SHORT ANSWER
Claude Pro — the $20 per month plan — is enough for this entire course. Joe confirmed this directly in the Questions for the instructor forum when several participants asked whether they needed the more expensive Max tier. The Module 1 video also makes it clear: "$20 per month plans are sufficient."
What Pro gets you
Claude Pro is the entry-level paid tier from Anthropic. It gives you:
- ›Access to Claude Sonnet and Opus through the web interface at claude.ai and through Claude Code on your machine.
- ›A usage allowance that's generous enough for the exercises in this course. You might hit the limit if you run a lot of long research sessions in one afternoon — if that happens, you just wait a few hours and come back.
- ›Everything you need to complete Modules 1 through 4 and the final project.
Madi McCool, a grants and communications manager who rebuilt her organization's website using Claude Code, does all of her work on Pro — you can see her setup walkthrough in her bonus interview. Pro is what most working journalists using these tools are on.
When you'd actually want Max
Max is Anthropic's higher-usage tier. Different pricing in different regions — roughly $100 to $200 per month depending on your currency and tier. You'd want it only if:
- ›You're running Claude Code for hours every single day and keep bumping into usage limits on Pro.
- ›You're running multiple long research tasks in parallel as part of a daily newsroom workflow.
- ›You already know Claude Code is a core tool in your work and the cost is worth the extra headroom.
None of that applies to finishing this course. Start with Pro. Upgrade later only if you're actually hitting the wall.
If you don't want to pay Anthropic
You don't have to use Claude at all for this course. The exercises are designed to work with any of three CLI tools:
- ›Gemini CLI. Has a genuinely useful free tier — about 1,000 requests per day at the time of writing. If you don't want to spend anything, this is the path.
- ›Codex CLI. Requires a ChatGPT Plus subscription ($20 per month). Works if you already pay for ChatGPT anyway. Mike Janssen at Current uses this path — his newsroom was already on ChatGPT Plus.
- ›Claude Code. Requires Claude Pro ($20 per month). What Joe demos in the videos.
All three CLI tools do the same fundamental thing: give an AI model the ability to read and write files on your machine. The exercises assume you're using one of them. Pick whichever fits your budget and your existing subscriptions.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Pick one of the $20 plans (Claude Pro or ChatGPT Plus) or use Gemini CLI's free tier. That's it. If you see a page anywhere in the course materials that implies you need Max, it's a typo — Joe confirmed as much in the forum.
RELATED: If Claude Code isn't available in your region, see this FAQ on using GitHub Copilot CLI as an alternative.