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Install Claude Code on Windows, macOS or Linux, understand subscription plans vs API billing, and run your first command.

Setting up Claude Code takes a few minutes. The installation itself is simple. The part worth understanding properly is how you pay for it, because that decides how much you can use it and how fast you spend money.

System requirements

Requirement	Minimum
Operating system	macOS 13+, Windows 10 (1809+) or Windows Server 2019+, Ubuntu 20.04+, Debian 10+, Alpine 3.19+
Hardware	4 GB RAM or more, x64 or ARM64 processor
Network	Internet connection (unless you use a local model, see Section 3)
Shell	Bash, Zsh, PowerShell or CMD

Install Claude Code

Go to code.claude.com or the official setup guide and copy the command for your operating system. The native installer is the recommended option because it updates itself automatically in the background.

irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex

irm is short for Invoke-RestMethod. It downloads the install script, and iex (Invoke-Expression) runs it.

curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash

curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.cmd -o install.cmd && install.cmd && del install.cmd

You can also install through a package manager. These do not auto-update, so you must upgrade them yourself.

Package manager	Install	Upgrade
Homebrew (macOS)	`brew install --cask claude-code`	`brew upgrade claude-code`
WinGet (Windows)	`winget install Anthropic.ClaudeCode`	`winget upgrade Anthropic.ClaudeCode`

PowerShell or CMD?

If you see The token '&&' is not a valid statement separator, you ran the CMD command in PowerShell. If you see 'irm' is not recognized, you ran the PowerShell command in CMD. Your prompt starts with PS when you are in PowerShell.

Verify the installation

Open a new terminal window and run:

claude --version

If you see a version number, you are ready. If the terminal says claude is not recognized, the install folder is not on your PATH yet. The native installer places Claude Code under .local in your home directory (for example ~/.local/bin on macOS and Linux) and prints the exact folder to add. Add it to your PATH, open a new terminal and try again.

For a full health check of your install and settings, run:

claude doctor

On native Windows, installing Git for Windows is recommended so Claude Code can use its Bash tool. Without it, Claude Code falls back to PowerShell. WSL users do not need it.

Plans: subscription vs API

Claude Code itself is free to install. Running it uses Claude models, and that is what you pay for. There are two ways.

Option 1: A Claude subscription

Plan	Claude Code	Good for
Free	Not included	Chatting on claude.ai only
Pro	Included	Learning, side projects, moderate daily use. You will hit the session limit on heavy days
Max	Included, with much higher limits	Daily professional use, larger projects, heavier models
Team / Enterprise	Included	Organisations that need admin controls and shared billing

With a subscription you do not pay per token. Instead, you get a usage limit per session window and per week. When you hit it, you either wait for the reset or turn on usage credits to keep working (more on that in the next lessons).

Option 2: The Anthropic API (pay as you go)

You create an account on the Claude Console, add credits, and pay for exactly the tokens you use. Prices are per million tokens (MTok), and output tokens cost more than input tokens.

Model family	Use it for	Approx. price per MTok (input / output)
Haiku	Fast, simple tasks	$1 / $5
Sonnet	Everyday coding	$2 / $10
Opus	Planning, architecture, hard problems	$4 / $20

Anthropic also offers Fable, its most capable and most expensive tier (around $10 / $50 per MTok), for the hardest long-running tasks. You will not need it for anything in these docs.

Prices change

These are the latest-generation prices at the time of writing (October 2026). In the videos you will see slightly older numbers, such as $5 for Opus and $3 for Sonnet, because older model versions were current at recording time. Always check the official pricing page before you plan a budget.

Which one should you choose?

Situation	Recommendation
You are learning and want predictable cost	Pro plan, or a small API top-up (around $5) if you stick to Sonnet or Haiku
You use Claude Code every day for work	Max plan
You run Claude Code in scripts or CI	API key
You want zero cost and have a strong GPU	Local model (Section 3), with lower speed and quality

A subscription is usually better value because you are not watching every token. The API is fine for learning as long as you avoid running Opus for everything.

First launch

Move to a project folder and start Claude Code:

cd my-project
claude

The first time you open a folder, Claude Code asks whether you trust it. This matters: once trusted, Claude can read and, with your approval, change files in that folder.

Choose the folder carefully

Do not run claude from your home directory or your entire C:\ drive. Create a dedicated project folder and start Claude Code there, so its reach is limited to what you actually want it to work on.

After you trust the folder, you get the Claude Code prompt. Try a simple question:

How can you help me?

Claude explains that it is built for software engineering tasks: writing and editing code, debugging, refactoring, writing tests, working with APIs, running commands and more.

Why the terminal?

A fair question: why use a terminal when we have nice graphical tools?

As a professional developer, a lot of real work already happens in the terminal: git, package managers, build tools, Docker, cloud CLIs. Even in the VS Code extension's graphical panel, some features (like configuring hooks) send you back to the terminal. So it makes sense to get comfortable there from day one. We will run the CLI inside VS Code's integrated terminal, which gives us the best of both.

Claude Code also has extensions for VS Code (and Cursor), a plugin for JetBrains IDEs like IntelliJ IDEA and PyCharm, a desktop app, and a web version.

Keeping Claude Code updated

Native installs update automatically. To update immediately:

claude update

Official references

Written By: Shramik Masti

Installation and Plans