Claude Personal Finance: what it is and how to use it
2026-11-06 · 4 min read
Claude Personal Finance is a new beta that links your US bank, card, loan and investment accounts to Claude through Plaid, so you can ask about your money and get answers from your own transactions. To use it, you need a Pro, Max or Ultra plan in the US: open Personal Finance in the sidebar, sign in to your bank through Plaid, and ask a question.
The post on X
@claudeai announced it on Thursday, November 5, with a video of about 90 seconds. The line to read twice: "Access is read-only, and Claude can't move, manage, or invest your money." Anthropic's announcement and help article have the rest.
That limit puts Claude on the safe side of at least one big bank's rules. As we covered in the JPMorgan AI agents ban, Chase won't let outside agents log in and act for customers, but read-only data through connectors like Plaid still works. Claude isn't first here, either: Meta's Muse launched with a Plaid connector.
Who can use it
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Plans | Pro ($20 a month), Max ($100), Ultra ($200) |
| Not included | Free, Team, Enterprise |
| Where | US only, US banks only |
| Apps | Web, Claude Desktop, iOS, Android |
| Bank limit | Up to 16 banks |
| History | Up to 24 months of transactions |
The rollout is gradual, so it may not be in your sidebar yet.
How to set it up
- Open Personal Finance in Claude's sidebar.
- Select "Link accounts with Plaid," choose your bank, sign in, and pick the accounts to share. You have 10 minutes to finish. Anthropic says Claude doesn't ask for or see your bank password.
- Ask a question. Anthropic's own examples include "Where did my money go this month?", "Am I spending more than I make?" and "What's an APR, and what has mine cost me this year?"
- Check the answer. Anthropic admits Claude can make mistakes and tells you to "ask which transactions are behind a number," then confirm important figures with your bank.
There's also a dashboard. Widgets cover spending, cash flow, accounts, subscriptions, upcoming bills and short insights from Claude, and you can add, edit, remove or reorder them. You can also ask for something specific, like a weekly spending chart or a calendar of what's due.
The fine print
Claude sees your bank's name, each account's name, type and last four digits, plus balances, credit limits and transactions. It does not read "holdings, trades, rates, or terms," so linking a brokerage won't get you a portfolio review. Anthropic also says the product isn't designed to give investment advice.
The privacy rules depend on where you ask. Conversations in the Personal Finance hub aren't used for training. Outside the hub, your normal privacy settings apply, and Claude can read your linked accounts in ordinary chats without asking each time. To change that, go to Connectors, then Plaid, and pick "Needs approval" or turn it off for chats.
Deleting things takes more care than you might expect. Once Claude has used your accounts in a chat, it's designed not to save that chat to memory or search it later, but the transactions stay in your chat history until you delete the chat. An artifact you publish from one of those chats stays up even after the chat is gone. Unlinking works per bank login, not per account, and removing your last bank deletes your dashboard, widgets and budgets for good.
Our read
Read-only is the right scope for a first version, and sending the login through Plaid keeps your password away from Claude. If you use Claude for other work, we'd switch Plaid to "Needs approval" on day one and keep money questions in the hub, since the training exclusion only covers the hub.
It's also narrower than "connect your bank to an AI" might sound. The help article says linked accounts can't be used in scheduled tasks, Cowork or Claude Code, and these chats may not be able to run code or work with Excel or PDF files. For now you ask and it answers, and you can't hand it a recurring job.
What it means for businesses
Personal Finance is for personal accounts. Moving to a Team or Enterprise organization unlinks your banks, and neither page describes using it to run a company's finances. The help article does mention linking a second login at the same bank, such as a business account, but we wouldn't treat that as a bookkeeping tool.
We'd still copy the design when connecting AI to your own business data: the person with the login grants access, the agent starts read-only, and you can ask to see the records behind any number. New Face Design's free process audit can show you where that setup would fit in your shop.