Claude is a family of artificial intelligence models developed by Anthropic for writing, analysis, reasoning, coding, image understanding, and tool use.
## What is Claude?
Claude is not one model. The family includes different performance tiers. Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku commonly distinguish the highest-capability, balanced, and faster or lower-cost options.
## How does Claude work?
Claude models process supported text and image inputs and generate answers, code, or analysis from patterns learned during training. Selected models support extended reasoning, tool calls, and long contexts.
## Where is Claude used?
Claude is available through the Claude application, Anthropic’s API, and partner cloud platforms. Common uses include writing, research, document analysis, programming, support, and agentic workflows.
## Strengths and limitations
The family offers choices that balance quality, speed, and cost. However, models can make mistakes or refuse legitimate requests, and capabilities, pricing, and availability vary by version.
## In short
Claude names Anthropic’s AI model family, while Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku are tiers and releases within that family.