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Anthropic Unavailable from Russia Documents and spreadsheets

Claude Cowork

Documents, spreadsheets and decks without a terminal: you hand over the task in an ordinary Claude chat and the work runs in Anthropic's cloud, even with the laptop closed.

Free?
No, paid plans only
Price
included in Claude plan
From Russia
Russia is not on Anthropic's supported-regions list, which names Cowork explicitly.
Models
Claude
Licence
not disclosed
Our benchmark
Models in our benchmark →
Official pricing page ↗ Checked 3 November 2026.

Unavailable from Russia. Similar tools that work: Kimi Work.

What changed in price and access

  1. New Cowork tasks on Pro, Max and Ultra run only in Anthropic's cloud: schedules run with the computer off, local-only mode was removed ↗
  2. Cowork was merged into the ordinary Claude chat: on Pro and Max any conversation can take a task, with shared projects and skills ↗
  3. Claude Cowork gained a built-in browser: it opens sites, fills forms and collects data on its own ↗
  4. Claude for Word: the agent edits a document with track changes on and checks numbers against the source ↗
  5. Claude Cowork: delegation and scheduled tasks; in June they ran only while the desktop app was open ↗

Weak point: Memory is per project: Richard Yu kept a rules copy in each one and after 6 weeks had 5 diverging versions, none clearly current.

How to check: For every number in a summary, ask for the file and place it came from, and open two at random. More below ↓

What it gives a manager

  • Scheduled tasks in the cloud: every Monday a digest of your Slack channels or a reports folder, even with your computer switched off.
  • Chat and Cowork are one conversation: a quick question and a full report in the same window, with shared projects, connectors and skills.
  • Start a task on the laptop, check and correct it from the phone: sessions and files belong to the account, not the computer.
  • On Team and Enterprise the owner switches Cowork and cloud mode on separately, per role on Enterprise; auto-approval can be turned off.

Weak points

  • Memory is per project: Richard Yu kept a rules copy in each one and after 6 weeks had 5 diverging versions, none clearly current.
  • Since October 6 new tasks on Pro, Max and Ultra run only in the cloud: local mode is gone, folder files are processed by Anthropic.
  • Anything that needs the browser is slow: it looks at the screen and clicks step by step, the way a person would.
  • Handles simple column-based spreadsheets well but struggles with merged cells and unusual layouts.

How to check this agent’s work

  1. For every number in a summary, ask for the file and place it came from, and open two at random.
  2. Edit documents with track changes on, so every replacement is visible.
  3. Compare a new scheduled task with what you would have done yourself for a week before letting it run alone.

Picking an agent takes an evening. After that the question is not the price but whether you can trust what it did.

Stop re-checking AI by hand

Checking everything an agent does by hand throws away the gain. Not checking means made-up numbers in a report. We are preparing a short course: in a week you build a check for one of your recurring AI outputs – a second agent and a couple of automatic cross-checks find the errors before your manager does.

What the course covers: programme and price

Strengths

  • Reads a whole folder at once: Richard Yu fed it 400 pages of emails, pages and call transcripts and it found 3 self-contradictions.
  • In Sadie St Lawrence's test it caught a hidden $18,000 stipend line and the CFO's 150-participant requirement that ChatGPT Work missed.
  • Access is limited to folders you grant, once or always; before risky steps like deleting files it pauses and shows what it is about to do.
  • Scheduled tasks run in the cloud: the computer can sleep, and results open on the web, desktop and phone.

Alternatives

What it can do for you
  • Pull together a project summary from a folder of reports and emails
  • Merge three spreadsheets into one and flag the discrepancies
  • Draft a presentation from a set of documents
  • Every Monday, summarise last week's messages in the team's Slack channels
Example from a review: An executive memo from three conflicting files

Sadie St Lawrence gave Claude Cowork and ChatGPT Work the same packet, an executive brief, leadership meeting notes and a budget spreadsheet, with no web access, and asked for a decision memo, a five-slide deck and an action tracker. The files deliberately disagreed on headcount (120 vs 150), launch date and budget: the sheet showed $133,100 under a $150,000 ceiling, but the notes required a $150 per-person stipend, making the real total $151,100. Both then received the same CFO revision. Cowork won on her weighted score and applied the correction; ChatGPT Work missed the requirement. Elapsed time is not stated in the video.

Source: Sadie St Lawrence, 'ChatGPT Work vs Claude Cowork: I Gave Both the Same Executive Job'

Reviews (6)

The video authors’ opinions, not our conclusions.

Facts with sources
  • Tasks run in Anthropic's cloud; Claude reaches local folders and the browser through Claude Desktop, and only while the app is open. Source
  • The same technology is sold by Microsoft inside Microsoft 365 as Copilot Cowork. Source (in Russian)
  • Unavailable from Russia, along with Claude. Source (in Russian)
  • Since September 16 Cowork in any chat has been rolling out to Pro and Max; on Enterprise the unified experience turns on by default on November 16. Source
  • Enterprise has an Efficient mode: only Sonnet and Haiku are available, and new sessions start on Sonnet 5.5 at low effort. Source
Claude Cowork: cloud sessions, folder access by permission
Claude Cowork: cloud sessions, folder access by permission

Take the course in English – first

We’ll email you the day the English course opens. One email, nothing else unless you ask for it.