Claude Teams
Claude Teams is the multi-user tier of Claude.ai — designed for small to medium teams who want shared Projects, consistent workflows, and centralised admin. It's the bridge between individual Pro accounts and full Enterprise deployments.
What Changes vs Personal Plans
Teams builds on the Pro plan features and adds collaboration and administrative capabilities:
Shared across the team
- Shared Projects — multiple members can contribute
- Shared Project knowledge base — everyone draws from the same files
- Shared custom instructions — apply the same system prompt across all team conversations in a Project
- Shared conversation history within Projects (visible to all Project members)
Admin controls added
- Invite and remove team members
- View team-wide usage (tokens, model usage by member)
- Consolidated billing — one invoice for the entire team
- Assign roles (admin vs member)
Shared Projects
The most powerful Teams feature is shared Projects. A shared Project:
- Shared knowledge base: Upload company documents, brand guidelines, technical specs, or reference materials once — every team member's conversations in the Project have access.
- Shared custom instructions: Define how Claude should behave for the entire team in this Project — tone, output format, what to avoid, what to assume about the audience. No need for each person to write their own system prompts.
- Shared conversation history: All conversations started within a shared Project are visible to all Project members. This means your colleagues can see, continue, or learn from each other's Claude conversations. Use this intentionally — it's powerful for collaboration but means nothing is private within a Project.
Private vs Shared Conversations
Not everything on Teams is shared:
- Conversations outside of a shared Project are private to the individual user — colleagues cannot see personal conversation history
- Only conversations inside a shared Project are visible to all Project members
- Members can create personal Projects that are not shared with the team
Best Practices for Teams
Write team-wide custom instructions once, well
The shared custom instructions field is the highest-leverage setting on Teams. A well-crafted instruction set — covering tone, formatting, what to assume, what to avoid — improves the quality of every person's output without requiring individuals to re-prompt. Review and refine these periodically.
Organise by workflow, not by person
Create Projects around workflows ("Customer Research", "Product Copy", "Engineering Specs") rather than assigning one Project per person. This lets the right people collaborate in the right context, with the right knowledge base.
Curate the knowledge base — don't overstuff it
Adding too many documents to a Project knowledge base dilutes relevance. Include only what Claude actively needs for that Project's tasks — not every company document you have. Revisit and prune quarterly.
Remind the team: shared Projects = shared visibility
New users often assume their conversations are private. Make it explicit that conversations within a shared Project are visible to all Project members — and that sensitive personal queries (HR questions, salary research) should be done outside of shared Projects.
Teams vs Enterprise
Teams is not a compliance product. If your organisation needs:
- SSO (SAML/OIDC via Okta, Azure AD, etc.)
- Audit logs (who asked what, when, what model responded)
- Data residency controls or zero-data-retention agreements
- HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (BAA)
- Custom data processing agreements (DPAs)
...then Enterprise is the appropriate tier. Teams is for small professional teams with standard SaaS data handling expectations. See Claude Enterprise for the full compliance picture.
Checklist: Do You Understand This?
- Teams adds shared Projects, shared knowledge bases, shared custom instructions, and admin controls over individual Pro
- Conversations within shared Projects are visible to all Project members — personal conversations outside Projects are private
- Organise Projects by workflow, not by person; write strong shared custom instructions for each Project
- Billing is consolidated per team; admins see team-wide usage
- Teams is not a compliance product — for SSO, audit logs, or HIPAA, use Enterprise instead