledge has a cutoff date)
- Specific statistics or citations without verification (it can hallucinate these)
- Tasks where errors have serious consequences without a human review step
Building Claude into your products
Beyond using Claude as a personal assistant, Claude can be embedded in your own software products through Anthropic's API. If you want to add AI capabilities to your product, such as an AI assistant, document Q&A, or content generation feature, our AI integration team builds on Claude and other models.
Use the AI feasibility checker to see what is possible for your specific use case. Then get in touch to discuss how it would work in practice.