Claude for Outlook

Claude for Outlook is Anthropic's Outlook add-in, the fourth Claude for Microsoft 365 add-in alongside Claude for Excel, Claude for PowerPoint and Claude for Word. Anthropic released it in public beta on May 7, 2026, for the Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans of Claude, and its documentation still describes it as in beta. The other three add-ins became generally available the same day.

Anthropic is specific about who it is for: professionals whose work runs through email, naming private equity and investment banking associates managing deal flow, in-house legal teams running counterparty negotiations, and consultants tracking multiple client threads.

What it does: triage an unread inbox into what needs you, what Claude can handle and what is noise. It drafts replies, reply-alls and forwards in your voice, which land unsent in the compose pane, and summarizes long threads into decisions, open items and who owes what, with per-email citations. It reads .docx and .xlsx attachments inline, searches past mail by topic rather than only by keyword, finds meeting times across attendees, and writes a one-page brief before a meeting.

The autonomy boundary is stated by the vendor: Claude never sends mail or invites on its own, and every draft lands unsent for review. During the beta Anthropic does not recommend it for unattended sending, for client-facing or counterparty correspondence without reading the draft first, for replacing your judgment on which emails matter, or for mailboxes holding privileged or regulated data without appropriate controls.

Compatibility is a procurement gate. It runs on Outlook on the web, on Outlook for Windows in both the new and classic clients, and on Outlook for Mac, each with a Microsoft 365 subscription. It does not run on Outlook 2016 or 2019 perpetual or volume-licensed editions, on iOS or Android, or on mailboxes hosted on Exchange on-premises. An admin must grant a one-time Microsoft Graph consent before deployment, and tenants in GCC High, DoD or 21Vianet clouds register their own Entra application.

With a Claude account, one conversation can span the inbox and the open document, workbook and deck, so an attachment opened in Word arrives with the thread already in context. Connectors and Skills work the same way as in the other three add-ins. Through Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI, Azure AI Foundry or an LLM gateway, Anthropic lists connectors and Skills as coming soon and cross-app work, dictation and file uploads as unavailable. On Bedrock, Vertex AI or a gateway that routes to them, no mailbox content reaches Anthropic.

There is no separate fee, and the add-in is included in paid Claude plans. Pro is $17 per month billed annually or $20 monthly, and Max is $100 per month for 5x usage or $200 for 20x. Team standard seats are $20 per seat per month billed annually or $25 monthly, with premium seats at $100 or $125. Enterprise is $20 per seat per month billed annually with a 20-seat minimum, plus usage at API rates.

Anthropic's enterprise page lists SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR and CCPA compliance. Mailbox content Claude reads becomes part of the prompt, and inputs and outputs are deleted from Anthropic's backend within 30 days, with exceptions Anthropic lists. The add-in keeps no server-side copy or index of the mailbox. For Enterprise organizations with the Compliance API enabled, Claude for Outlook sessions are included, and Anthropic labels that coverage public beta. It is not included in Enterprise audit logs and does not inherit custom data retention settings. Enterprise organizations can send audit telemetry to their own OpenTelemetry collector, and Anthropic states that on Pro, Max and Team plans observability and audit export are not available.

On Microsoft Marketplace, Anthropic's Claude for Outlook listing showed 2.0 out of 5 from 56 ratings in October 2026.

Buyers who want an assistant built into Microsoft 365 by Microsoft itself can compare Microsoft 365 Copilot. For longer tasks across local files and connected apps rather than one inbox, Anthropic offers Claude Cowork.

Current state Q4 2026: Claude for Outlook has been in public beta since May 7, 2026, and is the only one of the four add-ins still in beta. Compliance API coverage of its sessions is also in public beta, and the documentation now covers mailbox search by topic and US Government cloud tenants.