Claude Code cloud sessions or your own server: which one for which job

If you pay for Claude Pro or Max, you have probably seen the offer by now: 100 dollars of credit on Pro, 250 on Max, for Claude Code cloud sessions, to be claimed by 7 October. If you were also about to rent a machine to keep an agent running, the two look like the same purchase, and one of them costs nothing.

They do different jobs. A cloud session is good at a task that starts, finishes and hands you the result. A machine of your own is for an agent that has to be there when a message arrives at three in the morning. We rent out machines of the second kind. Below is what Anthropic's documentation says about cloud sessions, read on 4 October 2026, and how we split the jobs between the two.

What a cloud session is

A Claude Code session that runs on a virtual machine Anthropic manages instead of on your computer. You start one at claude.ai/code, in the Code tab of the Claude app, in the desktop app, or with claude --cloud in a terminal. It keeps running after you close your laptop, and you can check on it from your phone. Cloud sessions come with the Pro, Max and Team plans and with some Enterprise seats.

There is no separate compute charge for the cloud machine. A session shares your plan's rate limits with everything else you do in Claude and Claude Code, and tasks run in parallel use them up proportionately faster.

The credit, by Anthropic's own terms, goes to individual Pro and Max subscribers who had a subscription on 23 September. It has to be claimed by 7 October and spent by 4 November, both at 11:59 PM Pacific time. While it lasts, cloud sessions do not count toward your plan's limits. It does not cover Routines.

What it is built for

Work on code that lives on GitHub. The session clones your repository, works on a branch, pushes it and opens a pull request. With the Claude GitHub App installed, it can watch that pull request and fix what a failed check or a reviewer's comment points at. You can start several tasks at once and come back to finished work.

It also runs on a schedule. A Routine is a saved prompt with one or more repositories that runs hourly, nightly, weekly or once at a set time, and each run is a cloud session. A nightly review of what was merged that day, or a weekly report built from a repository, fits a Routine well.

The limits Anthropic lists

• It stops when it goes quiet. Cloud sessions stop after a period of inactivity and the session's machine is reclaimed. When you reopen the session, your conversation history comes back. Background work that was still running, such as subagents and shell commands, does not.
• It needs GitHub. Cloning a repository and opening a pull request require GitHub. Code on GitLab or Bitbucket can be uploaded as a bundle, but the session cannot push the result back there.
• The network is limited by default. How much a session can reach is set per environment.
• It needs an Anthropic account. Cloud sessions are not available when Claude Code runs through Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud or another provider.
• A Routine runs once an hour at most. A more frequent schedule is rejected.

For a coding task with a beginning and an end, these rarely get in the way. They start to matter when the job has no end.

Jobs with no end

An agent that answers people spends most of its day waiting. A Telegram bot waits for the next question from a customer. A watcher checks a mailbox, a supplier's price list or a public register every ten minutes and writes to you when something changes. A small web app shows the team today's orders. An agent that compares this month with last month needs last month's files still on the disk. Agents like these often talk to a CRM, a bank or a mail server, and many of them have no code repository at all.

Each of them needs a machine that is switched on when the message arrives, keeps its files, and reaches whatever network you let it reach.

What our machine is

A Linux machine of your own, on all the time, with Claude Code installed and kept up to date, a terminal in your browser, a mailbox for the agent and a bridge to Telegram. Claude Code on it signs in to your own Claude subscription, so Anthropic bills you for Claude as before, and the agent draws on the same plan limits a cloud session would. We charge for the machine:

• Mini, 2.99 euro a month (3.49 dollars outside Europe): 1 vCPU, 1 GB of memory, 10 GB of disk, no browser. Enough for a bot, a watcher, mail and files. Its IPv4 address is shared with the host and its IPv6 address is its own. Many networks still have no IPv6, so a web app for the public belongs on the Server.
• Server, 12 euro a month (14 dollars): 4 GB, 40 GB, its own IPv4 address and Chrome, for a web app anyone can open and an agent that logs into websites.

Prices include VAT where it applies. If you would rather we set the agent up and keep it running, the packages on the price list include that.

Which one for which job

The job	Cloud session	A machine of your own
Change code in a GitHub repository and open a pull request	Made for it, at no extra charge, and the credit pays until 4 November	Works, but you pay for a machine this job does not need
A nightly review or a weekly report from a repository	A Routine, once an hour at the most often	Works, at any interval
A Telegram bot or a small web app that answers all day	The machine is reclaimed after a period of inactivity, and background work is not restored	Made for it
Check a mailbox or a website every ten minutes	Too often for a Routine	Made for it
Keep notes, downloads and spreadsheets for months	A reopened session gets its conversation history back	They stay on the disk
Talk to your CRM, your bank, your mail server	Network access is limited by default	Whatever you allow
Work with no GitHub: GitLab, a folder of invoices, no code at all	Cloning and pull requests need GitHub	No repository needed

In short: for a coding task on a GitHub repository, use cloud sessions, and spend the credit before 4 November. For an agent that has to stay on, such as a Telegram bot, a watcher, a small web app, files that stay put, any network and no GitHub, rent a machine. Claude Code signs in to the same Claude subscription in both places, so nothing stops you using both.

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What this article says about cloud sessions comes from Anthropic's documentation, read on 4 October 2026: Claude Code in the cloud and Routines, which Anthropic marks as a research preview. The terms of the credit are from Anthropic's help centre. Our prices are from our price list on the same day. Claude and Claude Code are trade marks of Anthropic. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic.