BREAKING: Anthropic says Claude will stay ad-free, rejecting sponsored responses in AI chats
“There are many good places for advertising. A conversation with Claude is not one of them,” the company said, adding that ads would be “incompatible with what we want Claude to be: a genuinely helpful assistant for work and for deep thinking.”
- Feb 4, 2026,
- Updated Feb 4, 2026 7:29 PM IST
Anthropic on February 4 said it will keep its Claude assistant free of advertising, drawing a sharp contrast with rivals such as OpenAI, which announced in January that it will begin testing ads in its free AI product for logged-in users in the US and introduce a lower-cost subscription tier that still includes advertising.
“There are many good places for advertising. A conversation with Claude is not one of them,” the company said, adding that ads would be “incompatible with what we want Claude to be: a genuinely helpful assistant for work and for deep thinking.”
The move comes as OpenAI pushes further into consumer monetisation. The company said it will test ads in its free offering and is rolling out an $8-a-month “Go” plan with expanded features such as longer memory and more image creation, priced below its $20 Plus and $200 Pro subscriptions. Go users will also see ads, while Plus, Pro and business customers will not.
Anthropic, by contrast, said it wants its assistant to act “unambiguously in our users’ interests,” promising that users will not see “sponsored” links in conversations and that responses will not be influenced by advertisers or include third-party product placements they did not ask for.
The AI startup argued that conversations with AI assistants differ fundamentally from search engines or social media feeds, where people expect a mix of organic and paid content. “The format is open-ended; users often share context and reveal more than they would in a search query,” Anthropic said, warning that this openness makes chats more susceptible to subtle influence.
The company also cautioned that advertising incentives could skew how an assistant responds. If a user mentions trouble sleeping, for example, an ad-free model would explore causes such as stress or habits, while an ad-supported system might also weigh whether the moment presents “an opportunity to make a transaction.”
“Users shouldn’t have to second-guess whether an AI is genuinely helping them or subtly steering the conversation towards something monetizable,” Anthropic said.
Even ads placed alongside chats, without directly shaping responses, would still compromise what it wants Claude to be: “a clear space to think and work,” the company added, while pushing teams to optimize for engagement rather than usefulness. “The most useful AI interaction might be a short one,” it said.
Anthropic said its business model relies on enterprise contracts and paid subscriptions, with revenue reinvested into improving the assistant. “Our business model is straightforward,” it wrote, emphasising that it aims to expand access without “selling our users’ attention or data to advertisers.”
While rejecting ads, the company said it still plans to support commerce when users explicitly ask for it, including future “agentic commerce” features where Claude could handle purchases on a user’s behalf. Any third-party interactions, it said, will be guided by a single rule: “they should be initiated by the user.”
“We want our users to trust Claude to help them keep thinking—about their work, their challenges, and their ideas,” Anthropic said.
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Anthropic on February 4 said it will keep its Claude assistant free of advertising, drawing a sharp contrast with rivals such as OpenAI, which announced in January that it will begin testing ads in its free AI product for logged-in users in the US and introduce a lower-cost subscription tier that still includes advertising.
“There are many good places for advertising. A conversation with Claude is not one of them,” the company said, adding that ads would be “incompatible with what we want Claude to be: a genuinely helpful assistant for work and for deep thinking.”
The move comes as OpenAI pushes further into consumer monetisation. The company said it will test ads in its free offering and is rolling out an $8-a-month “Go” plan with expanded features such as longer memory and more image creation, priced below its $20 Plus and $200 Pro subscriptions. Go users will also see ads, while Plus, Pro and business customers will not.
Anthropic, by contrast, said it wants its assistant to act “unambiguously in our users’ interests,” promising that users will not see “sponsored” links in conversations and that responses will not be influenced by advertisers or include third-party product placements they did not ask for.
The AI startup argued that conversations with AI assistants differ fundamentally from search engines or social media feeds, where people expect a mix of organic and paid content. “The format is open-ended; users often share context and reveal more than they would in a search query,” Anthropic said, warning that this openness makes chats more susceptible to subtle influence.
The company also cautioned that advertising incentives could skew how an assistant responds. If a user mentions trouble sleeping, for example, an ad-free model would explore causes such as stress or habits, while an ad-supported system might also weigh whether the moment presents “an opportunity to make a transaction.”
“Users shouldn’t have to second-guess whether an AI is genuinely helping them or subtly steering the conversation towards something monetizable,” Anthropic said.
Even ads placed alongside chats, without directly shaping responses, would still compromise what it wants Claude to be: “a clear space to think and work,” the company added, while pushing teams to optimize for engagement rather than usefulness. “The most useful AI interaction might be a short one,” it said.
Anthropic said its business model relies on enterprise contracts and paid subscriptions, with revenue reinvested into improving the assistant. “Our business model is straightforward,” it wrote, emphasising that it aims to expand access without “selling our users’ attention or data to advertisers.”
While rejecting ads, the company said it still plans to support commerce when users explicitly ask for it, including future “agentic commerce” features where Claude could handle purchases on a user’s behalf. Any third-party interactions, it said, will be guided by a single rule: “they should be initiated by the user.”
“We want our users to trust Claude to help them keep thinking—about their work, their challenges, and their ideas,” Anthropic said.
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