Anthropic has expanded access to Claude Code by letting users run it through cloud sessions without signing up for the research preview. As part of the rollout, the company is offering up to $250 in free usage credits to encourage more people to try the tool.
The free credits apply only to cloud sessions, according to the announcement. That distinction matters for security and privacy reviews, because cloud-based coding sessions involve running code in Anthropic's hosted environment rather than on a developer's own machine.
This article relies on a single source, so there are no differing accounts to compare. The source does not include specifics about security controls or data handling, so anyone weighing this offer against local options will need to look to Anthropic's own documentation for those details.