Anthropic has made cloud sessions in Claude Code available to eligible Pro and Max subscribers without requiring a research preview sign-up, and is offering up to $250 in free promotional credits for them.

According to Anthropic, the promotion began on September 23, credits must be claimed by October 7, and any unused balance expires on November 4. The promotion covers the AI coding tool's cloud mode only, not local Claude Code sessions.

Cloud sessions run Claude Code on Anthropic's infrastructure instead of the user's computer. A task can be started, left running remotely, and reviewed later. "Cloud sessions run on Anthropic-hosted infrastructure, so the work keeps going even without your computer running," Anthropic explains.

The credit amount depends on the plan:

• Pro subscribers receive $100 in promotional cloud session credits.
• Max subscribers receive $250 in promotional cloud session credits.

The offer is limited to individual Pro and Max subscribers who had an active subscription when the promotion started on September 23. Anthropic says the credits are separate from normal Claude usage limits and are applied automatically whenever a cloud session starts. "If you hit a limit locally, keep going in the cloud until your credit runs out," the company says.

Once the promotional balance is used up, cloud sessions count against the plan's normal usage limits. Anthropic does not charge separately for the cloud container itself.

Until now, cloud sessions were limited to users in the research preview. With the change, any eligible subscriber can start one from the Claude website, the Code section of the Claude mobile app, the desktop app, or the Claude Code command line tool.

Subscribers who want the credits have to claim them before the deadline. The process looks like this:

1. Sign in to an individual Claude Pro or Max account that was active on September 23.
2. Claim the cloud session credit offer on the Claude website before October 7.
3. Start a cloud session from the Claude Code section on the web, the mobile app, or the desktop app, or run the command claude --cloud in the terminal.
4. Spend the balance before November 4, when any remaining credit expires.

The credits make the most sense for users who regularly hit their local Claude Code limits, since the cloud balance is drawn down separately. Long-running tasks that would otherwise require a computer to stay on are the other obvious use.

The promotion follows other recent Claude experiments, including Anthropic's Claude Money finance feature test. Anthropic has not said whether the credit offer will be extended to Team or Enterprise plans, or to subscribers who joined after September 23.