# Claude Cowork Anthropic desktop AI assistant that controls your screen, files, and apps ## About Claude Cowork Claude Cowork is Anthropic's agentic AI feature, launched in January 2026, that turns Claude into a desktop assistant capable of completing real work on your computer. Unlike regular Claude chat, Cowork can read, edit, and create files in folders you specify, see your screen, control your mouse and keyboard, open applications, browse the web, and run recurring tasks on a schedule. It launched on the Claude Desktop app for macOS and Windows, then reached the web, iPhone, and Android on July 7, 2026, with cloud sessions that keep a task running on Anthropic's servers after you close your laptop and scheduled tasks that run server-side unattended. Anthropic also added connectors and plugins (Google Drive, Gmail, DocuSign, FactSet) and made Cowork generally available across paid plans. Honest concession: Claude is one of the strongest models available, and for solo knowledge workers who want files processed in place and can now start or check a task from a phone or browser, Cowork is genuinely impressive. It is the right pick when raw model quality is the deciding factor and the work is fundamentally one person's job. The key difference from Sistava is the operating model, not the device count and no longer memory either. Claude now carries account-level memory across sessions on Pro and Max, and it can split a job into chunks that run in parallel. What it does not have is a roster: there are no named employees with their own roles, no hierarchy, and no delegation between them. Cowork is one assistant working for one person. Sistava is a cloud-native platform where your AI employees live in a workspace you manage from any device, hold their own roles and memory, connect to thousands of apps via OAuth, and work in coordinated teams. ## Platform details - Pricing: No free tier. Included with Claude Pro ($20/month), Max (from $100/month), or Team (Standard Seat $20/seat/month billed annually, $25 monthly, which includes Claude Code and Claude Cowork). The Premium Seat ($100/seat/month annually, $125 monthly) buys roughly 5x more usage, not Cowork access. - Founded: January 2026, by Anthropic - Funding: Anthropic (roughly $380B valuation after a February 2026 Series G, backed by Google and Amazon; filed confidentially for an IPO in June 2026) - Last reviewed: 2026-08-13 ## Official website - [Visit Claude Cowork](https://claude.ai) ## What Is Claude Cowork and How Does It Work? Claude Cowork launched on January 12, 2026 as part of the Claude Desktop app from Anthropic. It transforms Claude from a chat assistant into a desktop agent that can take real actions on your computer. In Cowork mode, Claude can read, edit, and create files in folders you grant access to. It can see your screen, move your mouse, click buttons, type text, open applications, and browse the web. Think of it as having a very smart intern sitting at your computer. You describe what you need done ("organize these 50 PDFs into folders by client name", "create a summary spreadsheet from these 12 reports", "research these 5 companies and draft outreach emails"), and Cowork executes the steps while you watch or do other things. The experience is polished and fast, as you would expect from Anthropic. Claude is one of the best AI models available, and Cowork puts that intelligence to work on real tasks rather than just answering questions. For individual knowledge workers who do most of their work on one machine, Cowork is genuinely impressive. ## How many devices does Claude Cowork actually reach? Cowork launched inside the Claude Desktop app on macOS and Windows only. That changed on July 7, 2026: Cowork is now reachable from claude.ai in any browser with no install, and it appears in the sidebar of the iOS and Android Claude apps. Cloud sessions run the task on Anthropic's servers, so it keeps working after you close your laptop, scheduled tasks fire server-side without you present, and a feature called Dispatch lets you send a task from your phone for your desktop session to pick up. The gap that remains is depth, not device count. Mobile is built for starting a task, checking status, and steering it mid-run. Deep local-folder access and desktop-file workflows (the kind of task Cowork was originally built for) still belong to the desktop app. So the honest comparison is no longer desktop-only versus everywhere; it is full local-machine access on one device versus lighter, everywhere access for the rest. Sistava is cloud-native from day one. Your AI employees live in a workspace accessible from any browser on any device, with the same depth of capability wherever you open it. Start a conversation on your laptop, continue on your phone, review results on your tablet, and nothing is a lighter version of anything else. ## Memory: One Account vs One Per Employee This used to be the biggest gap on the page, and it is now the smallest. Claude carries account-level memory that persists across sessions on Pro and Max, so it does remember what you worked on last week. A dedicated Project narrows that memory to one body of work, with standing instructions and scheduled tasks attached to it, which is useful when you want a job kept separate rather than blended into everything else you do. Sistava splits memory by employee instead of by account. Each AI employee builds its own graph and episodic memory around the role it holds, so the one running your inbox and the one running your pipeline do not blur into a single history. Knowledge graphs map connections between people, projects, and concepts. Episodic memory recalls specific interactions. For a single person doing a single stream of work, account-level memory is genuinely enough, and Claude does it well. The difference starts to matter when several roles run at once and you want each one to hold its own context, preferences, and history rather than sharing yours. ## Integrations: Local Files vs Thousands of Apps Cowork connects to your local file system and supports MCP (Model Context Protocol) for additional integrations. In practice, most users connect it to local folders and use screen control to interact with web apps. Setting up MCP connectors for specific services (Gmail, Slack, Notion) requires technical configuration. Sistava connects to thousands of apps through one-click OAuth. Click "Connect Gmail", authorize, done. Same for Slack, Notion, Salesforce, HubSpot, Google Calendar, Outlook, Jira, Asana, and hundreds more. No MCP setup, no manual configuration, no API keys to manage. Your AI employee works inside the tools you already use. ## Team Pricing: The Seat Cost Is Not the Difference For an individual, Cowork is affordable: $20/month on the Pro plan (with rate limits) or from $100/month on Max for heavier usage. There is no free tier. On the Claude Team plan, the Standard Seat is $20/seat/month billed annually, $25 billed monthly, and Anthropic lists it as including both Claude Code and Claude Cowork. So a team of five is roughly $100-125/month, not the several hundred a Premium Seat would suggest. The Premium Seat ($100/seat/month annually, $125 monthly) exists to buy about five times more usage, not to unlock Cowork. That puts the two products in the same price neighbourhood, so pick on what the money buys rather than on the number. Five Cowork seats give five people their own assistant, each working alone. The Leader plan gives one person a roster of AI employees with named roles, a leader that delegates, sprints with a written review, approval gates before anything touches a real account, and per-employee cost tracking. If what you need is five capable individuals, Cowork is the cheaper and simpler answer, and we would rather say so than quote you a number that was never true. ## Claude Cowork vs Claude Tag vs Claude Code: Where Each One Fits Anthropic now ships Claude across several surfaces, and it helps to separate them. Claude Cowork is the personal assistant that controls files and apps for one person, now reachable from desktop, web, and mobile. Claude Code is the terminal and editor agent for developers. Claude Tag is the newest: an AI teammate you tag in Slack, on Claude Enterprise and Team plans, that follows channels, builds context, and does real work when you mention it. They share the same strong models but target different places you work. If the surface you actually care about is Slack, the relevant comparison is not Cowork, it is Claude Tag, and the catch is the plan it ships on. Claude Tag launched in beta on June 23, 2026, running on Claude Opus 4.8, for Enterprise and Team plan customers, and Anthropic is retiring the older Claude for Slack app on August 3, 2026, which pushes every remaining Slack user onto that gated tier. A solo founder or small team that just wants to tag an AI in Slack and have it do the job ends up paying for an organization-wide tier to unlock one capability. Sistava gives you that same taggable-Slack experience without the enterprise gate. Hire an AI employee, connect it to Slack, and tag it like a coworker. It reads the channel history for context, continues in the thread without re-tagging, and asks for approval in Slack before any action that touches a real account, starting free. It is the Claude Tag alternative for the people the Enterprise and Team plans were never priced for. ## When to Choose Claude Cowork vs Sistava Choose Claude Cowork if you are a solo knowledge worker, you primarily need help with local file tasks (document processing, spreadsheet work, report generation) on top of lighter check-ins from your phone or browser, you already pay for Claude Pro or Max, you value the raw intelligence of Claude models above all else, and you do not need team collaboration. Choose Sistava if you want several named AI employees holding distinct roles and their own memory rather than one assistant holding all of it, you need thousands of app integrations without manual setup, you plan to scale beyond one person to a team or department, you want to choose between multiple AI models (not just Claude), or you need delegation, sprints, and approval gates around the work. Sistava is an AI workforce platform. Cowork is a single-user assistant that now follows you across devices, remembers across sessions, and runs work in parallel. The question is whether you need a very good assistant for yourself or a team that grows with your business. ## Comparison - [Compare Claude Cowork with Sistava](/en/compare/ai-personal-assistant/claude-cowork) — See the two platforms side by side when you are ready to evaluate them.