Do I have to pay for Claude as well as codus?
Yes. Your codus seat and your Claude plan are two separate payments to two different companies. codus is the workspace, and it does not include the AI. It drives Claude Code, which needs its own paid Claude plan, Pro or Max, bought from Anthropic, and that is what actually does the work. So you pay Anthropic for the AI and you pay codus for the seat that lets your team run it. If you would rather use OpenAI Codex, the same rule applies: you bring your own.
Why there are two bills
Think of codus as the cockpit and Claude as the engine. codus gives you the team seats, the projects, the tasks and the agents' workspace. Claude Code is the intelligence that reads your code and does the work. codus never resells the AI, so the AI is not baked into your seat price. That is deliberate: you run the Claude plan you already pay for, at your own usage, rather than paying codus a marked-up rate for it.
What each one costs
- Your codus seat is £99 per seat per month on Solo, and less per seat on the Agency plans. See How much does codus cost?.
- Your Claude plan is a paid plan, Pro or Max, bought from Anthropic at anthropic.com. The free Claude.ai plan does not include Claude Code, so it will not run codus.
Can I use an API key instead of a Claude plan?
For running the agents, no. codus agent sessions run on your Claude Code sign-in, which is your Pro or Max plan, not on a pay-as-you-go API key. Connecting an Anthropic API key inside codus is a separate feature, for building and running Claude-powered features inside your own projects. It does not power the agent that does your work. So to use codus you still need the paid Claude plan and Claude Code signed in.
Common problems
I paid for codus but nothing happens when I try to work. This is almost always the missing Claude plan. codus opens fine, but with no AI signed in behind it, nothing runs. Check you have a paid Claude plan and that Claude Code is installed and signed in. See What do I need before I can use codus? and How do I install Claude Code?.
codus says Claude Code is not installed, but I installed it. That is a separate, common setup snag with its own fix. See codus says Claude Code is not installed, but I installed it.