Claude gets read-only bank access for US Pro, Max, Ultra

Anthropic on November 5 announced Personal Finance, a beta hub where Claude reads the balances and transactions of the bank and card accounts you link and answers questions about them in plain language. It starts rolling out this week on the Pro, Max and Ultra plans in the US, according to Claude’s announcement. If you’re on one of those plans, Claude can total your spending across accounts and flag charges that hit twice, but it can’t move money, and Anthropic warns that Claude can get the numbers wrong.

Look for Personal Finance in Claude’s sidebar. Anthropic suggests opening it, connecting one account and asking a single question, such as “Can I afford a trip this spring?” The rollout is gradual, the company said on X, so the entry may show up later for some accounts. Linking goes through Plaid, a service that connects apps to banks. You sign in to your bank yourself, accept Plaid’s terms and approve read-only access there, so Claude never asks for or sees your bank password.

What Claude sees, and what it can’t do

Claude sees data only for the accounts you choose to connect: the bank’s name, each account’s name, type and last four digits, balances and credit limits, and up to two years of transactions. It can’t move, manage or invest your money, and Anthropic says the hub isn’t designed to give investment advice. You can unlink an account at any time, and after that Claude can no longer see its data.

Training depends on where you ask. Conversations inside the Personal Finance hub aren’t used to train Anthropic’s models. Anything you share with Claude outside the hub falls under your usual privacy settings, and that includes a statement pasted into an ordinary chat.

Like the rest of Claude, the hub carries no ads or sponsored recommendations, and Anthropic doesn’t offer credit cards, loans or savings accounts of its own, “so your money questions get a straight answer,” the post says.

What the answers look like

Anthropic’s walkthrough is an imagined month with payday 10 days away. Asked “Where did my money go this month?”, Claude adds up $4,309.37 across the connected accounts, sorted by category, with more than half going to rent and utilities and $1,024.51 to food and drink. Follow-up questions get it to compare against previous months, where it finds a membership renewal, and then to list four payments due from checking before payday, which leave $1,393.22.

Ask whether anything looks off and Claude reads across every connected account for charges that hit twice, unexpected fees or a bill that has crept up over the year. A question like “What’s an APR, and what has mine cost me this year?” gets the term explained and then the interest you’ve been charged added up. Claude can also build a weekly spending chart, a calendar of what’s due or a dashboard of the numbers you pick, and you can keep adjusting it.

Every figure in that walkthrough is Anthropic’s illustration. For your own totals, the check Anthropic gives you is still manual: ask Claude which transactions are behind a number, and confirm important figures with your bank.

The feature was visible two months ago. In September, TestingCatalog spotted an unreleased “Money” tab in the Claude mobile app with the onboarding line “Understand your money with Claude.” Third-party finance connectors such as Era Context and PocketSmith already worked with Claude then.

Anthropic calls the beta a starting point and is asking banks, wealth managers and financial services companies to help shape what comes next. “Personal Finance is a first step,” the company wrote. “For life’s bigger money decisions, we think people are best served by Claude working alongside the licensed professionals and regulated firms they trust.”