Last verified: October 2, 2026 (Pacific).
Direct answer: Anthropic moved Claude Code cloud sessions from research preview to general availability on September 23, 2026. Existing Pro subscribers can claim a one-time $100 credit and Max subscribers a one-time $250 credit — but only for cloud-session usage, and only if you claim by 11:59 PM Pacific on October 7, 2026. Unclaimed credit disappears. Claimed credit that goes unused expires November 4, 2026.
What a cloud session actually is
Claude Code running on Anthropic's machines instead of yours. You hand it a task and a GitHub repository; it keeps working after you close the laptop, lose Wi-Fi, or leave the room. Anthropic's pitch: "Cloud sessions run on Anthropic-hosted infrastructure, so the work keeps going even without your computer running."
The practical differences from a local session:
- Your laptop is not the bottleneck. No sleep, no battery, no VPN drop killing a long task.
- Isolation. The agent works in a hosted environment, not on your machine's files — which limits blast radius.
- Accessible everywhere. Start on desktop, check on mobile.
- It draws from credit, not just plan limits. The one-time credit applies automatically when you start a session, and it is separate from your weekly usage limits. Anthropic's framing: "If you hit a limit locally, keep going in the cloud until your credit runs out."
The credit, precisely
| Pro | Max | |
|---|---|---|
| One-time credit | $100 | $250 |
| Claim deadline | 11:59 PM PT, Oct 7, 2026 | 11:59 PM PT, Oct 7, 2026 |
| Unused credit expires | 11:59 PM PT, Nov 4, 2026 | 11:59 PM PT, Nov 4, 2026 |
| Eligibility | Individual subscriber active Sept 23, 2026 | Individual subscriber active Sept 23, 2026 |
One credit per account. The credit covers cloud sessions only — not chat, not API calls, not local Claude Code. It applies before your regular plan usage, and once it's gone, cloud sessions count against your normal plan limits. There is no separate charge for the cloud container itself.
What you need: a connected GitHub account, because every cloud session works against a repository. No GitHub, no session, no credit use.
How to claim it
1. Confirm your plan. Pro or Max, individual subscription, active on September 23.
2. Connect GitHub. Required before a cloud session will start.
3. Claim. Open Anthropic's claim link, or run /claim-credit inside the Claude Code CLI.
4. Start a session. From claude.ai/code, the Code tab in the Claude mobile app, the desktop app, or claude --cloud in the terminal. Anthropic also lists Routines as a starting point.
5. Watch the dates. Claim by October 7; spend it by November 4.
Team and Enterprise users get cloud-session access through premium seats, but the $100/$250 promotional credit is the Pro/Max subscriber offer — evaluate the feature on its own merits if you're outside the promo.
Under the hood
Anthropic runs cloud sessions on fresh Ubuntu 24.04 virtual machines — roughly 4 vCPUs, 16 GB of RAM, 30 GB of disk, per published reports. Organizations that can't let source code run on a vendor's VMs can route sessions to self-hosted environments instead — a separate path from the consumer credit.
Note the contrast with Remote Control: Remote Control connects a web or mobile interface to a Claude Code session running on *your own computer*, so that machine has to stay awake. Cloud sessions remove the machine entirely.
Should you use it?
Treat the credit as a trial budget. Point it at work that's easy to verify: bug fixes with test coverage, dependency updates, questions about a codebase. Check the branch and the pull request the agent produces before merging anything. Anthropic even describes auto-fix of pull requests directly in the cloud as a feature — still check the diff yourself.
For occasional or non-technical users, be honest with yourself: the credit may go unused, because cloud sessions require a GitHub-connected coding workflow to begin with. That's worth knowing before you count on redeeming the full amount.
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